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News: CFT’S 60th anniversary season announced

Full details of Chichester Festival Theatre’s Festival 2022 – their diamond anniversary year – have been announced by Artistic Director Daniel Evans and Executive Director Kathy Bourne

This sparkling Festival season offers no less than six world premiere productions, including three musicals: the Tony and Olivier Award-winning Gershwin musical Crazy for You; Local Hero, inspired by the hit film and featuring songs by Mark Knopfler; and a new family musical adventure, The Famous Five. The host of dramas includes some of the new plays originally lined up for Festival 2020 – The Taxidermist’s Daughter by Cicestrian Kate Mosse, Steven Moffat’s The Unfriend and Christopher Shinn’s The Narcissist – as well as Alecky Blythe’s Our Generation. Henry Goodman plays Poirot in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express; Alex Jennings leads the cast of Stephen Beresford’s new play The Southbury Child, Roy Williams’s much-praised Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads returns in a reconfigured Minerva; and Alan Ayckbourn’s celebrated Woman in Mind completes the line-up. And for Christmas, Chichester Festival Youth Theatre present The Wind in the Willows. Continue reading “News: CFT’S 60th anniversary season announced”

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September theatre round-up

A quick round-up of the rest of September’s shows

Mary Said What She Said, aka how far I will go for Isabelle Huppert
The Provoked Wife, aka how far I will go for Alexandra Gilbreath
A Doll’s House, aka if we must have more Ibsen, at least it is like this
Falsettos, aka finding the right way, for me, to respond
The Comedy Grotto, aka a sneaky peak at Joseph Morpurgo
The Life I Lead, aka something really rather sweet
Blues in the Night, aka all hail Broadway-bound Sharon D Clarke (and Debbie Kurup, and Clive Rowe too)
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, aka well why not go again Continue reading “September theatre round-up”

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Review: Young Chekhov – The Seagull, National Theatre

“We should show life…as we see it in our dreams.”

The Seagull may be the most ensemble-focused of the three plays that make up Young Chekhov but with the glorious Anna Chancellor appearing as the mercurial Arkadina – her star cachet getting her out of having to do either of the other two – the attention can’t help but be drawn to her and her extraordinary stage presence.

This may be the most well-known of the Chekhov plays being presented here, it certainly deservedly emerges as the strongest, and so David Hare’s freshened-up version has little of the heavy work it had to do with the others. Jonathan Kent’s production places it at the end of the three-show day deliberately, it’s where it sits chronologically and you really do get to see the maturation of the writer, his ability to develop his characters and themes more dramatically effectively. Continue reading “Review: Young Chekhov – The Seagull, National Theatre”

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Review: Young Chekhov – Platonov, National Theatre

“Whatever you do, don’t rely on your own judgement. That’s the worst mistake you could make

Platonov wasn’t performed in Chekhov’s lifetime and even in this radically adapted version by David Hare, I’m not 100% sure that it works. You can see the attraction in terms of the Young Chekhov context – a trilogy of the Russian’s early work – but for me, the main pleasure comes in seeing the benchmark from which his later genius advanced.

It’s not for lack of trying from Jonathan Kent’s production, lead by a sparkling performance of disreputable charisma from James McArdle as an unhappily married teacher intent on spreading his vodka-fuelled discontent through the bedsheets of most of the local community, not least Nina Sosanya’s Anna and Olivia Vinall’s Sofya, with little care for the impact of his actions. Continue reading “Review: Young Chekhov – Platonov, National Theatre”