Theatre reviews for you, by you. If you would like to review for us,
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Writer/Director: John Godber Reviewer: Cathy Crabb The Public Reviews Rating: Al (Rob Angell) and Bet (Wendi Peters) have had- like the set and costume implies- all the colour drained from their twenty-odd year relationship. Al has had to take redundancy/ early retirement which he spends in the shed making gloomy paintings of industrial scapes, Bet, knowing and sensitive [...]

Writer: Douglas Post Director: Patrick Sandford Reviewer: Catherine Love The Public Reviews Rating: A one man thriller sounds like an unlikely prospect and Douglas Post’s play is up against it from the outset. The setting is 1950s London and Post’s single protagonist is Derek Eveleigh, a broke, alcoholic photographer and ex-cop who is at the end of his [...]

Writer: Polly Teal Director: Nancy Meckler Reviewer: Mary Tapper The Public Reviews Rating: Shared Experience have a new home – they are now the resident theatre company of Oxford Playhouse – and last night they celebrated with an assured production of Bronte, a new version of the play that was originally produced with The Watermill Theatre in 2005. [...]

Writer: Charles Dickens Adaptor: Tanika Gupta Director: Nikolai Foster Reviewer: Bill Avenell The Public Reviews Rating: I went to the Theatre Royal in Brighton with slightly mixed emotions. I love reading Charles Dickens, would I love a stage adaptation of Great Expectations moved lock stock and barrel to India? The honest answer is I am not sure but [...]

Director: Paul Hunter Reviewer: Sara Jackson The Public Reviews Rating: So it’s never ideal. When you get back from a long day at work, put your feet up to relax. Look in your diary and realize you are supposed to be at the theatre tonight. It passes through your mind that you could just skip it and have [...]

Writer: Tim Firth Director: Roger Haines Reviewer: Rachael Martin The Public Reviews Rating: Upon hearing the words ‘Calendar Girls’, most people will think about the 2003 film release starring Julie Walters and the now Dame Helen Mirren. However a current theatrical production of the Calendar Girls story, directed by Roger Haines, has taken London’s West End by storm, [...]

Writer: Agatha Christie Director: Joe Harmston Reviewer: Ian Foster The Public Reviews Rating: Her off Strictly Come Dancing, him out of Drop the Dead Donkey, her out of Monarch of the Glen, him off Doctors and yes him out of Harry Potter all grown up now: Bill Kenwright’s The Agatha Christie Theatre Company’s production of her 1958 play [...]

Writer: Alan Bennett Director: Christopher Luscombe Reviewer: Catherine Love The Public Reviews Rating: Is all knowledge, as A. E. Housman posits, ‘precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use’? This is just one of the questions posed by Alan Bennett’s phenomenally successful play The History Boys, returning this year for another national tour. In the critically [...]