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Writer/Director: Gerry Tebbutt Reviewer: Ann Bawtree The Public Reviews Rating: What a refreshing evening’s entertainment! This show is a real traditional pantomime going back, if not quite as far as Harlequin and Columbine, at least to before the days of Christmas shows simply lionising the latest “celebrity”. “Jack and the Beanstalk” is Gerry Tebbutt’s thirty-seventh pantomime and his [...]

Writer: Noel Coward Director: Joe Harmston Reviewer: Steve Turner The Public Reviews Rating: Noel Coward’s final play, written in 1967 and set in 1951, Star Quality, takes us into the world of the theatre. Starting with the leading lady’s acceptance of a part in a new play, we follow her fortunes via first read through, and rehearsals all [...]

Writer: Wynyard Browne Director: Michael Lunney Reviewer: Steve Turner The Public Reviews Rating: Set in a Norfolk vicarage on Christmas Eve towards the end of the 1940s at a family gathering, Wynyard Browne’s play unfolds over a 24 hour period bringing us a tale of family secrets and hidden desires. The central theme of the play is the [...]

Writer: Agatha Christie Director: Joe Harmston Reviewer: Bill Avenell The Public Reviews Rating: My knowledge of Agatha Christie has up to now been largely confined to the Poirot, Marple, Mousetrap type plots, the classic ‘ murder whodunnit’ in which the detective explains all to the assembled suspects in the final act. Well, there was a murder and there [...]

Writer/Director: Alan Ayckbourn Reviewer: Steve Turner The Public Reviews Rating: Three women have urgent business in a smart hotel suite. One of them has narrowly escaped being murdered, one is about to be murdered, and the other was murdered two decades before. Impossible? Not in this establishment, where, instead of connecting to an adjacent room, the door in [...]

Writer: Jules Verne Director/Adaptor: Russ Tunney Music: Matt Baker Reviewer: Ann Bawtree The Public Reviews Rating: Advertised as suitable for ages six to elderly adult it would be more true to say that it is not unsuitable for anybody in that age range. However it is most suitable for six year olds to early teens with older teens [...]

Author: Charles Dickens Adaptor: Tanika Gupta Director: Nikolai Foster Reviewer: Ann Bawtree The Public Reviews Rating: Great Expectations is a long, long book and this is a long, long play, verging on three hours. There were two stages to the adaptation, firstly from the literary to the dramatic form and then the translation from mid nineteenth century [...]

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 [...]