The Young Theatre Blog

Of all the things I expected from the National Ballet of Cuba, this wasn’t it. Technically impressive dancers with a serious case of charisma deficit. It wasn’t till Act III that one of the principals suddenly developed a personality. The production is…

There are reports that we of the British people are now officially out of the recession.  A growth of 0.01% is worth celebrating for the [...]

I scare myself sometimes. I caught a preview of this and thought it dull, dreary and long. Lloyd-Webber then came out with some rubbish about how the show was “halfway there” and that people shouldn’t judge yet (which particularly grated as they were c…

It has been released today that some West End shows are to do away with their live orchestras in an attempt to improve the quality of the show music.  Increasing pressure for musicals to be accompanied by a recorded track has been given clearance by the relevant industry bodies. In recent years, the quality of … Read more

Rare plays are often rare for a reason. Tennessee William’s earliest full length play “Spring Storm” is a fairly mixed bag. The contents fall well within his standard canon but the style at times leaves something to be desired. Given a solid if inconsi…

Exquisite. “Sweet Nothings” is a play so perfectly tuned to my sensibilities that it’s almost scary. Given in this elegant Luc Bondy staging I genuinely haven’t been more enraptured by a straight play in a long time. Brilliantly funny at times but neve…

Comedy gigs don’t really get any bigger than this. Quite apart from the epic running time, in excess of three and half hours, the line-up was simply astonishing. The sheer number of performers meant we got fairly small bite-sized chunks of each comedia…

Site-specific theatre. I gush just thinking of the possibilities. “Your Nation Loves You” returns us to the evocative tunnels under Waterloo station (last seen as “Tunnel 228″, some of which still haunts this staging) for another cold and damp experien…

Any project taking place in the tunnels under Waterloo Station has an air of excitement and potential to be something truly spectacular. In [...]

London has been blessed with two Janacek operas recently, a fact I can only applaud, and the English National Opera’s “Katya Kabanova” certainly holds up musically against the Royal Opera’s “Cunning Little Vixen”. David Alden’s new staging looks too si…