Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story is a touring musical from Canada’s 2b Theatre Company about Canadian refugees at the turn of the 20th century. Judi Herman speaks to husband and wife team Hannah Moscovitch and…
Pinteresque: enigmatic, sinister, comic, dangerous… The adjective coined to describe the great iconoclastic playwright’s style is more than the sum of these. Marking the 10th anniversary of Harold Pinter’s death, this ambitious completist season of his 20+ short works…
In 1992, poet and playwright Tony Harrison – celebrated for the excitement and energy of his verse dramas – came up with this novel way of sharing the stories of scientists behind inventions that changed the face of warfare. Exercised by events during the Gulf War…
Kilburn’s Tricycle Theatre, now Kiln Theatre, has been lovingly refurbished to incorporate beautiful original tiles, stone and woodwork uncovered during the works, sensitively harmonising with new artwork and décor. A more spacious auditorium with…
Jewish American avant garde theatre pioneers Stanley Silverman and Richard Foreman’s ‘occult opera upon perception’ first played with audiences 50 years ago, so this European premiere is an anniversary production too. Elephant Steps first ran just a year…
Writing team Howard Ashman (book and lyrics) and Alan Menken (music) are responsible for a string of award-winning movie music megahits. Most notably Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid, but before they went all Disney…
It’s been 30 years since the premiere of this gripping, foul-mouthed opera, its libretto by Steven Berkoff based on his powerful, scurrilous take on the Oedipus myth itself first performed in 1980. Director Jonathan Moore and composer Mark-Anthony Turnage collaborated…
Israeli choreographer Sharon Eyal is justly renowned for her spare, precise choreography, as well as the dedication she inspires in the young dancers with whom she works. Here she collaborates again with fellow Israeli Gai Behar under the name L-E-V (Hebrew for heart)…
“Everyone is the first person ever to die,” says King Berenger’s favourite Queen, Marie. Romanian-French Absurdist playwright Ionesco wrote this unsettling, provocative drama in 1962, exercised by his fear and expectation that a debilitating liver disease would prove…
Hugely popular Jewish funny-man Matt Lucas makes his musical theatre debut in Me and My Girl. He plays Bill Snibson, a cheerful Cockney barrow boy who discovers he’s the long-lost heir to the title of Earl of Hareford and a stately pile in Hampshire. It’s the perfect summer musical…
This gloriously witty, erudite tribute to the ‘degenerate’ music banned by the Nazis has graced auditoria large and small and now amply fills the Barbican’s vast space, thanks to the fabulous Aurora Orchestra, placed firmly centre-stage by Barry Humphries and director Nikki Woollaston…
Kiss Me Kate is credited with reviving Cole Porter’s flagging post-war career and from Opera North’s glorious revival it’s easy to see why. Sam and Bella Spewack, the Jewish power couple behind the book, had worked with Porter before and Bella insisted Porter was invited to write…
Several of Miller’s plays are revealingly autobiographical and this, his last, is an intriguing part of the story. Getting its European premiere here, Finishing the Picture does indeed deal with endings, although it is set some decades before he wrote it in 2004. By the time Marilyn Monroe was…
I tried explaining Sondheim’s complex morality fable to my five-year-old granddaughter. “You might find it scary," I said. "It weaves together the stories of Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Rapunzel and Jack and the Beanstalk with a new story about a baker and his wife. The pair long for…
Known for her wickedly accurate voicing of Edwina Currie in Spitting Image, Jessica Martin is ideal casting for another prominent Jewish Tory gal: Shirley Porter. This larger-than-life anti-heroine was leader of Westminster Council from 1983 to 1991. Martin’s Porter is vociferous…