A Small Mind At The Theatre

I suppose it shouldn't have been a surprise that The Railway Children from Looking Glass Theatre was an awfully old fashioned and really rather quaint show. I know that at some point in the dim distant past I saw the original film version (all Jenny Agutter and "Daddy" etc), as I think definitely every one of my age will have seen that. However, the fact that of the audience, staggeringly only three were children suggests a little to me that the audience was either family and friends of the performers, or older people reminiscing over the story they remember from their younger days. I have to confess that I didn't remember much of the story ahead of seeing it, however, this adaptation from James Smith (who also directs) based on the Edith Nesbit original brings the story and characters to life in a compact seventy-minute version. As has been common from recent years, the cast is formed from recent graduates of University of Northampton BA Actors course, all famil...

I generally steer clear of pantomimes in general, but have inherited a few people and groups that I feel the need and am generally happy to support through thick and thin. Hence following my trip to Duston Players earlier in December, I found myself back at the annual Looking Glass Theatre's pantomime at St Peter's Church a week or so back (this is a heavily delayed review). Looking Glass do none showy traditional family pantos, there are no awkward moments here of the adult squirming over whether that joke was too near the knuckle for little Johnny sitting next to you. There are though always jokes for the grown-ups, but not in the adult nature, just occasionally newsworthy stuff, and this time among others we had the rather timely Baron Le Brexit as the baddie. This is the third panto I have seen from Looking Glass and without criticism of the previous ones, this is the best. It's a more solid presentation and perhaps most importantly wields the best quartet of a cast...

"Welcome to the apocalypse" is a rather encouraging tagline for The End from Phone Box Theatre. Following a successful, yet failed cancer drug introduction in 2017, this is indeed the apocalypse. While curing cancer, cell corruption has caused the dreaded Z to appear. It is perhaps telling that The End is the only Flash this year (that I aware of anyway) to setup a Facebook event. As like no other I have yet seen this week, this is more of that E word than any other. Long before you have entered the venue of St Peter's Church this play, and I use the word loosely, has already begun. One by one the audience is ushered into the church by the tactical vested Roach (Daniel Gray). Rough and vicious in demeanor, you know that it is wise not to mess with him. Your destination briefly is an encounter with Scruff (Connor McAvoy), who does a check for bites and shines a torch in your eyes and mouth to make sure you are not one of them. After the exam you are sent to your seat,...

Following the emotional trauma of Blue Stockings, for my second play from the University of Northampton's third years, it would have been nice to have a gentle cool down. Days Of Significance telling the story of love lives and their own fears for a future on the front line in Iraq was not to provide it. Never in my experience so far have I been welcomed to a play with such aggressive and upfront material as this from Roy Williams. A barrage of F words, a minor mortar of a prosthetic penis hanging limply from an actors trousers and then an artillery shell of C words to make sure the enemy/audience is totally wiped out. I am quite frankly not surprised that an elderly couple did leave the show relatively early in the first half as despite our understanding that this was a war themed play, we were little prepared for the "Battle Of Bridge Street" opening, to give it a local theme. Fortunately myself, while not likely to partake in verbals to this extreme, rarely, maybe ne...