A Small Mind At The Theatre

It is an awful lot of pressure to put on both a production and a group of performers to recreate legends of the past, and with Million Dollar Quartet , it as the title suggests brings the need to bring four such icons to the stage. However this touring production of the show knows no fear and rarely fails when bringing both them and an iconic day in the history of music to the stage. Set on a single day in December 1956, Million Dollar Quartet tells the story of a chance gathering of Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley in a recording studio and the creation of an album of legend. The first of the four we meet on stage is the cocky new guy Jerry Lee Lewis, performed on this night by understudy Elliot Clay. As is often the case with an understudy in my experience, it is an incredible performance capturing both the skill on the piano and the vocal talent impressively. He is suitably irritating to each and everyone else as this precocious, over confident kid m...

Recent political turmoils have been kind to Jonathan Maitland's biting and tremendously witty Dead Sheep. As 52% duked it out with 48%, it became the perfect modern metaphor of the lead protagonists of Dead Sheep, Margaret Thatcher (Steve Nallon) and Geoffrey Howe (Paul Bradley). It all appeared to have fell perfectly for this touring production. Margaret Thatcher (Steve Nallon) and Geoffrey Howe (Paul Bradley). Winding back a year and a half to Dead Sheep's debut in London, this play perhaps might have felt a little under appreciated. However, I think it is clear that this script has been doctored, like maybe many political papers of the past, to garner as much mileage from events since. There feels maybe much heavier undertones from the Europe material, that might not have originally got the same response. Mentions of a possible breakaway Euro skeptic party and Howe's line of the British public not being trusted to make the right decision especially, with the la...