A Small Mind At The Theatre

Following an interesting journey, myself, Keith, Karl, Tarquin and three ladies (it was clearly a big car) arrived at Kettering to see the Theats production of the classic musical West Side Story . This was a number of firsts for me, with my first visit to The Lighthouse Theatre, the first time I had seen theatre group Theats and my first viewing of West Side Story . Despite never having seen the classic musical before, I was overwhelmingly familiar with it through both the exceptional songs that come from it and the original Bard source. It is an extremely challenging show to stage I imagine with both the tasking songs and the famous dance routines that have cast its place in history. For the most part, the amateur group Theats takes this challenge and wins, primarily with its casting of the two iconic leads Maria and Tony, in these roles Lauren Jones and Daniel Fortune form an exceptional partnership on stage and performing both their solos and duets with a confident e...

It is a strange but honoured circumstance perhaps to find such a play by a name as Tony Klinger debuting in the compact Castle Theatre studio space in Wellingborough. However despite Mr Klinger's name being a recognisable one in the world of film making and more recently on the bookshelf, A Tired Heart & The Big C is the first play to come from the film industry stalwart. A Tired Heart is described by the author himself as an "outpouring of emotions" formed from a series of life events that he has had. Lead character is Stuart Wagner (Steve While) who in the first scene sees the death of his father Sam (Will Adams), killed by a so-called tired heart. It is no real spoiler and totally impossible to avoid the fact in this review that Sam does not leave Stuart forever, as spruced up in white suit he remains a reoccurring presence. Following the death of Sam, the story unfolds via the funeral arrangements and financial fallout surrounding his death and as the title sugg...