UK Regional Theater Reviews: Best Shows & Critic Recommendations Page 8

Review: JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT, Edinburgh Playhouse
by Fiona Scott - October 26, 2022

Way, way back, what back feels like, many centuries ago, an all-singing, all-dancing revival of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, directed by Laurence Connor, opened at the London Palladium in the summer of 2019....

Review: THE FAMOUS FIVE: A NEW MUSICAL, Chichester Festival Theatre
by Gary Naylor - October 26, 2022

A show full of good songs, fine singing and engaging characters doesn't quite live up to the sum of its parts...

Review: DIDO AND AENEAS, Theatre Royal Bath
by Cheryl Markosky - October 21, 2022

It's a double first at Theatre Royal Bath with Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. Regarded as England's first opera when initially performed around 1688, it's also the first opera to be performed in the intimate Ustinov Studio....

Review: GOOD LUCK, STUDIO, Salisbury Playhouse
by Cheryl Markosky - October 19, 2022

Mischief's new catastrophe comedy, Good Luck, Studio, goes very wrong - but perhaps not in the way the Mischief team intended....

Review: KINKY BOOTS, Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch
by Gary Naylor - October 14, 2022

If the show lacks a little in power having been pared back, many more people will have a chance to enjoy a super show...

Review: JEKYLL & HYDE, Reading Rep Theatre
by Mickey-Jo Boucher - October 14, 2022

Audrey Brisson is a quirky intrigue at 4’10”. With little capacity to seem towering and imposing, Brisson has instead perfected the subtleties that are available to her, her ever widening eyes and steadily creeping sneer betray volumes about the conflict raging within the respectable Victorian gentl...

Review: O, ISLAND!, The Other Place, Royal Shakespeare Theatre
by Gary Naylor - October 13, 2022

Nina Segal's new play is hamstrung by an old set up....

Review: DREAMGIRLS, King's Theatre, Glasgow
by Fiona Scott - October 12, 2022

What did our critic think of DREAMGIRLS at King's Theatre, Glasgow?...

Review: TRIO, New Wolsey Theatre
by Mickey-Jo Boucher - October 12, 2022

At its core, Trio’s biggest wound is a self-inflicted one. It undercuts its own capacity for dramatic impact due to its structure, with each character taking turns to discuss the events of their tumultuous shared history in the past tense, emotionally removed from each historic detail and inherently...

Review: THE WELLSPRING. Salisbury Playhouse
by Cheryl Markosky - October 13, 2022

The Wellspring is a new father and son two-hander by award-winning playwright Barney Norris (Visitors, Eventide, Nightfall) and novelist (Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain, Undercurrent); and his father - pianist, composer and broadcaster David Owen Norris....

Review: GODS OF THE GAME, Grange Park Opera
by Gary Naylor - October 07, 2022

Football opera land perfectly between the Women's Euros and the Men's World Cup finding plenty of common ground to delight fans of both art forms...

Review: SPIKE, Salisbury Playhouse
by Cheryl Markosky - October 05, 2022

In a fabulously fast-paced and funny tribute to Spike Milligan, writers Ian Hislop and Nick Newman affectionately convey how the extraordinary Anglo-Irishman creates The Goon Show....

Review: RAMBERT DANCE IN PEAKY BLINDERS: THE REDEMPTION OF THOMAS SHELBY, Birmingham Hippodrome
by Laura Lott - September 29, 2022

The sinister chords of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' 'Red Right Hand' ring out as Tommy Shelby stands, flanked by family members, with the light glinting from the razor blade sewn into his wool tweed cap. It's a scene familiar to any fan of the global hit TV show Peaky Blinders. But something's diffe...

Review: WHEN DARKNESS FALLS, Salisbury Playhouse
by Cheryl Markosky - September 28, 2022

A debate about folklore versus fact, and whether history is just 'a collection of lies we've decided upon'. Are ghost stories a projection of our fears? Who do you believe in the end?...

Review: SUGAR BABY, Alphabetti Theatre
by Bryony Rae Taylor - September 27, 2022

Sugar Baby made its debut at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2017. A compelling one-man play by Alan Harris, this new production directed by Natasha Haws is a wonderfully wild ride....

Review: THE NARCISSIST, Chichester Festival Theatre
by Gary Naylor - September 01, 2022

Christopher Shinn's play brims with interesting politics but is too often bogged down in overly-familiar personal issues...

Review: INTO THE WOODS, Theatre Royal Bath
by Cheryl Markosky - August 26, 2022

A terrifically trippy child's world on speed in a Victorian toy theatre within a theatre, conjured up by inventive 81-year-old Gilliam, and his co-director and choreographer, Leah Hausman....

Review: ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, Royal Shakespeare Theatre
by Gary Naylor - August 26, 2022

Not an easy play to watch, but a fascinating analysis of some of humanity's darker corners...

Review: PHAEDRA/MINOTAUR, Theatre Royal Bath
by Cheryl Markosky - August 18, 2022

They say good things come in small packages. This adage certainly applies to Theatre Royal Bath’s larger-than-life double bill of Benjamin Britten’s Phaedra and newly commissioned ballet, Minotaur, in the diminutive Ustinov Studio....

Review: IDENTICAL, Nottingham Playhouse
by Laura Lott - August 03, 2022

From Erich Kastner's classic 1949 novel, to the 1961 movie starring Hayley Mills and the 1998 remake featuring Lindsay Lohan, The Parent Trap has been delighting families for generations. Its newest incarnation comes in the form of this charming new musical, produced by Kenny Wax and directed by Tre...

Review: BUGSY MALONE, Birmingham Repertory Theatre
by Laura Lott - August 01, 2022

It's Prohibition-era New York, but not as you know it. The speakeasies and gang tensions are present and correct, but the mobsters and showgirls look like children, and the machine guns fire cream instead of bullets....

Review: BILLY ELLIOT THE MUSICAL, Leicester Curve
by Mickey-Jo Boucher - July 21, 2022

Six years after it closed in the West End, the first new staging of Billy Elliot The Musical has opened at the Leicester Curve, made possible by liaison with the original filmmakers. Though it is a bold departure in many ways from the beloved original production, its story endures and continues to r...

Review: ESTELLA, Trinity Theatre, Tunbridge Wells
by Gary Naylor - July 17, 2022

Charles Dickens' novels are filled to the brim with characters who capture different elements of the human condition - evil and good and, crucially, plenty in-between. Perhaps the most fascinating of them all - at least she was to me when first I read Great Expectations in my mid-20s - is Estella, P...

BWW Review: LES MISERABLES, Bristol Hippodrome
by Tim Wright - July 16, 2022

It’s tough to keep a musical juggernaut like Les Misérables going. It’s even tougher to keep it feeling fresh, night after night for well over 35 years. Where others have faltered, Les Misérables has kept marching on to its own revolutionary drum beat. ...

Review: BUGSY MALONE, Theatre Royal Bath
by Alice Cope - July 14, 2022

A delightfully entertaining performance full of energy and talented young stars....