Review: THE SEA HORSE, Golden Goose TheatreNovember 6, 2025Recently, on the north coast of Ireland, I had lunch in a seaside bar. Outside, the wind howled, sunshine and rain were locked in a battle for supremacy and the sky was too big. I knew that feeling, as I had grown up by the sea with sandhills at the top of the road. It was ‘other’ to the adult version of me, but familiar to the childhood person. I’ve always understood that these edges are liminal spaces in which things change quickly and much (too much) is contingent.
Review: DEAD MAN WALKING, London ColiseumNovember 6, 2025A confession. It’s a guilty pleasure of mine to read the death notices on Wikipedia - I am my mother’s son after all and, without the columns of classifieds in the Liverpool Echo, where else is there to look?
Review: TOSCA, Starring Anna Netrebko, Royal Ballet and OperaSeptember 12, 2025If you come to opera via film musicals and, later, stage shows, Tosca is amongst the most accessible. The story of the lovers and the evil apparatchik is told at a furious pace, trauma after trauma piling up as the emotional heft becomes all but unbearable. There’s no standing about for twenty minutes while someone sings stage left, no mythical dwarves hiding gold, no magical toymaker. Nor, as early critics were quick to point out, is there a whole lot of poetry either in Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa adaptation of Victorien Sardou’s sensational play. However, there are compensations…
Review: SEAGULL: TRUE STORY, Marylebone TheatreSeptember 10, 2025Putin, Chekhov, Trump, art, principles, punishment, love, hate and that iconic, topless-on-a-horse photo of Mad Vlad. And much, much, more.