Spring Awakening, Bailey Theatre Company, Leech Hall, 04/03/2010       
the play’s classical shape and sense of grandeur should give tragic resonance to its modern concerns
 I can understand why Ben Salter and Hannah Shand chose to stage Frank Wedekind’s late nineteenth-century drama. Its themes (sexuality, the repression of the young, the dangers of knowing too little or too much) are undeniably urgent; its sensibility (brash, occasionally vulgar) is undoubtedly contemporary. I can understand their choice, but I cannot applaud it. In my opinion, the Bailey Theatre Company’s latest production laboured under a significant, …

Measure for Measure, Caedmon Hall, 10th – 13th February 2010
Hild Bede Theatre’s challenging vision of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure was always going to be an ambitious endeavour. With the director’s note stating that “Shakespeare can be tedious”, resulting in “a series of blasphemous cuts and changes”, it was unlikely to be the pedant’s dream performance. However, at times, it proved to be a refreshing and, often, vibrant interpretation of the bard’s great morality play.
From the very beginning, the audience was invited to gaze upon a seedy and depraved world; drinks …

The Durham Revue Comedyfest , 1st March 2010, Gala Theatre

I always thought that everyone loved a little bit of comedy. Certainly everyone in the Gala auditorium at the Durham Revue’s Comedyfest (with a bit of Oxford Revue and Cambridge Footlights on the side) was up for a laugh or two. And by and large the actors remembered to pick them up from…

Stevie Martin is enthralled by The Shape of Things, First Person Theatre Company, 28th – 30th January 2010

Having never seen Neil LaBute’s The Shape Of Things before, the genuinely shocking denouement was always going to come as a surprise. What I wasn’t expecting, however, was the incredible high quality of First Person Theatre Company’s production; it was sensitive, amusing, startling…

Jonny Muir reviews the stage adaptation of Pratchett’s Guards! Guards!, The Assembly Rooms, 18th – 20th February 2010

Well, I have to admit, I’m kind of stuck. What can I possibly say about Ooook! Productions’ Guards! Guards!? I suppose for the sake of journalistic integrity (I have such precious little of it, after all) I should mention that it was poorly acted, sloppily paced and clumsily staged. I should probably…

Donnchadh O’Conaill is underwhelmed by Equus, THIS Theatre Company, Assembly Rooms, 10th – 13th February 2010
The overall impression I left THIS Theatre’s production of Equus with was that I didn’t have one. I’m genuinely puzzled as to how a production with such excellent technical elements and genuinely thrilling set-pieces could also incorporate downright mediocrity at other points.
When I first saw a production of this play (not the Daniel Radcliffe revival, a student production in a different university), I thought it a superb piece of writing; on this viewing, it seems …

Jonny Muir falls for DULOG’s West Side Story, 26th 30th January 2010, Gala Theatre

For two years in a row, round about January, I have been going to the Gala Theatre to watch a production in which DULOG kick the ever-living crap out of every other DST show that year. Anything Goes and Guys & Dolls remain two of my favourite Durham productions, with standards of performance and professionalism that put most…

Lyndsey Fineran enjoys a little black comedy at HCTC’s prodcution of Friedrich Durrenmatt’s ‘The Visit’, 4th – 6th February 2010

“I can be best understood if one grasps grotesqueness”, wrote Durrenmatt of his theatrical style. True to this encapsulation, his 1956 tragicomedy, ‘The Visit,’ depends heavily on its interpretation. At once fairytale, parable, satire and farce, with a basis in realism yet moving into areas of the grotesque and the absurd, ‘The Visit’ is a play which demands a lot from its audience…

Donnchadh O’Conaill checks out the Durham Revue’s Christmas Comedy for a Quid Assembly Rooms, 15 December 2009
there was a natural balance to the performances and some impressive chemistry when the right performers were placed in the right sketches
Another year, another new Revue. Christmas Comedy for a Quid was the first chance for the great Durham public to pass judgement on a troupe which, Matt Mulligan apart, consisted entirely of new faces. The verdict ought to be: promising, but can do better. Much of the required improvement will simply be a …

Stevie Martin reviews, and is underwhelmed by, Fergus Leatham’s production of Talking Heads

Both series’ of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads were broadcast in 1988 and 1998 respectively and were comprised of numerous monologues delivered by various characters ranging from the humorous to the downright tragic. To perform such a play…

Lyndsey Fineran is charmed by DOE’s ‘Albert Herring’, 12th – 14th November 2009
‘Albert Herring’ is Benjamin Britten’s 1940s comic chamber opera and the latest offering from the Durham Opera Ensemble. A quaint and nostalgic journey to a bygone England and its eclectic inhabitants, it tells the tale of Albert, the village’s timid and painfully innocent greengrocer’s son who finally makes his break away from both the community’s suffocating moral code and his mother’s apron strings – offering both a moving personal journey and a jocular parody on small-town life.
The last …

Donnchadh O’Conaill reviews Seven Lears: The Pursuit of the Good – Woodplayers, Collingwood College, 8th December 2009
To start with, I must confess that I didn’t enjoy Woodplayer’s production of Seven Lears.  Some of the blame for this can be placed with Howard Barker’s script, which I found very bitty, consisting mostly of short exchanges with very little sustained development of character or plot. The point of this style is to shake up the theatrical experience, to jog the audience out of their comfortable three-act routine by use of striking tableaux, a …

James Doe reviews Timmy Thompson Is Dead and, despite some pitfalls, finds it an enjoyable experience…

James Morton’s ‘Timmy Thompson is Dead’ follows the well-trodden path of student writing; dealing with death, an incident that has disrupted the relationships within a group, and a realization that we are all different but essentially the same. The play itself is, in many ways, a reworking of Satre’s ‘No Exit’: three girls are trapped…

Stevie Martin on why you should go and see Seven Lears at Collingwood next week…

Durham does a lot of theatre. It’s a fact. Unfortunately, with such a flourishing theatrical scene comes an overwhelming amount of acronyms: DULOG, DST, CTC, BTC, HCTC, DOE, DUP… OK, stopping now. But does an acronym (usually involving the letters ‘D’ or ‘T’) really make a great theatre company? Of course not, which is why the Collingwood Woodplayers have chosen to bypass all that irritating abbreviation and concentrate on producing some quality theatre coming at you on the 7th, 8th and 9th December.

Aside from the Assembly Rooms, there are so many…

Jonny Muir samples the Freshers’ Play offering of 2009, Our Town

The ethos of the annual Fresher’s Play is egalitarian – as many people as possible should be given the opportunity to get involved. I find this a fundamentally flawed notion. It forces directors to opt for plays with large casts, in the hope it will accommodate the large scale of involvement. This often comes at the expense of choosing smaller, better plays, ones which may not offer such a wealth of opportunities to participate, but are perhaps more worth putting…