Wyndham’s theatre, London Grant brings shock-haired vigour as a vain novelist forced to welcome his boho children’s surprise guests in comedy of clipped social embarrassment Hay Fever, now one of Noël Coward’s best-known and most-performed works, hasn’t always been a smash hit. British critics who found its West End debut in 1925 amusing enough nevertheless noted its lack of plot, and the first Broadway production was a flop. A critic for Vogue called it “funny in places”, which sounds like the kind of stinging putdown you’d expect from the playwright’s own hand. A century of performances have proved the play’s lasting power, but its comic effect has always lain less in the words as written than their delivery – it is, after all, about a family that is “artificial to the point of lunacy”. At their centre is diva Judith Bliss, who has retired from the stage to take up the role of country hostess. When she, her husband and their self-consciously bohemian childre...
Playhouse, Sheffield
Elvi Piper’s show for over-threes has knockabout silliness, vintage styling, cracker jokes and appealing songs
‘Welcome to the happiest place on earth, kid,” snarls Tiny Tim, the caretaker who doesn’t care. Clementine has arrived in a fabled town called Christmas but instead of candy cane lanes she finds crumbled gingerbread, a malfunctioning robot and a shortfall of snow and joy. It was once Christmas every day here but now it’s perennial January. Even the trees are blue.
Thankfully, the newcomer is as zesty as she sounds. With a plan akin to the cheer-spreading finale of Elf, Clementine sets about generating enough festive spirit to restore the town’s glory.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/C1ATwbM
via IFTTT
Comments
Post a Comment