Regents Park Theatre
The Turn of the Screw, ENO, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - one dimension, not fourTuesday, 26 June 2018
Opera and music theatre have set the birds shrilling in Regent's Park before in the shape of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess – a very forgettable production – and Sondheim's Into the Woods – much better, and a score which can give any 20th century opera a... Read more... |
Peter Pan, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - ensemble playing at its bestSaturday, 26 May 2018
This exuberant production both clarifies and further complicates the conundrum of Peter Pan. In any production true to Barrie there is an underpinning of sadness, an acknowledgement of the losses we must all suffer: children leave home and adult... Read more... |
David Edgar: 'Ebenezer Scrooge is alive and well'Monday, 27 November 2017
Since mid-August, I’ve been doing something I swore I’d never do again. I’ve been rehearsing a new adaptation of a novel by Charles Dickens. Sometime in the autumn of 1979, I received a phone call from Trevor Nunn, artistic director of the Royal... Read more... |
A Tale of Two Cities, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre review - it was the longest of timesMonday, 17 July 2017
Much loved, yes. But Dickens’s novel is probably little read by modern audiences and so a chance to see a new adaptation of this tale of discontent, riot and general mayhem set in the French revolution and spread across London and Paris in the late... Read more... |
Matthew Dunster on adapting 'A Tale of Two Cities'Tuesday, 04 July 2017
When you are adapting a novel like A Tale of Two Cities, it's a privilege to sit with a great piece of writing for a considerable amount of time. You also feel secure (and a bit cheeky) in the knowledge that another writer has already done most of... Read more... |
On the Town review - triple threat Danny Mac and co are unmissableThursday, 01 June 2017
On 8 April 1952, screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green were chatting to Charlie Chaplin at a party when he started raving about a picture he’d seen the previous night at Sam Goldwyn’s house. It was called Singin’ in the Rain – had they... Read more... |
Jesus Christ Superstar, Regent's Park Open Air TheatreFriday, 22 July 2016
London’s West End may be the envy of the world, but when it comes to musicals the big-hitting theatres might have to up their game a bit if they’re to keep up with the city’s rival offerings. Compare the summer’s biggest opening, Aladdin (currently... Read more... |
Henry V, Regent's Park Open Air TheatreThursday, 23 June 2016
As we finally go to the polls, casting votes based on our view of national identity and Britain’s place in the world, here comes Shakespeare’s ever-topical play. Robert Hastie’s thoughtful take is contemporary dress but stripped back, not so much... Read more... |
Running Wild, Regent's Park Open Air TheatreWednesday, 25 May 2016
Running Wild is a theatrical safari with no expenses spared. This latest stage adaptation of a novel by Michael Morpurgo (of War Horse fame) boasts a jungle-full of puppets – a majestic elephant and some affectionate orangutans included – and a... Read more... |
Peter Pan, Regent's Park Open Air TheatreFriday, 22 May 2015
“All children, except one, grow up.” So begins J. M. Barrie’s iconic tale of arrested development, given new power and poignancy in this high-flying production. A century after one of Barrie’s youthful collaborators, George Llewelyn Davies, was... Read more... |
Porgy and Bess, Regent's Park Open Air TheatreTuesday, 29 July 2014
It should work as pure musical theatre. Yet what precisely is Gershwin’s - or rather “The Gershwins’”, as this title frames it, though Ira wasn’t quite Gilbert or Brecht - Porgy and Bess? An opera? Trevor Nunn made the three-hour-plus score, much... Read more... |
Hobson's Choice, Open Air Theatre, Regent's ParkWednesday, 18 June 2014
Director Nadia Fall has taken that patriarchal purveyor of footwear Henry Horatio Hobson and his family out of their natural habitat - a traditional proscenium arch theatre - and into a different time, the 1960s. Does this staple of British drama,... Read more... |
