Gary Naylor
Bio

I turned down The Beatles. Well, not exactly, but on seeing Blood Brothers in 1982, I said it would never sell outside Liverpool - too sentimental, thought I.

Obviously, I grew up to be a theatre reviewer, writing here and for BroadwayWorld since 2009. I also write a weekly cricket column for The Guardian and I podcast about old football at Nessun Dorma. 

I'm a member of the Critics' Circle and the Cricket Media Club and I serve on the committee of the Society for Theatre Research in my capacity as Joint Administrator for the Theatre Book of the Year Award. I have a particular interest in initiatives that address Impostor Syndrome's deleterious effect on young people accessing culture. 

If I'm not watching or writing about a play, an opera, a movie, the cricket or the football, I'm probably asleep - but do check my pulse, just to be sure...

articles by Gary Naylor

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Reviewing The Clash’s 27 October 1976 appearance at Birmingham’s Barbarella’s, UK music weekly Sounds detected a particular, unique,…
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The Fez Festival of World Sacred Music has been peerless over the years in presenting world/global music acts in one magical place. Only…
Ever since he crashed into the world with that eerie masterpiece, Maxinquaye (1995) – an album that has never aged – Bristol-born Tricky,…
Mould are a post-punk sounding trio from Bristol. The press release says that their debut album is “13 tracks that explore the horrors of…
The regular scriptwriter for Yorgos Lanthimos’s films, Efthimis Filippou, has worked with another director, Karim Aïnouz, on Rosebush…
This week saw something of a landmark gig for Birmingham’s ever-exuberant folkies, Bonfire Radicals. New album, Spaghetti Junction was…
A voice at the start of dancer Aakash Odedra’s performance speaks out of the darkness about the Sufi myth behind what we are going to see,…
Pyschedelic music has always encouraged intergenerational influence. Thus West Midlander Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember, in his 1980s Spacemen 3…