REVIEW: The Seagull, Chichester Festival Theatre ✭✭✭✭

The Seagull at Chichester Festival Theatre

Hare’s adaptation, the best of the three in the Season, is crisp, charming and comical, thereby magnifying the effect of the more tragic aspects. It’s a markedly short version of the play, and Kent assists the understanding of its contours and colours by interposing interval between Acts 3 and 4. This allows the four central characters of the play to stake out their positions, develop their tensions and alliances, their hopes, fears and dreams; by the time the third Act is over, the various dice have been rolled and Act Four, set two years on, is about consequences; chickens – or seagulls – coming home to roost.

REVIEW: Ivanov, Chichester Festival Theatre ✭✭✭✭✭

Ivanov at Chichester Festival theatre

Honesty, as David Hare points out, is the dominating theme of Ivanov. It is also the dominating principle adopted by Jonathan Kent as the guiding light for his revival of Ivanov, now playing at the Chichester Festival Theatre as part of their Young Chekhov season. The performances he elicits from the specially formed repertory company are intensely honest, truly felt, and they create a theatrical tapestry which is rich in detail and unsparing in terms of vitality and verity.

Jim Broadbent Stars in A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol Starring Jim Broadbent at the Noel Coward Theatre

Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol returns to the London stage later this year in a new version adapted by Patrick Barlow and starring Academy Award-winning actor Jim Broadbent. Jim Broadbent will be joined by an exciting group of performers who will bring characters from Tiny Tim to Bob Cratchit to life as part of Dicken’s tale of grief, ghoulish ghosts, greed and eleventh-hour redemption. A Christmas Carol is to be directed by Olivier award-winning Phelim McDermott, Artistic Director of Improbable, one of Britain’s most inventive theatre companies, responsible for the iconic production Shockheaded Peter. Design will be by Tom Pye and Toby Sedgwick will act as Dirctor of Movement with lighting design by Peter Mumford and sound design by Gareth Fry. In the spirit of the season A Christmas Carol and The Mackintosh Foundation are proud to be supporting St Martin-In-The-Fields Christmas Appeal by donating 50 pence for each ticket … Read more