The President's Husband's Drama Reviews

If this production deserves one accolade, it is for precision, hard won through apt casting choices, sophisticated direction, and a flawless aesthetic. This is immediately evident from the very choice of production. “And Then There Were None” is OUDS’ 2025 BAME show, and it is an inspired pick.  The 1940s novel-turned-screenplay by crime writer Agatha Christie confronts us with its uncomfortable history. The play follows a ‘whodunnit’ murder mystery structured around a nursery rhyme from an 1869 Minstrel show, and originally made prolific use of the N word, in its title and key plot elements. It was later renamed, equally uncomfortably, to “Ten Little Indians,” (the name that saw it through its 1945 Broadway run) with its current title only coming into play in the mid-2000s.  The OUDS BAME production grapples with play’s history by oscillating between sincerity and parody, and employing Kevin Elyot’s 2005 script, where “soldier” stands in for the slurs of previous titles. The ...

Cyrano de Bergerac is that rarest of things, a perfect play: funny, tragic, action-packed, and boasting a larger-than-life hero you can't help loving. It bounces off the stage, as light and springy as one of Ragueneau the chef's souffles – and every bit as deliciously cheesy. Normally Cyrano is a big-budget extravaganza, with richly brocaded 17th-century costumes, piles of food, barrels of wine, romantic balconies and trench warfare. I remember one production which, in the final act, featured a huge tree gently shedding its autumn leaves on the characters, and turning from green to gold, to red and to grey as the evening sun went down. It was beautiful and evocative, but was it really worth the cost? Lara Machado's production shows that, even with a budget of zilch, Cyrano can still cast its magic spell. Why? Because this play is about poetry, not props. Every character in it, from soldiers to marquises, is obsessed with poetry. Cyrano himself duels with a hundred assass...

It’s Sicily in Stratford-upon-Avon, and this week it certainly feels like it. It’s 23 degrees at 4pm. As the evening descends, the sunlight softens and grows warm. Minutes stretch uncaged across the lawns outside the theatre. The swans on the Avon make hardly a ripple in the stillness, and the bronze statue of Shakespeare, palm outstretched and polished shiny as a pope’s ring, generates an inner warmth as day gives way to dusk. On such a night as this do young men’s minds turn to love… and football. It's part of a critic’s job to go into every production with an open mind. But with this Much Ado About Nothing the RSC has been so open about Director Michael Longhurst’s concept that it’s hard not to embark on it without some preconceptions. ‘Shakespeare’s original rom-com set in the world of top-flight football and celebrity culture, where scandal-filled rivalries are the hottest new thing and lads and WAGs collide’ says the website. It sounds fun, but what’s got into the RSC? They ...

The Rocky Horror Show is a musical about an alien creature from the planet Transsexual, who tries to fit in on planet Earth while being true to their own sexuality. Ultimately they are destroyed. Heteronormativity triumphs, but it's a hollow victory, as the one character who brought vivacity, imagination and pure raunch to their party of unconventional conventionalists has paid the ultimate price. It’s a tribute to trans rights. The show is over half a century old. Have we learnt nothing in those years? Supreme Court, take note. Audiences in the early 1970s were the young, the rebellious and the open-minded. To them, Frank N. Furter's hedonistic philosophy, 'Give Yourself Over To Absolute Pleasure', was a doorway that opened into gardens of delight and heightened awareness. I'm not sure it has the same resonance in 2025. The audience at the New Theatre were middle-aged cosplayers out for a singalong. The absolute pleasure they came for was to see an old nostalgic f...

Out of all the Old Testament heroines to make your poster-girl, the one the Tudors lost their heads over was Queen Esther. Her bravery led to comparisons with Elizabeth the First. Her humility was depicted in embroidery. Christians saw her as a proto-Virgin Mary. A tapestry at Hever Castle long thought to depict Mary Tudor marrying the King of France has turned out be Esther's wedding to King Ahasuerus in an allegorical link with the Royal couple. Theories abound as to why the Tudors were so obsessed with Esther - and they are described in fascinating detail in the programme for this latest revelatory production from the unique Edward's Boys. She was a role model; she was devout; she defended her people; at a dinner party she was the ultimate hostess. But as far as both Henry the Eighth and Ahasuerus were concerned, she was also completely irresistible. She literally won a beauty contest to become Queen. Esther is the wellspring of every search-for-a-princess narrative in Weste...

The chapel of St John's College is a magnificent setting for this most stately of all Shakespeare's regal plays. (Even its battles are far off-stage, happening between rather than during the scenes.) And Tom Allen's production takes full advantage of that ancient splendour, with a version of the play presented in proudly traditional style. Saleem Nassar, up in the St John's organ loft, pipes out steady funeral dirges and musical announcements that seem the perfect embodiment of that ubiquitous renaissance stage direction, "Alarum". If the current Edward the Second  in Stratford-upon-Avon is a royal court full of back-biting, action and unadulterated snogging, this one is closer to a sequence of tableaux, where the focus, to the exclusion of almost everything else, is on verse, verse, verse. The actors' diction is perfect. Trochees and spondees are observed with rigour and respect. The iambic pentameter is king here, not Richard or Bolingbroke. You can almo...