Reviews

Whoever said that crime doesn’t pay? In the case of Agatha Christie, the genre of murder mystery has been a literary gold-mine.

As an ironic observation of what was to come, one of the guests arriving at Soldier Island stated that something peculiar was taking place on their weekend away.

One by one the toy soldiers on the coffee table disappear as the corresponding character shuffled off their mortal coil, in this theatrical adaptation of what was recently voted as Christie’s most popular novel.

As co-director Elizabeth Browne points out, Othello is a challenging text which is “commonly studied and rarely performed” due to its sensitive and controversial content. Racism and domestic violence are at the core of this play. MUSC has openly addressed these aspects and depicted them for what they are: abhorrent. This is a very brave production that wishes to confront the ways in which jealousy, deception, and betrayal fuel these perfidious behaviours.

State Opera have made a bold but welcome move in selecting the 1998 Jonathan Dove operatic comedy Flight, a modern-day opera with over 150 performances across the world to date.

Harold Pinter was one of the most influential British dramatists of the past 70 years. The creator of ‘Pinteresque’ comedy of menace, he led the way from small one-act theatre works to writing major films like The Servant and The French Lieutenant’s Woman. It seemed that nothing was beyond Pinter’s capabilities, so the Ensemble’s revival of these two early works – one is from 1957 – reveals indications of the greatness to come. Look out for strange meanings, long pauses and plenty of subtexts.