Chris Eldon Lee writes about his friend and Three Men In A Bowtie comedy colleague Martin Jones who has died at the age of 74. Martin always made an entrance. He’d leap on stage in full evening dress and muddy green wellies, punching the air, bouncing around full of joy, like a Heifer let out …
Jabs at Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury, reviewed by John Hargreaves As JABS began, Sally Tonge joked that there was a long period when no Englishman, Scotsman, or Irishman walked into a bar. Neither did she. With her vocation as a folksinger reduced to strumming alone in front of a computer, she volunteered for training as a …
Chris Eldon Lee reviews “The Girl Next Door” by Alan Ayckbourn, which is at the New Vic Theatre in Newcastle-under-Lyme until Saturday 18th September. Don’t worry. I’m not going to spoil anything. It’s just that the latest theatrical device from this ever inventive and craftiest of playwrights comes right at the end. After a tortuous …
Chris Eldon Lee reviews ‘The 39 Steps’, which is at Theatr Clwyd until Saturday 22nd September. Once he’d got over the shock – I expect even the dour John Buchan would be rolling in the isles at Patrick Barlow’s 21st century adaptation of his famous story ‘The 39 Steps’. Or possibly writing to his solicitor. …
Chris Eldon Lee reviews ‘The Winslow Boy’, which is at Birmingham Repertory Theatre until March 3rd – and then touring. This is a marvellous production of a masterful play…an old-fashioned drawing room drama, swaddled in a huge amount of humour, overlaid with riveting tension, and solidly based on a disturbingly true story. The 13-year-old son …
Chris Eldon Lee reviews ‘Brick History’, which is at Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery until April 15th If you are going to depict the last 13.8 million years of history using only Lego bricks, you still have to start with the ‘Big Bang’. Assuming ‘Existence’ was only two-dimensional (for a split second, at least) then …