Howard Brenton’s history play is very enjoyable.  Anne you may remember lost her head because she was adulterous and because Henry VIII had fallen out of love with her and fallen in love with Jane Seymour.

"Danton’s Death is a vast sprawling epic and it has, very sensibly, been ruthlessly cut. Michael Grandage’s extremely efficient and fast production, played without interval, comes in under two hours. The rhetoric, often lifted verbatim from the assemblies and tribunals, is riveting." Robert Tanith reviews.

When it comes to plot, things are somewhat patchy and thin on the ground in Oklahoma!, what with the drawn-out love triangles and those eventual rather unconvincing, violent turns of events. So you realise from the start it's going to take more than just a few catchy songs to keep a bright, golden haze on the meadow for almost three hours! Was it an omen, we wondered, that the onstage corn, admittedly as high as an elephant's eye, was looking rather dry and wilted?

The two parts are one consecutive play. So you must see them in the correct order.
 
If you only want to see one play, see Part I. it’s self-contained. Part 2 isn’t so understandable or so enjoyable on its own

I have to confess that Les Miserables is one of my favourite shows of all time, and therefore I approached this ‘new’ production, restaged to celebrate its 25th anniversary, with a degree of trepidation; would this be ‘change for changes sake’ rather than for actual improvement?  And how can you improve on what is, after all a masterpiece of production?  Well let me reassure any fellow sceptics immediately: the show is simply stunning. The story and music have received, very sensibly, very little alteration – what has changed is the staging… and I can honestly say I absolutely loved it.

How's this for a fascinating line-up? Sir Anthony Sher, Richard Wilson, Kathy Burke and Sean Tully (on leave from the cobbled streets of Corrie.)

Well, be that as it may, these worthies were merely audience members this time round, all seated in the newly refurbished Crucible Studio for the regional premiere of award-winning play That Face.

David Hirson’s comedy will be remembered as the play which opened with a thirty-minute monologue.

Mark Rylance’s performance is such a tour de force that on the night I went he received the loudest and longest ovation I have ever heard in the middle of a play.