And Then There Were None program This weekend I saw the State College Community Theatre’s (SCCT) production of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None directed by Eli Beers-Altman and assistant directed by Joe Appel. Our story begins with eight very different house guests, eccentric in their own ways, arriving at an isolated mansion situated …
Continue reading Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None – 13 Sept. 2025 by Andi Stout
Giant promotional poster I wasn’t sure what I was going to think of Mark Rosenblatt’s Giant, performed at the Harold Pinter Theatre under the direction of Nicholas Hytner. It was the play selected by this year’s Comparative Drama Conference, and I attended on a ticket through the conference. Since I don’t know much about Roald …
Poster for Merry Wives of Windsor It was a wonderful coincidence when Shakespeare’s Globe posted their 2025 summer season, because they were doing Merry Wives of Windsor, which I had already decided to teach for my Literary London course. This followed them doing Richard III in 2024, while I was teaching that play. It was …
Continue reading William Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor—5 July 2025
I saw Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution roughly one year ago in the London County Hall, under the direction of Lucy Bailey both times. My previous review (which includes a plot summary in the second paragraph) is available here: https://phillipzapkin.com/2024/06/13/agatha-christies-witness-for-the-prosecution-12-june-2024/. It’s interesting to see a trial play twice, because you no longer have to …
Continue reading Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution—1 July 2025
Poster for Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is one of those plays that is incredibly famous, but also quite easy to hate: because so many of us are forced to read it in school, because so many people think of this story of teenage angst and suicide as the ultimate love story, even …
Continue reading William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet—29 June 2025
John Cleese’s stage version of Fawlty Towers is a striking adaptation of the beloved 1970s sitcom of the same name, in which Cleese starred and which he co-wrote with Connie Booth (who played Polly in the original). What makes the stage version—premiering in 2016—so fascinating for me is what it does and doesn’t do, and …
I wasn’t sure what I was going to make of Dickie Beau’s one-man show Showmanism: A Concise Histrionic of Performance, directed by Jan-Willem Van Den Bosch at London’s Hampstead Theatre. I knew very little about the show before it started, apart from it being a one-person show (which can sometimes be quite disappointing) and that …
Typically, I’m not a huge fan of musicals, but Roald Dahl’s Matilda: The Musical, direct by Matthew Warchus at London’s Cambridge Theatre was properly enjoyable. I watched the film version of Matilda as a kid, but I’ve never read the book, so I did have some distance from the source materials, while still having a …
Continue reading Roald Dahl’s Matilda: The Musical—18 June 2025
Back to the Future: The Musical Show Poster I’m not really a musicals person, especially in the West End/Broadway style of musical, so Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future: The Musical (with music and lyrics by Allan Silvestri and Glen Ballard) is not normally the kind of show I would seek out. …
Continue reading Back to the Future: The Musical—27 June 2024
Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap To get the standard info out of the way first, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap is famous for having the world’s longest single production run, opening at the Ambassadors Theatre in 1952 and playing uninterrupted (despite a move next door to its current location at St. Martin’s Theatre in 1974—though they never …
Continue reading Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap—20 June 2024
Phillip Zapkin 