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 …
William Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor—5 July 2025
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 …
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Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution—1 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 …
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William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet—29 June 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 …
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Arthur Miller’s The Crucible—28 June 2025
Program for The Crucible Arthur Miller’s classic anti-McCarthyite play The Crucible is widely regarded as one of the most important plays of the twentieth century, taking a stand against the injustice that comes with authoritarian injustice and religious fanaticism. But it’s also a deeply problematic play. And the choice by Shakespeare’s Globe to put it …
John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers—24 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 …
Dickie Beau’s Showmanism—21 June 2025
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 …
Roald Dahl’s Matilda: The Musical—18 June 2025
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 …
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Nora and Delia Ephron’s Love, Loss, and What I Wore—17 Apr. 2025
Love, Loss, and What I Wore program The Gamble Mill and Sock & Buskin Theatre Company co-sponsored a staged reading of Nora and Delia Ephron’s Love, Loss, and What I Wore—adapted from Ilene Beckerman’s novel—as a charity performance to raise money for Out of the Cold Centre County, which is a shelter. The production was …
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Kari Williamson and Nate Schierman’s Slain at the Speakeasy—23 Mar. 2025
Slain at the Speakeasy program Kari Williamson and Nate Schierman’s Slain at the Speakeasy is a full-length play developed out of an original semi-scripted murder mystery party script by Stefanie Austin, so this is definitely an in-house project for Sock & Buskin Theatre Company. Although this version was based on the original, the full-length production—directed …
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Phillip Zapkin 