27^th November, 2025

“Silver white winters that melt into springs”

Often voted amongst the public’s favourite musicals, the film adaptation of The Sound Of Music is a staple of many a festive TV schedule. And while sweeping shots of the Austrian hills, singing nuns and Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer’s sizzling chemistry has entertained my family for decades, it comes as a surprise even to me that I had yet to see the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic on stage. Thus it was with delight that I took my seat for Curve’s annual Christmas treat with great anticipation, ready to have my goosebumps tingled and my cockles warmed. And, as is often the case, Nikolai Foster and the creative team do not disappoint, offering an evening filled with spectacle, drama and glorious music.

Fearing that she is not cut out for convent life, young novitiate, Maria, is sent by her Mother Abbess to be a governess to a widowed Captain’s seven unruly children. Maria soon embeds herself into the von Trapp family life and romance ensues against a backdrop of political unease and the threat of Nazi occupation.

Foster has reassembled much of the team behind last year’s critically acclaimed production of My Fair Lady, not least it’s two stars, Molly Lynch and David Seadon-Young, who make for an incredibly likeable Maria and Georg, displaying an easy chemistry that has the audience rooting for them from the off. Lynch’s Maria is free-spirited, with a rebellious edge. Coupled with the choice to perform with her natural Irish accent, Lynch immediately puts all thoughts of Julie Andrews’ iconic performance aside. Seadon-Young is less brooding than audiences are perhaps used to, but I enjoyed his slight awkwardness in his portrayal of the Captain. There’s an insecurity to the strict, stuffed-shirt persona displayed when Maria first meets him, which makes the thawing of his character even more endearing. The two leads receive fine support from a kindly Joanna Riding as Mother Abbess (the relationship between her and Maria has a real warmth), Aviva Tulley’s earnest and suitably youthful Liesl, and Minal Patel’s jovial Max Detweiler. The child cast are wonderfully down to earth, enhanced by Ebony Molina’s choreography which places an emphasis on childlike joy.

Foster’s production eschews any tweeness associated with The Sound of Music, instead embracing a darker tone, at times reminiscent of Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret. Michael Taylor’s superb set stages the action amidst the Austrian hills – complete with a copse of birch trees and running waterfall – an ever-present reminder of the bucolic idyll that is threatened by the impending fascist regime. The Act One finale in which the Mother Abbess sings ‘Climb Ev’ry Mountain’ with the intention of comforting and inspiring Maria to embrace her true self, is imbued with a sinister foreshadowing as Nazi stormtroopers infiltrate the distant hills. While not quite as chilling as Cabaret’s infamous ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’, Foster strikes a similarly disconcerting tone by juxtaposing hopeful music with nightmarish imagery.

While the 1965 film adaptation expands the story, allowing time for the central romance to breathe, the fast-paced nature of this stage production successfully creates a sense of the tensions and doom-laden inevitability of pre-WWII Europe. The show hurtles towards its conclusion in the manner of a thriller, completely at odds with the care-free idealism of the opening scenes. This production has made me look at an all time classic with fresh eyes – no easy feat – while retaining many of the feel-good aspects we all grew up loving (‘My Favourite Things’, the curtain to clothes transformation, fun singing lessons, and thunderstorm frolics). Curve have yet again produced a musical treat for the festive season, for audiences of all ages to enjoy and contemplate.

The Sound of Music plays at Curve until 17^th January 2026.

For further information please visit: The Sound of Music - Curve Theatre, Leicester

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23^rd October, 2025

“Martha’s a devil with language. She really is”

In the middle of the night, we’re invited to spend a few hours of fun and games with history professor George and his wife Martha, along with a young couple they’ve invited back for an after party. As the play progresses the reality of their academic and liberal life becomes increasingly precarious and we spiral into their claustrophobic, booze-fuelled world of bitterness and disappointment. Cathy Tyson and Patrick Robinson give powerhouse performances in this timely Made at Curve production directed by Cara Nolan.

Edward Albee’s 1962 Tony winning play is an American classic up there with Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar Named Desire. What’s staggering then is that it was his first full length three-act play. We’re in a small New England college town: respectable, liberal, full of young blonde-haired optimism. These values are characterised by the younger married couple Honey (Tilly Steele) and Nick (George Kemp) when they first enter the home of George (Robinson) and Martha (Tyson). What they walk in to is a world of explosive arguments, manipulation and failed dreams. George is a struggling associate history professor unable to have lived up to his father in law’s (who is head of the college) expectations. Martha torments him, reminding him of his failures every chance she gets, whilst living her own fantasy life fuelled by alcohol. The title alludes to a parlour game at the party earlier in the evening, becoming a motif, sung childishly throughout the play. As Nick and Honey are toyed with, becoming embroiled in George and Martha’s cruel games, we are similarly drawn into their trickery and backbiting, the rug repeatedly being pulled from under our feet. Albee’s dialogue is rhythmic and cyclical, full of squabbling and revelations that are delicious to watch. Martha and George turn everything from heartache and painful memories, indeed marriage itself, into a game.

As the play progresses, Albee destabilises the ideals of marriage and the American Dream: career success, the nuclear family, a stable marriage. At a time when America is looking in the mirror at those values, its identity and its Dream, Nolan’s production couldn’t be timelier. Her direction is well-paced and revels in the vitriol of Albee’s language, drawing out excellent performances from the cast. Tyson in particular is quite the force as Martha, bringing out her monstrous cruelty, her ability to exploit George, but also evoking a well of pain underneath. There are points, like when describing someone’s eye colour, where she’s undermining George and relishing every word. And there are other moments, like the guttural scream she produces in the third act after George pops the bubble of her make-believe world, where we sympathise with her. Robinson has a natural stage presence, making George’s dry wit and glibness Martha’s perfect match; I loved the way he offered to pour Martha another glass of rubbing alcohol. And Steele gives a standout performance as Honey: initially meek and passive, she gains confidence the more sloshed she gets, revealing the cracks in her and Nick’s seemingly perfect marriage. This is all played out on Amy Jane Cook’s set: a handsome living room strewn with books and peppered with liquor bottles squirreled away in dark corners and bookshelves.

There’s delight in watching these four actors give towering performances as characters who refuse to conform to domestic expectations and instead embrace their inner chaos. Over the three hours 20 minutes running time, bottles are broken, alcohol spilt and mascara runs, but Nolan and her cast keep the audience on the edge of their seats with Albee’s shattered American dream and marital disharmony.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is playing at Curve until 8^th November. For more information, please visit https://www.curveonline.co.uk/whats-on/shows/whos-afraid-of-virginia-woolf/

29^th September, 2025

Please note this review contains plot spoilers

“It feels like we’re suspended in time”

Frantic Assembly’s co-productions with Curve are unmissable. In recent years, they’ve transformed literary classics such as Othello and Metamorphosis, fusing movement and design to drive the story forward, stripping the text and creating startling theatre for contemporary audiences. Frantic’s co-founder and artistic director Scott Graham directs this new play by Anna Jordan, about a young couple plunging into their shared past, scaling the soaring highs and crushing lows of their relationship. Those who saw Jordan’s The Unreturning will know that her plays and Frantic Assembly are a happy pairing. That play delved into perceptions of home and national identity in a production which probed big questions with astonishing physicality. Lost Atoms, which celebrates the company’s 30th anniversary, blends their hallmark physicality and stunning design with Jordan’s more personal story of a couple re-living their relationship.

Andrzej Goulding’s design, an impressive wall of drawers, takes inspiration from the opening stage direction in the text: it ‘should hold memories. The stuff of a relationship’. It’s on these drawers, stacked as high as 14 rows tall, that the couple precariously but skilfully climb and clamber, opening up drawers and fetching memories from their past: donuts from their first encounter, golf clubs from an early date, family photos. They’re the props of everyday life, the detritus of a relationship; all neatly organised, easily retrieved and easily filed away. It provides a canvas where we meet Jess (Hannah Sinclair Robinson) and Robbie (Joe Layton) as they dissect their relationship. We’re submersed into memories from throughout their relationship like the initial meet-cute, awkward first meetings with the in-laws, the highs of falling in love and the nadirs of trauma. It’s easy to invest in the couple, a result achieved thanks to Jordan’s use of language. The dialogue is prosaic, specific and sounds believable in the mouths of a young couple. But their likability is also thanks to Robinson and Layton’s performances. Layton brings out Joe’s quiet vulnerability and pragmatism. When he wins £500 on a scratch card, there are no flights of fancy or major celebration; he seems resigned to the fact he’s likely never going to be able to buy a property. His job teaching disadvantaged youths how to cook is telling of how he’s not without ambition but also shuns any compliments that what he’s doing may be heroic. And yet he’s strongly encouraging of Jess’ squashed ambitions to become a painter. Jess, on the other hand, can be less disciplined and more spontaneous. How the two actors capture their characters’ contradictions, idiosyncrasies and faults is what makes the play so enthralling.

Graham enhances the characters’ relationship through movement. As they literally scale their memories, at times it looks like the pair are suspended in mid-air as they navigate up and across the wall with only small drawer handles as footholds, and under and over each other like acrobats. Graham and his design team make great use of this effect to stage certain memories. A walk along a stormy coastal path to show Jess his mum’s beach hut sets off Robbie’s grief and an admission that he might be depressed. At this point, he is perched on a single draw high on the stage immersed in the memory of being close to the cliff edge (sound design is by Carolyn Downing; lighting by Simisola Majekodunmi). There are funnier moments too, such as one exchange where the couple remember Jess’ parents meeting Robbie for the first time. Being grilled on career prospects, whether he’s a veggie and how much sugar he takes in his tea is choreographed in a way which gives it pace, lightness and humour.

But what is another sign of Graham’s assuredness in Jordan’s play is where he lets the text come to the fore, unaccompanied by any movement. In the second act, after deciding to not go ahead with a termination, Jess suffers a miscarriage. Again, the specificity in Jordan’s text makes the scenes painfully tangible: their memories of being put in a freezing cold holding room, the nurse who couldn’t make eye contact, the sterility of phrases like ‘medical management’. For those familiar with the situation, it strikes a chord. But I suppose that is like so much of Lost Atoms, everyone who has been in a relationship will recognise at least some of the beats in Jess and Robbie’s experience.

As their relationship falters so does the way they remember those hard times. The characters often comment on the previous scene in a space which the text refers to as No Man’s Land. Slight lighting changes reflect this change of perspective as Jess and Robbie disagree on what was said, where they were, and whether one felt supported by the other. In this way, Jess’ interest in the oral tradition of how fairy tales have morphed over the centuries reflects Jordan’s thematic interest in the fallibility of memory. As their memories diverge and it’s questioned what is remembered versus what is chosen to be forgotten, the fractures in their relationship become more visible. The play ends in a series of hypothetical speeches as to where their lives (might) take them, together or apart. It’s a beautiful piece of writing which melds the specific and the universal in a production which perfectly fuses text, movement and design.

Lost Atoms plays at Curve until 4^th October before touring. For more information, please visit https://www.curveonline.co.uk/whats-on/shows/lost-atoms/

Lost Atoms plays at Lyric Hammersmith Theatre 29^th January – 28^th February 2026.

1. Much Ado About Nothing

It’s always a treat to see something in Leicester’s Guildhall, a wonky 14th Century timber-beamed building that lends any play an atmospheric backdrop. For one night only, the Guildhall will be the setting of Shakespeare’s comedy of scheming and love-hate relationships. What makes this production stand out is that it’s presented by The Handlebards, a four-person troupe performing in unconventional spaces and touring from venue to venue with all their costumes and props on bikes. Their work specialises in charming, energetic and environmentally sustainable Shakespeare, so the evening promises to be a perfect end to the summer.

9^th September, Leicester Guildhall

2. Lost Atoms

Frantic Assembly’s co-productions with Curve are unmissable. In recent years, they’ve transformed literary classics such as Othello and Metamorphosis, fusing movement and design to drive the story forward, stripping the text and creating startling theatre for contemporary audiences. Frantic’s co-founder and artistic director Scott Graham directs this new play by Anna Jordan, about a young couple plunging into their shared past, scaling the soaring highs and crushing lows of their relationship. For those who saw The Unreturning at Curve in 2019 will know that Jordan and Frantic Assembly are a happy pairing. That play delved into perceptions of home and larger issues of national identity in a production which probed questions with astonishing physicality. This production sounds like a promising way to celebrate the company’s 30^th anniversary.

22^nd September – 4^th October, Frantic Assembly at Curve

3. The Unfriend

Following two West End runs, it’s no surprise that amateur groups have been quick to mount their own productions of Steven Moffat’s The Unfriend as soon as the rights were released. The Leicester Drama Society’s production, directed by Jane Towers, opens at the end of September. Founded over 100 years ago, the society stages a variety of works from Shakespeare to Agatha Christie – their upcoming season also features modern classics like The Memory of Water and page-to-stage adaptations such as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Moffat’s The Unfriend opened in Chichester post-pandemic and is a dark comedy about a suburban couple of inadvertently invite a murderer to their home after befriending her on holiday. Its broad humour and light satirising of middle-class families makes it popular fare for those seeking an entertaining evening.

29^th September – 4^th October, The Little Theatre

4. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Edward Albee’s 1962 Tony winning play is an American classic up there with Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar Named Desire. In the middle of the night in a New England college town, we’re invited to spend a few hours of fun and games with history professor George and his wife Martha. As the play progresses the reality of their academic and liberal life becomes increasingly precarious and we spiral into their claustrophobic, drink-fuelled world. Albee’s dialogue is rhythmic and cyclical, full of squabbling and revelations that’s delicious to watch. BAFTA winner Cathy Tyson and Patrick Robinson star in Cara Nolan’s Made at Curve production playing exclusively in Leicester.

18^th October – 8^th November, Curve

5. Purlie Victorious

Ossie Davis’ 1961 play, which carries the provocative sub-title A Non-Confederate Romp through the Cotton Patch, is receiving a rare staging in the UK. A Broadway revival in 2023 starring Hamilton’s Leslie Odom Jr put the play on the map again stateside but it’s a lesser-known work in the UK. On one hand, it’s a full-throttle farce about a preacher in Georgia; on the other, it’s a serious work about racism which was ahead of its time. Rounding off Black History Month, this is a rehearsed reading in partnership with Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage, an arts and education organisation based in Leicester which puts communities and practitioners from diversity and intersectional identities centre stage.

30^th October – 1^st November, Curve

6. Holes

From the creator of sitcoms Plebs and the brilliant Here We Go, Tom Basden’s 2013 play is being presented in The Little Theatre’s smaller studio space in November. Following an air disaster, four survivors (most of them office workers on the way to a conference) find themselves stranded on a desert island. With echoes of Tim Firth’s Neville’s Island, it’s been described as a sharply observed comedy of English awkwardness and surviving against the odds.

5^th – 8^th November, Little Theatre The Haywood Studio

7. 14/48 Theatre Festival

The world’s quickest theatre festival in Leicester’s oldest theatre. Back for its 12^th year, 70 artists are given 24 hours to write, direct, rehearse, design and perform seven brand-new plays. For the artists, it typically starts on the Thursday evening with a tradition known as tapping the keg, where groups are given a jumping off point (eg. a theme) for inspiration to start creating pieces ready to perform on Friday evening. 14/48 draws artists from all of the world but is a hub for local talent. And if you miss the first night, they do it all over again for performances on the Saturday evening.

7^th – 8^th November, Y Theatre

8. The Fifth Step

Since 2009, the National Theatre has screened many of its productions live from London’s South Bank to cinemas across the UK and around the world. In its early days, I remember having to travel to Warwick Arts Centre to see their production of The Cherry Orchard as that was the nearest venue. Thankfully, all of Leicester’s cinemas now stream NT Live productions. Most of the shows are now pre-recorded and they’ve widened their offering to also stream co-productions and some West End shows. One of their latest offerings is David Ireland’s new play The Fifth Step starring Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman. A hit at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2024, the show transferred to the West End this summer. Recorded at the intimate, in-the-round @Soho Place, the subversively funny play centres on an addict and his new sponsor as they progress through the 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous programme.

Various NT Live screenings from 27^th November, Phoenix, Showcase, Odeon

9. Breaking the Code

Before the 2014 film The Imitation Game introduced the work and life of Alan Turing to a wider audience, Hugh Whitmore’s 1986 play dramatised the professional triumphs and personal tragedy of Turing’s life. Famed for cracking The Enigma Code which led to victory for the Allied forces in WWII, Whitmore thematically links his code-cracking genius to his struggles of grappling with his sexuality. Directed by the Royal & Derngate’s artistic director Jesse Jones, this production features a new epilogue written by Neil Bartlett that speaks to Turing’s lasting legacy on modern Britain.

11^th – 27^th September, Northampton Royal & Derngate

10. Eureka Day

Jonathan Spector’s play didn’t receive much of a fanfare when it premiered in 2018. Set in an elementary school in an affluent part of San Francisco, the play sees the niceties of a Parent-Teacher Association fall apart after an outbreak of mumps reveals that not everyone is on board with the school’s vaccine policy. Understandably, the play’s seen more traction post-Covid, and even won this year’s Tony Award for Best Play Revival following a Broadway run. It’s described as a razor-sharp comedy and has been noted for skewering both sides of the political spectrum. Directed by James Grieve, this production stars Olivier Award Winner Jenna Russell.

25^th October – 15^th November, Nottingham Playhouse

The Leicester Review is a new Substack which champions theatre in Leicester and its surrounding areas. Here you can find reviews, features and commentary from the region’s thriving theatre scene.

With over 12 years’ experience of reviewing theatre in Leicester, around the UK and internationally, we aim for our writing to be consistently original, creative and insightful. There’s so much creativity, passion, talent, intelligence and pure graft that goes into every decision of what we see on stage. We hope to reflect those efforts in our writing. Ultimately, we feel that a review’s purpose should be to capture the feeling of what it’s like to be in the audience of any given performance at that time – ‘writing letters to posterity’ as Kenneth Tynan put it. This is surely an almost impossible task. But theatre criticism is a creative practice in itself and with each review we hope to be part of a bigger conversation, contributing to an exciting, eclectic and thriving community.

There will be the occasional review from outside Leicestershire. As someone who’s Leicester born and bred with an interest in arts and culture, I’ll often hop on a train to places like Nottingham, Birmingham or London to see theatre. Seeing and championing work from elsewhere only informs and strengthens the work going on in our city. There may also be the occasional piece about other art forms, connecting place and Leicester's heritage to its contemporary arts and culture scene.

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