The BFG

adapted by Tom Wells and Jenny Worton from Roald Dahl's story

seen at the Chichester Festival Theatre on 21 March 2026

Daniel Evans directs John Leader as the BFG with a supporting company of actors and puppeteers in an imaginative staging of Roald Dahl's popular children's story extolling the virtues of friendship for all, from orphans to untypical giants and even the Queen of England. The production is a joint venture by the Chichester Festival Theatre, the RSC and Singapore's Esplanade Theatre on the Bay, with the blessing of the Roald Dahl Story Company.

The difficulty in staging a play concerning humans and giants is the question of scale, a problem that besets everything from pantomime (Jack and the Beanstalk) to Wagner's opera Das Rheingold. In this story the challenge is compounded by having humans, a small giant (the titular BFG, albeit his initials stand for "Big Friendly Giant") and regular-sized large giants - a three-fold issue of scale rather than the usual two-fold issue. In a versatile set designed by Vicki Mortimer, the problem is solved by the imaginative use of puppets. At times we see the child Sophie, her friend Kimberley, and the Queen and her court, from an ordinary human perspective, and if the BFG is present he is represented by a large-scale puppet manipulated by three puppeteers. Sometimes we see things from the BFG's perspective: John Leader is on stage and the humans are represented by small marionettes; the threatening regular giants are themselves large-scale puppets. Dizzyingly, on occasion we see actors portraying the human-eating large giants, while the BFG is a small marionette and the child Sophie is a tiny doll.

The staging is brilliantly effective, allowing the story to proceed at a headlong pace with no confusion. Children in the audience are enthralled (though one small voice behind me asked with incipient disappointment at the first blackout "is that the end?" - of course it wasn't) while the adults marvel at the ingenuity. The cast - even the two child actors for Sophie and Kimberley - handle all the logistical challenges with aplomb, and the paean to friendship, ludicrous though many of its narrative details are, rolls forward with unstoppable energy, enlivened by ridiculous word-coinages and a final explosion of fart jokes. 

Lord of the Flies

by Nigel Williams adapted from William Golding's novel

seen at the Chichester Festival Theatre on 11 October 2025

William Golding's famous novel is now over 70 years old and this stage adaptation was written in 1991 for a school production and first performed professionally in 1995. But the big question at the heart of Lord of the Flies still remains all too pertinent: to what extent is "civilised society" just a veneer concealing humanity's innate cruelty and violence. The issue is crystallised in the story of a group of British schoolboys - ostensibly the exemplars of good behaviour - stranded by a plane crash on an uninhabited tropical island with no surviving adults. What will they do?

Notoriously they start with high ideals - mostly suggested by Piggy (Alfie Jallow), who sees the reluctant Ralph (Sheyi Cole) as the obvious person to lead - but these are compromised by boyish inattention to detail, high spirits, and eventually the disruptions caused by the charismatic Jack (Tucker St. Ivany) who disputes Ralph's authority and causes a fateful split. Things only go from bad to worse as Jack's gang becomes increasingly rebellious and violent, partly through inadvertence and partly through Jack's visions of "the Beast".

It is difficult to depict a tropical island on a bare stage, and difficult too to present the group of boys as young enough to match those in the original novel, or even for that matter in Peter Brook's celebrated film. Director Antony Lau and designer Georgia Lowe have made virtues of necessity: the stage is utterly bare, the backstage area starkly revealed to the audience, and it is littered with the moveable crates one sees at airports, which make for handy props. The boys are all young actors, some making their professional debut, but clearly at the very end of their schooldays if not beyond them. In a space that is unadorned, surrounded by black walls and black crates, the cast evokes the island with impressive conviction, and also manages to convey the curious mixture of swagger and insecurity which might typify the reactions of young boys cast on their own resources. Wisely, the boys we see are the "big'uns", while the "little'uns" (the youngest survivors of the crash) are only referred to.

At times it was difficult to understand exactly what was happening: there was too much noise and frenzy on stage. At times there was a strange disconnect between the theatrical space and the imagined space: towards the end of the play Jack seated himself at a piano and gave a spirited rendition of "The Great Pretender" as the chaos that he had unleashed began to spread. But at other times the spectacle was completely engrossing, and the group dynamics superbly realised. The boyish taunts ("stupid" being the ultimate put-down or insult), the playground bullying suddenly turned frighteningly serious, the anxiousness to please authority and the nervousness when authority seemed to be absent, were all convincing. Perhaps the full horror of what happens was weakened by the inescapable fact that the cast was older than the boys they were playing, but it was a fine production of a powerful adaptation..

Top Hat

by Irving Berlin

seen at the Chichester Festival Theatre on 23 August 2025

RKO's 1935 film Top Hat has been adapted for the stage by Matthew White and Howard Jacques, and is directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall. Jerry Travers (the part taken by Fred Astaire in the film) is played by Phillip Attmore and Dale Tremont (taken by Ginger Rogers) by Lucy St. Louis, with Horace Hardwick played by Clive Carter and Madge Hardwick by Sally Ann Triplett, together with a large supporting cast.

The play is essentially a farce generated by prolonged mistaken identities and misunderstandings, interspersed with now-famous songs and dazzling tap routines. To some extent the musical numbers slow down the farce (problematic since the genre depends on fast action to disguise the improbabilities) while the ludicrous situations surround classic songs and dances with unrelated froth, but the resulting confection is very entertaining and the comic energy gathers pace, especially in the second half.

Transferring a film, in which it is easy to move from place to place with a camera fade, to the stage can be a perilous affair, but the set designer Peter McKintosh has solved the problems on the Chichester's thrust stage with a glitzy all-purpose Art Deco backdrop, the clever use of a revolve, and adroit placements of furniture by a bevy of assorted hotel staff. Even the quick shifts from one bedroom suite to another, required in both the London and the Venetian settings, are managed with flair, while a series of benches or balustrades rise from the revolving floor when required for hotel lobbies or bandstands.

The leading couple perhaps inevitably lack the extraordinary chemistry of their film originals, but nonetheless play off each other engagingly and prove sterling dancers in both duets and ensemble numbers. On the exposed circle of the stage, with the outermost area lower than the centre, the sheer skill of co-ordinated tap dancing is shown off to exhilarating effect; since the style is now not so often seen it is salutary to be reminded how accomplished the cast must be to deliver the routines without mishap.

All in all, a good evening's entertainment. 

Anna Karenina

by Leo Tolstoy adapted by Phillip Breen

seen at the Chichester Festival Theatre on 21 June 2025

Phillip Breen, who has adapted Tolstoy's novel for the stage, directs Natalie Dormer as Anna, Tomiwa Edun as her husband Karenin, Jonnie Broadbent as her brother Stiva, Naomi Sheldon as his wife Dolly, Shalisha James-Davis as Dolly's sister Kitty, David Oakes as Levin (eventually Kitty's husband) and Seamus Dilate as Vronsky, with whom Anna has a passionate affair in this staging of Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina.

All those relationships, together with Russian patronymics and nicknames, famously cause complications for non-Russian readers, but are perhaps easier to keep in mind when embodied by actors on the stage (who dispense with the patronymics almost entirely); there are a number of minor characters as well. The novel examines three fraught marriages, the trajectories of which are interleaved; the play remains surprisingly faithful to this structure rather than taking the easier but less satisfactory option of focussing attention only on Anna. This does make for an intense experience which runs the risk of being too long-winded, but it also allows for the famous opening sentence of the novel - "All happy families are alike but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion" (in the 1954 translation by Rosemary Edmonds) - to be fully demonstrated.

The Oblonsky marriage is under constant strain because of Stiva's serial infidelities and Dolly's exhaustion from child-bearing; the Karenin marriage is stretched to breaking point by Anna's grand passion for Vronsky and her husband's intransigence; in contrast, the Levin marriage, delayed by misunderstandings and almost sabotaged by Levin's tactless revelations about his past, seems set to be solid even though it will be always be volatile as husband and wife strive to accommodate and understand one another.

This was a fine cast and a well-designed production with a versatile set (designer Max Jones), but it did not always convince. The main problem, perhaps inherited from the book itself, is that Vronsky does not come across as the heart-breaker he needs to be: there was insufficient emphasis on Kitty's crush on him, or on his caddishness at abandoning her, so that the impact of Anna's presence at the ball where the family expected him to propose to Kitty was not as traumatic as it should have been. Then, in turn, there was no real spark between Anna and Vronsky to justify the grand passion, though the later stages of their affair, when the social pressured crowding them in upon themselves laid bare the paucity of their inner resources, was very well handled.

In a fluid staging which included simulated train journeys and a finely imagined journey by carriage during which Dolly vented her frustrations while an impassive coachman concentrated on driving, and mercifully refrained from offering any peasant wisdom at the end, Anna's final desperate act was somehow not made fully clear. I knew what she had done, because I have read the book and seen other adaptations, but I wonder whether someone completely new to the story would have been certain about what was shown. These two events perhaps indicate the weakness of an otherwise successful adaptation: Dolly's outburst just too modern, consisting almost entirely of expletives, and Anna's demise the victim of too-clever stagecraft.

The Government Inspector

by Nikolai Gogol

seen at the Chichester Festival Theatre on 17 May 2025

Gregory Doran directs a new version of Gogol's famous play by Phil Porter, with a large ensemble cast (how profligate with actors older playwrights were! - twenty-four named characters and unnamed sundries.)

A marvellous set, designed by Francis O'Connor, gives the impression of a nineteenth-centruy provincial Russian (or Ukrainian) town, with cupolas and steep roofs silhouetted like a child's overgrown box of wooden building blocks, while also representing the cluttered office of the beleaguered mayor. The local worthies are in a sudden panic having heard that a government inspector is about to arrive, probably incognito: their venality might well be exposed. Their mounting unease is brilliantly counterpointed by the extraordinary comings and goings of a local police officer who skids across the floor in paroxysms of enthusiasm.

A wastrel passing through the town is mistaken for the inspector; from being threatened with starvation for not having paid his bills at the inn, Khlestakov is suddenly showered with favour and money, and he is soon in a position to flirt with both the wife and the daughter of the mayor, and he is more than willing to accept, and then to demand, favours from all and sundry.

This farcical indictment of petty corruption and unbridled opportunism is great fun to watch, though its mechanics are occasionally a bit creaky. The local jealousies and snobberies are nicely observed; the classic master/servant relationship is wonderfully elaborated between Khlestakov and the hapless but worldly-wise Osip; the imperious wife and put-upon daughter of the mayor provide a study of domestic tension; and there is a good deal of physical comedy making excellent use of Chichester's thrust stage, including a spectacular pratfall through a skylight into Khlestakov's garret room in the hostelry.

Khlestakiv makes his getaway apparently unscathed, and far richer than he was when he arrived, while the town worthies are about to be confronted by the real inspector ....

The Girl on the Train

by Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel

seen at the Chichester Festival Theatre on 28 February 2025

Loveday Ingram directs this adaptation from Paula Hawkins's novel and the subsequent film, starring Giovanna Fletcher as the troubled Rachel Watson, a divorced alcoholic still obsessed with her husband Tom (Jason Merrells) who is now married to Anna (Zena Carswell).

When Megan Hipwell (Natalie Dunne), a near neighbour of Tom and Anna, disappears, Rachel's propensity to loiter near her old house, and to leave increasingly incoherent messages on Tom's phone, inevitably leads to her being questioned. It becomes clear that she has seen the neighbour when travelling by train, and in her befuddled state imagines that she has some sort of connection with her, leading her to introduce herself to Scott Hipwell (Samuel Collings) as a 'friend' of his missing wife.

The situation is increasingly claustrophobic, with Rachel's misery spiralling out of control and potentially compromising any attempt to solve the mystery of Megan's disappearance, particularly as Rachel has been seen near where Megan was last seen, but she has no clear recollection of what she was doing at the time. The gaps in her memory provide a convenient means of heightening the tension and frustration surrounding the police investigation, and alienating her ex-husband, his new wife, and also Scott.

Much depends on Giovanna Fletcher's skill at portraying Rachel as an unreliable and deeply distressed woman; at times the misery and confusion seem to exist only on one aggrieved note, but on the whole her gradual movement towards clarity and responsibility (though agonisingly slow) is believable. The supporting cast fulfil their roles despite some melodramatic moments, and it takes some time before the true course of action on the fateful night becomes clear. A couple of flashbacks to Megan's session with a psychologist help to fill in her troubled backstory.

As a variation of the theme of a bumbling amateur helping to solve a mystery, Rachel's incapacity to remember clearly what would immediately solve the problem is a clever device which allows for a satisfying pace in revealing to the audience all the relevant information. The result is a highly entertaining thriller. The technical production, envisaging several locations both indoors and out, provides an excellent physical background to the developing story.

 

Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of)

by Isobel McArthur

seen at the Chichester Festival Theatre on 15 February 2025

Isobel McArthur directs a revival of her own irreverent adaptation of Pride and Prejudice featuring a cast of five actresses purporting to be 'the servants' narrating and acting out the story for us while occasionally being interrupted to perform their daily drudgery. (The programme lists eight actresses, but only five appeared on stage: perhaps there are rotations.)

It's an amusing variation on the perennial desire to adapt Jane Austen's novels, and in the wrong hands it could have all come unstuck. Happily we were in the right hands: the comedy is far broader (and often earthier) than anything Austen would have attempted, but the energy is fizzing and the seriousness beneath the satire still comes through, with convincing evocations of the attraction between Charles Bingley and Jane Bennett, and the far more complex dance of interest and repulsion between the proud Elizabeth Bennett and the prejudiced Fitzwilliam Darcy. There is also an intriguing and somewhat melancholic take on the career of Lizzie's friend Charlotte Lucas, who in this version marries the unctuous Mr Collins in despair of ever having her true feelings for Lizzie recognised by her oblivious friend.

With five actors taking all the parts there is plenty of opportunity for lightning costume changes (often a matter of swapping overcoats or shawls over all-purpose servants' dresses). The most clever is the minor adjustment to change from the engaging but dim Charles Bingley to his snobbish sister Caroline; the most brilliant is the transformation of one actress from the hysterical Mrs Bennett to the repressed Mr Darcy. In the meantime Mr Bennett is portrayed simply as a newspaper visible in a comfortable chair which always has its back to the audience: hysterically it proves possible to light a pipe for this non-presence. The device sacrifices some of Austen's best lines, but perfectly indicates the frustrating distance this father keeps from his whole family.

Spicing up the action and providing a brilliant commentary on proceedings is the liberal use of modern pop songs to underscore the narrative. Lizzie sings Carly Simon's "You're so Vain" to Mr Darcy, which perfectly sums up her initial reaction to his hauteur, while later in desperation he takes the microphone to sing the Partridge Family's classic "I Think I Love You!") to her. Meanwhile Mr Collins is more than happy to extol his patroness Lady Catherine de Burgh (suitably costumed) with a version of "Lady in Red", mischievously ascribed to a 'distant relative' of hers, one Chris de Burgh.

There's another sneaking anachronism when Mr Darcy first appears in Pemberley to the consternation of Lizzie and the delight of her aunt Gardiner: the servants are mystified that he appears to be quite dry. No-one can now resist a reference to the famous 1995 TV adaptation in which Colin Firth's Darcy appeared to Jennifer Ehle's Lizzie having just swum in Pemberley's lake.

Karaoke-singing servants, snappy narration, inspired impersonations, and wonderful high spirits: all in all a great entertainment.

A Man for All Seasons

by Robert Bolt

seen at the Chichester Festival Theatre on 1 February 2025

Jonathan Church directs Martin Shaw as Sir Thomas More in this revival of Robert Bolt's 1960 play, with Edward Bennett as Thomas Cromwell and Gary Wilmot as the Common Man.

The play concerns the last years of Thomas More's life, concentrating on his promotion to be Lord Chancellor after Cardinal Wolsey's downfall, and his subsequent crisis of conscience over the king's 'great matter' (his proposed divorce and remarriage), brought to a climax when king Henry VIII declares himself Supreme Head of the Church of England and requires his subjects to swear the Oath of Supremacy. More attempts to avoid the issue by maintaining a strict silence on the matter, relying on the king's assurances of protection given in earlier days, but he is ultimately condemned through the perjury of a witness, and inevitably executed.

The story is by now familiar after decades of exposure to Tudor politics in novels, films and TV series, and this version of it alone may possibly have encouraged the fashion, particularly when it was turned into a successful film starring Paul Scofield in 1966 (he had originated the role on stage). The exposition is important, however, and it is still salutary to hear the ringing words of conviction about religious faith, the importance of law, and the dangers of special pleading or of setting expediency above strict adherence to legal principle. Martin Shaw delivered the lines with power and conviction, ensuring that More's integrity remains utterly convincing, as it must for the play to work.

Gary Wilmot portrays the Common Man (not present in the film), a bridge between the high and mighty figures of Tudor politics and the modern audience; frequently he addresses the audience directly, providing both narrative details and some comic relief, while taking part in proceedings as servant, boatman, jailer, juryman, and finally executioner. It's a strange device, but a welcome contrast to the excessive high-mindedness of More's stand.

It is fascinating to see this play in the light of Hilary Mantel's trilogy of novels about Thomas Cromwell, and their stage and television adaptations, since in Wolf Hall Thomas More is by no means a sympathetic character; whereas here he is the hero of the piece, a man of utmost integrity brought down by the determination of others who are corruptible. The deviousness of Cromwell is perhaps tinged with knowledge of Mantel's portrait, rather than being simply villainous - but if anything this adds richness to the whole enterprise as it places More in a context of real people rather than cardboard figures. Interestingly also, More's own failings may now seem more obvious through our awareness that he could be characterised in a different way. His concern to protect his family by refusing to explain to them what he is doing is all very well in legal terms, but there is also a heartlessness there, and he is all too obviously the authoritarian patriarch in his household.

The revival was well worth seeing; the conflict of conscience and high politics has not gone away, even if it seems hardly possible in today's climate that such stands as More's would be so prominently taken.

Summer 1954

by Terence Rattigan

seen at the Chichester Festival Theatre on 24 January 2025

James Dacre directs two one-act Rattigan plays, Table Number Seven (from Separate Tables) and The Browning Version, in a double bill, unifying the plays by emphasising their setting in the early 1950s, though actually The Browning Version was written in 1948. (Usually the first play is shown together with Table by the Window set earlier in the same hotel, while the latter is performed with the light-hearted Harlequinade.) 

In both plays Rattigan displays his mastery in examining and exposing the threat to genuinely humane feelings posed by the rigid social niceties of his time; in each he offers a glimmer of hope that some characters at least will escape the suffocating pressures that have so far blighted their lives.

The separate tables are in the dining room of a residential hotel in Bournemouth, a perfect microcosm of faded and repressed middle-class gentility. The permanent residents are dominated by the fearsome Mrs Railton-Bell (Siân Phillips), but even more dominated is her fragile daughter Sybil (Alexandra Dowling). Major Pollock (Nathaniel Parker) provides the most colour, but he is revealed to be a fraud when Mrs R-B spots an account of a trial in the local newspaper. The machinery of middle-class morality, amusingly satirised by George Bernard Shaw in plays such as Pygmalion, is here more vitriolic, but the good graces of the hotel manager Miss Cooper (Lolita Chakrabarti) encourage a rebellion whereby the formidable Mrs R-B is the character finally isolated by her prejudice. Thus in microcosm, with finely observed social dynamics, a plea for tolerance is made.

In the second play Nathaniel Parker and Lolita Chakrabarti take the roles of Andrew and Millie Crocker-Harris, a desiccated schoolmaster on the verge of early retirement due to ill-health and his far more vivacious wife, who have long ago fallen out of love with each other. Again the world of a minor boys' public school provides the perfect setting for Rattigan's cool examination of thwarted hopes and desperate remedies; it is extraordinary that the gift of a book from a schoolboy uninterested in classics to a dry and rule-bound master can be so affecting, and a single slap to the face can be so shocking, but in a play where turbulent emotions are almost impossible to express, these are highly charged moments.

The production is smart and well-designed on the open-thrust stage (Mike Britton responsible), and the supporting characters - down-at-heel hotel residents in the first play, an odious headmaster, a compromised colleague, all-too-eager newcomers and a boy with finer feelings than might be expected in the second - provide a rich environment for the central dilemmas to play out. Rattigan, once central to the English theatre, then sidelined by younger playwrights in these very 1950s, is more and more shown to be well worth revisiting.

The Dresser

by Ronald Harwood

seen at the Chichester Festival Theatre on 26 January 2017

This revival of the play, first performed in Manchester in 1980, is directed by Sean Foley with Ken Stott as 'Sir' and Reece Shearsmith as Norman, the eponymous Dresser. It portrays the close but fractious relationship between the autocratic actor manager of a wartime repertory company and his dresser, who possessively manages to cajole the over-stressed performer to rise to playing King Lear during an air raid.

The first act takes place in the dressing room; there is an initial panic because 'Sir' has had some sort of collapse in the market place and has been hospitalised. But he later appears, having discharged himself, and insists that the evening's performance should not be cancelled. The second act takes place partly on stage during the performance, and partly in the dressing room. The set is artfully designed to revolve to allow smooth transitions in the second half.

The play is full of sharp perceptions about repertory life, particularly during the war when there was much physical discomfort and evidently a short supply of new male talent (the supporting males are either past their best, or else physically wounded and hence discharged from the Services). Also, the actor manager's style, though comic at times to watch (though never to experience), is monstrously selfish. But then, so too is Norman, who fiercely defends his patch, more than half aware that his sense of self is totally dependent on his position, quite apart from his livelihood.

Ken Stott is wonderfully over the top, irascible, pettish, dominating, outrageous, yet able to summon reserves of actorly power even as he is struggling to remember which play he is in and when he should go on stage. Reece Shearsmith gives us an utterly convincing Norman, fussy, diligent, not quite sufficiently able to disguise his campness, full of little routines to keep things running his way, pathetically in need of approval when he is forced to make a public announcement. 

The play stands or falls by the relationship these two present to us, and in this case it was completely convincing. One could easily understand the curious reliance the two have on each other, and the completely different way in which each both acknowledges and denies the fact. Norman's ultimate realisation that Sir has completely failed to mention him in his projected memoirs is quite heartrending.

The production is also well served by the supporting players, who circle round their capricious boss with varying degrees of respect, affection and misplaced aspiration. This is a fine revival.