Tag Archives: Hildegard Bechtler

Top Hat, Aldwych Theatre, London’s West End, May 2012

If you like a frothy musical with lots of dancing, and numbers like Cheek to Cheek by Irving Berlin, this is for you. It’s the early 1930s and an American dancer named Jerry Travers has come to London to star in a show produced by wealthy Horace Hardwick. A tap dance routine he performs in his hotel …

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The Damnation of Faust, English National Opera, ENO, London Coliseum, May 2011

This is ostensibly a French opera sung in English, though it’s not really an opera but a légende dramatique by Hector Berlioz — a musical and vocal canvas on which a clever director can paint his own picture. And this is exactly what Terry Gilliam does by turning the whole thing into a history about the rise …

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Cause Célèbre, The Old Vic, London, March 2011

Anne-Marie Duff as Alma Rattenbury was utterly convincing as a charmingly batty woman who lived life to the full.

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After the Dance, National Theatre, NT Lyttelton, June 2010

This riveting play by Terence Rattigan had the misfortune to open in June 1939, shortly before war was declared, and when the country’s mood rapidly changed it was taken off. … It’s been somewhat ignored for that reason, but this production and cast do it full justice, and I recommend booking tickets before word gets out.

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Arcadia, Duke of York’s Theatre, June 2009

This Tom Stoppard play cleverly juxtaposes the modern world of literary scholarship and mathematics with the early nineteenth century world of literary creativity, classical study and scientific enquiry.

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