Reviews

Director Bernard Teuben brings the tension and theatricality of the courtroom to the stage in this absorbing drama by well-known novelist (and one time guest of Her Majesty’s prisons) Jeffrey Archer. With the Scales of Justice towering above on a huge and colourful backdrop, the stage transforms to the pomp and be-wigged ceremony of the Old Bailey and the trial of cardiologist Patrick Sherwood (Jason Spindlow) – charged with murdering his wife by administering the poison potassium chloride.

Theresa Rebeck, famous for her television writing but also a Pulitzer Prize nominee, has written a fine play in Seminar. Full of snappy one-liners to please a main stage audience, it also delves deeply into the psyche of the writer and the constant struggle between art and craft. Real writers - true storytellers - are born, not made.

Conor McPherson is a deceptive playwright who brilliantly marries a witty and accessible primary level of storytelling with deep subtext that often takes us to places we would rather not go. Simple dialogue is openly accessible, but to reach the depth of McPherson’s subtext and philosophy is like taking a giant leap down a well. It takes highly skilled actors and a fine director to go down that well and discover just how deep it is. Fortunately Q44 – a little company that continually mines the well in its quest for excellence – has those actors, and that director.

They are the gracefully gliding, giggling, girlish devoted handmaidens to Princess-then-Queen Marie Antoinette – she who famously said (or did she?) ‘Let them eat cake.’  Marie Antoinette - the political pawn, child bride, queen, breeder, fashion icon, hobby farmer, adulteress, dilettante, victim and dead.  Her handmaidens live vicariously, each convinced that Marie is her best friend (‘This morning, when I was emptying her chamber pot, she touched my hand!’), but all sharing with her every high, every low, every triumph, every disappointment