Reviews

Mark St. Germain is a prolific American writer of plays, musicals, and documentary films. All of them are much acclaimed, many of them involve famous people. His play Becoming Dr Ruth  tells the story Dr Ruth Westheimer, who escaped from Nazi Germany in the Kinderstransport, went on to Israel and America, and eventually became a pioneering radio and television sex therapist.

There’s a bare room, with a table and a few chairs. A man sits reading a file, drinking his coffee. A white board has the letters ‘AJP’ written on it, and through one of the two doors, another man peers through, looking nervous. ‘Liam?’ asks the man with a file, and he nods in agreement.

Returning to the Playhouse after two COVID-jammed, performance-free years comes this tight production of Shakespeare’s most famous play. A packed, masked audience showed its standing approval of a three-hour performance featuring ghosts, multiple murders and betrayals, not to mention some of the greatest lines, scenes and soliloquies ever written.

International Women’s Day was the auspicious date that Fringe headliner Prinnie Stevens opened her one woman show: Lady Sings The Blues. She is quoted as saying, ‘When I perform…I represent all that I love and all who have gone before me’, and this show eloquently and passionately embraces the journeys of beloved female blues, pop and soul singers, from Billie (Holiday) to Beyonce.