Apr 24, 2023 18:51:21 GMT londonpostie said:I just booked! You need to go deep into the run, though. I booked the last week.

The simple set is made up of a variety of objects which are used to create live foley which accompanies the action on stage. It’s a magical nod to the medium that plays such an important role in this story. Ben and Max Ringham’s sound design is bold and often surprising; a scene in the House of Commons sounds rowdily realistic, despite only a handful of characters being involved. There could scarcely be a better moment to put the BBC on stage. So under threat – from the influence of placemen and from precarious funding. So needed, not only for non-fake news but as a conduit of imagination and intellect, when the arts are under threat. Greg is an award-winning writer with a huge passion for theatre. He has appeared on stage, as well as having directed several plays in his native Scotland. Stephen Campbell Moore as John Reith and Adrian Scarborough as Churchill in When Winston Went to War With the Wireless at the Donmar. Photograph: Manuel Harlan Adrian Scarborough will play Winston Churchill, with Stephen Campbell Moore as John Reith. Further casting will be announced at a later date.It’s a fascinating window into now little-remembered events, and Katy Rudd’s zippy production feels the most at ease while depicting the dawn of the BBC: a ragtag group of eccentrics who genuinely had no idea how to run a broadcaster - because literally nobody anywhere had ever done it before - balancing ethical dilemmas about news coverage with hokey light entertainment shows. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. I'm not having a good run at the Donmar lately because I saw this last night (Friday 9th) and for me it was only OK.

The confrontational energy from both sides is matched with plenty of humour. Short scenes recreate some of the output of the time, from singers to musicians and comedians. Remarkably, much of it sounds like something you would still hear being broadcast on Radio 4 Extra in the present day. Thorne’s play is an unabashed celebration of the BBC and the haunted, brittle man who built it. Undoubtedly, the 1926 general strike was the making of the nascent corporation – but was it also its finest hour? It’s a question that doesn’t trouble When Winston... – but perhaps it should trouble us. Yet something feels under-powered about this central conflict. There’s a lot of shouting – and Adrian Scarborough’s Churchill doesn’t help things. He gets a few nice laughs, but Churchill here is a caricature. There’s also an awful lot of history to crunch through: characters lob gobbets about Gallipoli and the Gold Standard at each other like hand grenades. The play’s title teases that Thorne, who wrote The Motive and the Cue and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, is interested in the mano-a-mano encounter between Reith and Churchill. In fact, it’s more a character study in how Reith, the son of a Presbyterian minister, tried to balance his professional ambition with his conscience and sympathy for the strikers. Is he willing to sell his soul for the BBC’s future? Stephen Campbell Moore captures this fragile hauteur well; his Reith is a pine tree blown in a storm, buffeted by memories of his gay lover and duty to his neglected wife. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial.Lizzi Gee’s driving choreography punches home in the same direction as Rob Howell’s design, with its gaudy palette and skewed perspectives: as if echoing the size of his self-esteem, our hero’s tousled room is studded with miniature illuminated houses, clinging to its walls like limpets. Yet the relentless energy of the early scenes does not move naturally into the self-discovery of the ending in Danny Rubin’s book or Minchin’s music. And I wish I could see a musical in which salvation didn’t depend on being homey. This is all adazzle but seeing it twice is enough for me. Ultimately, I just didn't think the story was deep enough. It was interesting, and especially the parallels between the situation in this play and the modern-day relationship between the Tory party and the BBC, but I don't think it needed two hours to tell it. Likewise, the ethical compromises Reith makes to appease the government are fascinating, but feel like they’d have worked better in a show more explicitly about the Beeb.