REVIEW: Home, I'm Darling (Theatr Clwyd, Mold)

My favourite aspect of Home, I'm Darling could be considered a spoiler, so I'll clue you in at the end and give you fair warning. But it's no spoiler to say that this play, written by Laura Wade and directed by Theatr Clwyd's artistic director Tamara Harvey, is a real blast, daddy-o!

Judy and Johnny are in love with the 1950s: the threads, the nests, the frocks, the decor, the sounds, the chariots, the designs, the works! They first met through their mutual love of the period and became soul mates, visiting 1950s events such as JiveFest and indulging their passion with their friends Fran and Marcus. Both have well-paid gigs (Judy's better paid than Johnny), but one day, Judy decides she's had enough of her high-flying managerial job in finance, and the couple agree she should cop a breeze, and become a housewife instead. Rather, a 1950s housewife...

REVIEW: Turn of the Screw (Theatr Clwyd, Mold)

Thirty years ago, Stephen Mallatrat's masterful adaptation of Susan Hill's novel The Woman in Black changed the way that ghost stories were told on the stage. Anybody who has seen either the West End or the touring version of the play will know how bone-chillingly effective the production is even today, especially if you don't know what to expect. Mallatrat's The Woman in Black remains the standard by which all other theatrical ghost stories must be held, and Tim Luscombe's version of the Henry James 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw is no different - especially as it mentions it in publicity.

Different people find different things scary, and there are very different approaches to making things scary within the horror/ supernatural genre. There's out-and-out gorefests, and the productions that go for the visceral as well as the visual (Ghost Stories, The Soulless Ones), while there's also the spooky, eerie, atmospherically charged productions - such as The Woman in Black - which creep up on the senses and shout BOO!

REVIEW: The Assassination of Katie Hopkins (Theatr Clwyd, Mold)

Everybody has an opinion these days. Including me. However, I'm invited to give my opinion (and sometimes paid to do it). But what about all the people who have opinions that nobody asked for? Are they still valid? Do people still want to hear them? Do people need to hear them?

The truth is, everybody's opinion is valid, but not every opinion is welcome. Social media allows the individual to speak to the masses at the touch of a button, and they can put as much or as little thought and research into that opinion as they like.

This frenetic new musical, written by Chris Bush and composed by Matt Winkworth, attempts to open up the national debate about freedom of speech, and whether what's called "hate speech" should be just as free as all the self-congratulatory back-patting and celebrity worship that happens online. For every tweet simpering over the birth of a new #royalbaby, there's another slamming the Duchess of Cambridge for looking too glamorous just hours after giving birth. For every #BlackPower hashtag, there's a thread bemoaning the loss of Little England and what it means to be British (and white).

REVIEW: The Weir (Theatr Clwyd, Mold)

Back in the 1970s, the film company Amicus made several portmanteau horror films which told eerie, sometimes light-hearted, but always gruesome tales of misfortune and tragedy. They were like Hammer films, but more lurid and macabre.

Conor McPherson's The Weir - celebrating its 20th anniversary this year - would make a cracking portmanteau horror film, with its four spine-chilling folk tales framed by an overarching story about a bunch of people whiling away an evening in a rural Irish pub. There's even a bonus tale in the form of a melancholy reminiscence of lost love and missed opportunity.

There's a good reason why McPherson won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play in 1999, because The Weir is a haunting, bittersweet, sometimes unsettling, often heartwarming story which beautifully reflects the laid-back, pastoral way of life in rural Ireland, as well as showing how we all carry with us our own demons and fears, which are often waiting keenly to jump to the surface if we let them.

REVIEW: National Dance Company Wales: Roots (Theatr Clwyd, Mold)

NDC Wales decided to mix things up a bit for its Autumn tour and present a curated evening of four short and snappy dance pieces instead of the traditional three longer pieces. Contemporary dance can be a very hard sell to new audiences, so it's commendable that NDC Wales is trying to broaden its appeal by offering bite-size dances which might appeal to newbies. It's a bit like a box of Quality Street - if you don't like one piece, there'll be another one along soon to tempt your tastes. The trouble with assorted chocolates though, is that for every caramel soft centre, there's a dreaded toffee penny.

Artistic director Caroline Finn wanted Roots to present different styles of dance, to show how contrasting contemporary dance can be, so that established audiences got a little of what they fancied, and newcomers got a crash course in what the art form's all about. This is a welcome idea, as is the choice to have Finn introducing each piece, and then hosting a short Q&A afterwards, because inevitably with contemporary dance, people have questions afterwards, even if it's to say: "What was that all about?"

REVIEW: Little Wolf (Pontio, Bangor)

The loss of a child is one of the most horrifying and emotionally exhausting events that can happen to anyone, and none more so than the child's parents and family. We've all seen it on the news, when a child is reported missing and the local community joins the emergency services in searching the area, combing the landscape for clues. And then the dreaded press conference where the parents issue an emotional plea for the child to come home, reassuring them that they've done nothing wrong, that mummy won't be angry. Or pleading with an abductor to let the child go, unharmed. It's devastating just to watch such a scenario play out, never mind be directly involved with it.

So you'd expect a play about the loss (and subsequent death) of a child to be packed with raw emotion, to grab you by the heartstrings and seriously mess you up. It's a fundamentally emotional event, invoking anger, frustration, hatred, fear and despair. Indeed, the publicity for Little Wolf - an adaptation by Simon Harris of Henrik Ibsen's 1895 play Little Eyolf - promises a "vital and raw" production, but unfortunately it turns up lacking.

REVIEW: P.A.R.A.D.E. (Pontio, Bangor)

P.A.R.A.D.E. (I'm not altogether sure what it's an acronym of; I suspect nothing in particular) is the impressive result of a collaboration between National Dance Company Wales, Dawns i Bawb, Rubicon Dance, Wales Millennium Centre, Pontio in Bangor, and artistic director Marc Rees, and forms a key part of Wales's R17 celebrations marking a century since the Russian Revolution.

What has the Russian Revolution got to do with the people of Wales, some people might ask. It's a good question, but the truth is that when the workers were going on strike and overthrowing their bosses in Petrograd, they were being watched and admired by the coal miners of South Wales, who were inspired by the fact the working man could triumph over the might of autocracy. Russia's uprising led to Maerdy in the Rhondda being nicknamed Little Moscow due to its people's socialist sympathies, and for producing the forthright trade unionist Arthur Horner, who helped found the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1920.