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.

REVIEW: The Rise and Fall of Little Voice (Theatr Clwyd, Mold)

At the heart of Jim Cartwright's play The Rise and Fall of Little Voice is a touching, sentimental story of a shy northern girl struggling to get heard by those around her, including her brash and selfish mother, who treats her the same way wicked stepmothers treat their Cinderellas. But at over two and a half hours in length, Cartwright struggles to fill the time with enough plot to make it as riveting as it should be.

The play (which opened at the National Theatre in 1992 and was written specifically for Jane Horrocks) was adapted into a film in 1998, and tells the story of a shy girl who can do stunningly accurate impressions of divas such as Shirley Bassey, Judy Garland and Edith Piaf after listening to her beloved late father's LP collection. However, the film was significantly more concise in its plotting. Kate Wasserberg's production of the play packs plenty of wallop when it's needed, but there are also a few too many moments of ponderous water-treading, moments which allow the audience to shift in their seat, hoping something will happen soon.

This is particularly noticeable in Act 1, where too much time is spent building up characters who don't require that much time to be fleshed out. The audience gets what the playwright's trying to do much quicker than he does himself. In particular, LV's harridan mother Mari, a stereotypical northern sexpot straight out of the Lily Savage school of termagent matriarchs. All the hallmarks of such a part are there - the too-tight leopard skin skirts and heels, the flashing knickers, the sharp, foul-mouthed tongue and the total disregard for the feelings and needs of those around her. Nicola Reynolds throws everything she's got into Mari Hoff, perhaps more than she should at times, making her a loud, brash, abusive, unpleasant gorgon who cares more about her drinks cabinet and her sex life than her meek daughter. Cartwright may have written the role broadly, but with every part like this, there has to be a more human side, and unfortunately we get to see far too much of the tart and not nearly enough of the heart.

INTERVIEW: Actor Catrin Aaron on playing Little Voice at Theatr Clwyd

Imagine a stage show where the late, great Judy Garland tops the bill, and the support acts are Shirley Bassey, Marilyn Monroe and Billie Holiday. Apart from the tiresome "some of them are dead" problem, you'd pay good money to see that show, wouldn't you?

Well, now you can, because Theatr Clwyd is staging a brand new production of Jim Cartwright's classic The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, which was specially written for actor Jane Horrocks back in 1992 for the National Theatre. Most people will remember the Oscar-nominated film from 1998, also starring Horrocks, but Theatr Clwyd's take casts the multi-talented Catrin Aaron as the shy, reclusive LV.

"I've never worked on a musical before," admits Catrin, "although I wouldn't really class Little Voice as a musical. It's more of a comedy drama with music."

Catrin trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and has got background in singing performance, including many educational and Christmas shows, "but this is the first time I've done it on my own," she laughs.

REVIEW: Uncle Vanya (Theatr Clwyd, Mold)

OK, let's get the headline out of the way first - Jamie Ballard is simply extraordinary in (and as) Uncle Vanya. Voted by the Guardian as one of the "ten best Hamlets ever", Ballard is an absolute revelation as a man whose entire life has been dictated to and shaped by other people's, whether it be the death of his sister, an unrequited love, or his supercilious brother-in-law. Vanya is one of life's great losers, and Jamie Ballard not so much plays the part as inhabits it.

One of the biggest problems some people have with theatre is the suspension of belief. When you watch a film or TV drama, you already know subconsciously that none of it is real, and you accept that, because you're watching these people on an oblong flatscreen several feet in front of you, like a window into a universe of fiction. But when you're at the theatre, sitting just feet away from a live action performance, you're being asked to believe that the drama is really happening right in front of you, as in life, and that can be harder for some people to swallow. Sometimes, audiences treat it as a challenge - "Convince me!" they smirk. "Convince me that you're really in that three-walled kitchen and feeling suicidal!"

The magic of live theatre is when the audience is utterly convinced that what they're witnessing is real, when they are duped into accepting the facts of the fiction before them because the talent and experience behind it is just too damn good. Achieving verisimilitude is a constant ambition for theatre makers, and director Tamara Harvey achieves it in spades in Theatr Clwyd's Uncle Vanya.

INTERVIEW: Actor Jamie Ballard on Uncle Vanya at Theatr Clwyd

In 2010, the Guardian's Susannah Clapp listed actor Jamie Ballard as one of her "ten best Hamlets", alongside high profile figures such as Henry Irving, John Gielgud, David Tennant and Mark Rylance. Jamie played the Prince of Denmark in Jonathan Miller's production at Bristol’s Tobacco Factory in 2008, but is now swapping tragedy for comedy as he's about to take on the title role in Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya for Theatr Clwyd in Mold.

But hold on. People don't generally associate the 19th century Russian playwright with laughs and giggles, do they?

"Chekhov thought of his plays as comedies," says Jamie. "It was only his creative relationship with Constantin Stanislavski [the Russian theatre practitioner who staged a pioneering version of Chekhov’s The Seagull in 1898] that made the perception of his work all heavy and serious."

PREVIEW: Llawn05 (Llandudno Arts Festival 2017)

Llawn is a free arts festival that celebrates and explores Llandudno through art, artefact, sound, comedy, performance and participation. This is its fifth successive year, and across the weekend visitors to the North Wales seaside resort can explore this work in unusual and surprising places, including baptist chapels, empty shops, shipping containers and even a set of Victorian bathing machines! Past Llawns have also featured work in the caves of the Great Orme, and on the roof of Venue Cymru!

So what has the arts festival weekend got up its sleeve for visitors this year? Curators Lisa Heledd Jones and John Rostron have lined up a plethora of stunning, inspiring and entertaining works. The fun kicks off on Friday, September 15th and continues throughout Saturday and Sunday too. Here's a guide to some of the best, most unusual and exciting exhibits and presentations to catch:

REVIEW: Out of Love (Theatr Clwyd, Mold)

What is it, that "fire between women", as playwright Elinor Cook calls it? Not even the main characters in this thoughtful play can admit to defining that special and particular relationship that women have. One might say that friendship is merely a ceasefire between women, but that's too harsh, too simple a definition. It's much more complex than that.

Cook's Out of Love examines the friendship between two women over the course of a couple of decades. They grow up together, as close friends, but inevitably drift apart as their adult lives begin to develop and divert. On the one hand we have the sensible yet sensitive Lorna, all thick blonde curls and brave faces, while on the other we have the more outgoing Grace, a bundle of energy and ideas lacking a driving focus. We see these two girls at different stages of their lives together, as children, as teenagers, and as grown adults, and the story is both tragic and heart-warming.

REVIEW: The B Word (King's Arms, Salford)

Dan is an ordinary kind of guy. He works as an airport baggage inspector. He cares as best he can for his mum, who suffers with Multiple Sclerosis. He loves doughnuts and hates mushrooms. He's a twentysomething everyman who we can all relate to. He's likeable and honest.

But Dan is also a "yes man", a pleaser, one of those people who's just too polite to say no or ask questions. He's typically English in that he'd rather smile and turn a blind eye than face confrontation. Which isn't the most ideal personality trait for an airport baggage inspector.

This performance is semi-immersive in that solo performer Ryan Gilmartin (as Dan) sits among the audience in what is supposed to be his staff room during a break. Dan has sandwiches to eat, and shares around bags of doughnuts (the chocolate custard doughnuts wisely remained unopened, but the jam ones went down very well in the performance I attended!). He talks to the audience as his confidantes, like fellow staff members on a lunch break, and over the course of 40 minutes or so he shares his thoughts on everything from the heroism in Star Wars to the depressing nature of current affairs.

REVIEW: Julius Caesar (Storyhouse, Chester)

The recent controversy surrounding last month's Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar in New York is the best example of why this 418-year-old play is still fiercely relevant today. In the American production, staged in Central Park, the setting was updated to modern day, and the character of Caesar was depicted as a suspiciously Donald Trump-like figure. And because it forms the backbone of Shakespeare's play, Caesar was duly assassinated, outraging some audience members who saw it as "political violence against the right".

It's impossible not to see the parallels between Shakespeare's 16th century political thriller and what's going on in the world in 2017. Caesar was a democratically elected but autocratic leader whose hubris and ambition bred discontent and, ultimately, rebellion within his ranks. Although we haven't seen much by way of betrayal among Trump's people so far, it's surely only a matter of time until the whispers of conspiracy begin and the knives are sharpened.

For Storyhouse's summer production of Julius Caesar, director Loveday Ingram has brought the setting right up to date too. This is a play for today, these times of political extremes and turmoil, despite its vintage. So out go the togas and amphitheatres and in come the sharp business suits and presidential lecterns. Modernising Julius Caesar may be the obvious thing to do (Robert Hastie did the same again with his recent Crucible Theatre production in Sheffield), but it gives the play fresh life, invigorating its message by telling it from a 21st century perspective. Christopher Wright's Caesar may not look like Donald Trump, but he's depicted very much in a presidential vein, complete with rally flags and banners of red, white and blue.

REVIEW: BoHo (Theatr Clwyd, Mold)

Working in the City is hard. It's stressful. Maybe it's not as hard as coal mining or fire-fighting, and not as stressful as policing or soldiering, but in context, city slickers have a tough time, not least because of the pressures they put on themselves to be successful. To beat their colleagues and to be the best, no matter how or what.

David Jones is just another cog in the giant wheel of this industry. He wears a sharp suit, maintains a healthy body, and is great in bed (or so he tells us). But what happens when the pressure to maintain this vision of perfection starts to get too much, and the veneer begins to crumble?

Although BoHo - a co-production between Theatr Clwyd and Hijinx - takes city slicker David as its central character, this "dystopian musical misadventure" is not strictly about bankers and financiers. David is an avatar for us all, for each and every one of us making our way through life in the best way we know how. David, for all his sharp-suited, pill-popping trappings, is an everyman who hurts and feels and struggles just like the rest of us.

INTERVIEW: Playwright Brad Birch on Black Mountain (Paines Plough, Theatr Clwyd)

A script is like a recipe – the playwright sets out the ingredients and their properties, but it takes a team of chefs to cook up the finished dish. That's how Brad Birch, whose latest play Black Mountain will receive its world premiere at Mold's Theatr Clwyd on July 11th, thinks about his various creations.

Brad's work is far more than a simple list of ingredients, however. As writer in residence with the Welsh new writing theatre company Undeb, as well as being attached to the Royal Shakespeare Company, Brad has enjoyed his fair share of successes, whether it's receiving the prestigious Harold Pinter Commission in 2016 to write a new play for the Royal Court, or winning a Scotsman Edinburgh Fringe First Award for his 2013 play Gardening: For the Unfulfilled and Alienated.

The Mid Wales-born writer penned his first piece, The Snow Queen, in 2008 for Mid Powys Youth Theatre, and has since seen his work produced by Cardiff's Sherman (Light Arrested Between the Curtain and the Glass, 2011), the Royal Court (Permafrost, 2011, and Where the Shot Rabbits Lay, 2012), Dirty Protest (Milton, 2013), the Royal Exchange (Tender Bolus, 2014) and the Orange Tree (The Brink, 2016), among others.

REVIEW: The Beggar's Opera at Storyhouse, Chester

When Chester's Gateway Theatre closed its doors for the very last time ten years ago, there was the expectation that it would be replaced by a performing arts centre called the Northgate Development. However, the Northgate plans were put on hold in 2008, and it wasn't until 2012 that Cheshire West and Chester Council revealed an ambitious vision to transform the city centre's derelict Odeon cinema into a replacement theatre and picture house combined. This vision widened still further the following year with the announcement that the old Odeon building would be renovated and extended to become a cultural arts hub for the entire city.

Last week saw Chester's decade in the cultural wilderness finally come to an end with the grand opening of Storyhouse, a £37 million arts centre which incorporates an 800-seat auditorium, a 100-seat cinema, plus the city library, a community performance and rehearsal space, a restaurant, two bars, and a children's storytelling space. To be blunt, Storyhouse is nothing short of magnificent.

REVIEW: The Trials of Oscar Wilde (Pontio, Bangor)

Who would have thought that a spelling mistake could lead to the ignominious and very public downfall of one of the greatest playwrights in British literary history? On February 18th, 1895, the Marquess of Queensberry left a card at the reception of the Albemarle Club for the attention of playwright Oscar Wilde. It simply read: "For Oscar Wilde, posing Somdomite". This card subsequently became Exhibit A in a libel case Wilde brought against Queensberry, but the truth was the Marquess knew exactly what he was doing in goading Wilde, who fell for his "booby trap".

The trial exposed more about Wilde's private life, proclivities and passions than he could ever have bargained for, and ultimately led to a counter-trial where the Crown prosecuted Wilde for gross indecency. The jury in this trial could not reach a verdict, but the retrial jury certainly did, and Wilde was sentenced to two years hard labour in prison. The sentence took its toll on Wilde both spiritually and physically, and three-and-a-half year later, he was dead, aged 46.

REVIEW: The Importance of Being Earnest (Theatr Clwyd, Mold)

The last production I saw of Oscar Wilde's 1895 classic The Importance of Being Earnest lived up to the common conception that the play is a rather fusty, stilted, mildly amusing drawing-room comedy, performed with stiff upper lips and an air of superiority to the audience.

Not so with Richard Fitch's blisteringly energetic new production at Theatr Clwyd, which takes Wilde's magnum opus, holds it up to the light, decides that it's actually perfectly good as it is, but places it back down on the stage with a youthful enthusiasm that its creator would've revelled in.

The hallmarks of the play are all still there: the period setting, the lavish 19th century costumes, the acerbic and witty dialogue, the thematic intent to scratch the veneer of Victorian society to see what lies beneath. Everything that somebody going to see The Importance of Being Earnest would expect to see is there, but Fitch has given the presentation a jolly good shake and as a result, gives the play a fresh lease of life.