'Mrs Warren's Profession' by George Bernard Shaw

29 October 2025

This year we’ve made two visits to Shaw's Corner - the house where George Bernard Shaw lived in Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire - at Easter and on the weekend of the playwright's birthday in July when we saw an open-air production of his play 'Arms and the Man' (reviewed here in August 2025. This Monday we were at the Odeon in Milton Keynes to see a NT Live recording of Dominic Cooke’s new production of ‘Mrs Warren’s Profession’ at the National Theatre in London. Shaw wrote more than 60 plays and only a handful are still regularly performed but ‘Mrs Warren’s Profession’ has struggled for performances since it was written in 1893 - not receiving its first public performance in England until 1925. This is because of its subject matter which explores the links between sex and society. The new National Theatre production stars Imelda Staunton as Mrs Warren and her real-life daughter Bessie Carter as Mrs Warren’s daughter Vivie. It’s a fascinating play. Initially the relationships between the characters feel confusingly odd, with the suggestion of something going on beneath the surface of the dialogue reminding me of the style of much more recent plays by Sam Shepard, Caryl Churchill and Edward Albee. But as the reasons for their behaviour towards each other becomes clearer it turns into a compelling series of arguments about morality, exploitation, and women’s rights which genuinely manages to make strong cases for opposing points of view. Imelda Staunton was wonderful but this was Bessie Carter’s play and she was brilliant. Our only disappointment was that this play that struggled for performances for so long hadn’t reached a larger audience: we were the only two people in the Odeon to see it.

'Born With Teeth' by Liz Duffy Adams

24 October 2025

In 2016 the Guardian reported new evidence, based on computational analysis, that Christopher Marlowe collaborated with William Shakespeare on parts of the Henry VI trilogy of plays - a collaboration subsequently endorsed by the New Oxford Shakespeare imprint of Oxford University Press which now also credits Marlowe. Liz Duffy Adams’ new play ‘Born With Teeth’, which we saw at Wyndham’s Theatre in London on Saturday, imagines Shakespeare and Marlowe working together on the Henry VI plays. It’s an entertaining and intriguing two-hander which, in this Royal Shakespeare Company production, directed by Daniel Evans, provides a star vehicle for two very successful TV actors, Ncuti Gatwa (as Kit Marlowe) and Edward Bluemel (as Shakespeare). Both actors entirely justify their casting with impressive stage performances, showing (across three short acts) the shift in power in the relationship between the two playwrights. The script is clever, witty and often very funny - using contemporary English in a period setting to make the interactions between the two writers believable and relevant. But, even at just 90 minutes without an interval, the play feels too long for its material. It’s an interesting thought-experiment which might have made a really strong 60 minute fringe play but doesn’t have enough content to sustain itself but is worth seeing for the performances by Gatwa and Bluemel. And it helped with my ongoing game of Doctor Who bingo: Ncuti Gatwa is the fifth Doctor I have seen on stage (following Peter Davison, David Tennant, Christopher Eccleston and Jodie Whittaker, since you ask!). 

'Clown Town' by Mick Herron

24 October 2025

It was wonderful to return to the world of Jackson Lamb and the Slow Horses in Mick Herron’s new spy novel in the Slough House series, ‘Clown Town’, which I have just finished reading as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Sean Barrett. The previous book, ‘Bad Actors’ (reviewed here in June 2024) felt like the climax of the series, so I was intrigued to see where ‘Clown Town’ would take us. As usual the book starts with a confusing violent opening scene involving unfamiliar characters. This is followed by a perambulation around the offices of Slough House - MI5's dumping ground for disgraced operatives - to slowly reintroduce us to each member of the team. After several chapters of what seems like entertaining but trivial sub-plots you begin to wonder when the main story is going to start, only to realise that the collision between those sub-plots is going to be the main story. Mick Herron frequently plays with the reader - keeping us hanging on for ages towards the end of the book before finally revealing who died in the big set-piece confrontation. But he also manages to create a cast of hopeless, helpless losers who are surprisingly likeable and sympathetic. 

Bologna

17 October 2025

We had a wonderful holiday in Bologna - the culinary capital of Italy and the location of the oldest university in the Western world, founded in 1088. It is a beautiful and very distinctive city, with most of the buildings conforming to a colour palette of warm tones of yellow, red and orange, and miles and miles of porticoes (wide arched covered pedestrian walkways) - more than any other city in the world. If you are visiting Bologna I would recommend reading John Grisham's 2005 novel 'The Broker' while you are there. It's a gripping thriller and its descriptions of Bologna - and the experience of learning to speak Italian - were the perfect companion to our holiday. We were lucky to see a Bologna Festival concert by the MDI String Quartet in the magnificent Oratorio di San Filippo Neri - one of the grandest places I have ever seen a classical concert. We had day trips, by train, to Milan, Ravenna and Venice. Milan was nicer than we were expecting with some stunning buildings, particularly the Castello Sforzesco. The town of Ravenna was a little less picturesque than we had imagined but its famous Byzantine mosaics were amazing. And it was wonderful to return to Venice, 24 years after our previous visit, and to manage to find the little hotel where we had stayed all those years ago. You can see a selection of my holiday photos at: https://culturaloutlook.blogspot.com/search/label/Bologna2025 

'Top Hat' by Irving Berlin

1 October 2025

Last Friday we were at Milton Keynes Theatre to see the Chichester Festival Theatre production of Irving Berlin's 'Top Hat'. The show is based on the 1935 film starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, adapted for the stage in 2011 by Matthew White and Howard Jacques, and is directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall (who was also responsible for the glorious Barbican production of 'Anything Goes' by Cole Porter, reviewed here in September 2021). It's a feast of Irving Berlin songs, including 'Puttin' On the Ritz', 'Let's Face the Music and Dance' and 'Cheek To Cheek' as well as 'Top Hat, White Tie and Tails'. There is nothing more joyous than an old-fashioned tap-dance musical and the big dance numbers are brilliantly performed by a large cast, squeezed onto a relatively small stage. Phillip Attmore (as Jerry Travers) is a stunning dancer - incredible in the fast tap numbers but equally graceful in the ballroom dances. The prototype romcom plot is typically slight and forgettable, and the book is desperately in need of a modern rewrite, but you can just wallow in the beautiful costumes, stylish set (by Peter McKintosh) and an amazing display of dancing.