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Articles by Tim Holford-Smith

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About Tim Holford-Smith

Despite running his architectural practice full-time, Tim is a frequent theatre-goer and occasional am-dram producer. More Posts

Me and My Girl/Chichester

I did not expect my guest – the actress who starred in the London production alongside Robert Lindsay and then Enn Reitel – to like this Me and My Girl but I thought I might. I did not. The story resembles Pygmalion. A cheeky working class South Londoner (Bill Snibson) is located and [...]

August 14, 2018 // 0 Comments

Saul/Glyndebourne

Producing Handel’s oratorio Saul sets challenges but offers opportunities too. Like most oratorios, biblical music composed for rendition in a church or chapel, there was initially nothing more than the music so any director has total licence. There is no composer or operatic tradition on his/her [...]

August 4, 2018 // 0 Comments

Weimar Cabaret /The Barbican Theatre

In my last post I reviewed a nonogenerian still going strong (Burt Bacharach) and now an octogenarian Barry Humphries, still performing with aplomb. Born in Melbourne in 1934, law and philosophy graduate Humphries is something of a renaissance man. He starred in Oliver! as Fagin in the sixties but [...]

July 27, 2018 // 0 Comments

Der Rosenkavalier /Glyndebourne

Daffers recenty reviewed her Orient Express trip in terms of an experience and I would apply the same description to Glyndebourne. It’s expensive, it’s well run, to have a picnic by the lake on a summer’s day is wondrous, but I don’t know if it’s for the real Opera buff. Added to this the [...]

June 3, 2018 // 0 Comments

Present Laughter /Chichester Festival Theatre

Directing a lesser-known Noel Coward play sets a challenge: do you make it a period piece or do you find some way to make it more contemporary? Director Sean Foley took the latter route and it did not really work. Perhaps he had at the front of his mind the success of James Corden in A Servant of [...]

May 8, 2018 // 0 Comments

Quiz/ Chichester Festival Theatre

James Graham is definitely the playwright flavour of the month. To the two hits he has written playing in the West End This House and Ink he can add Quiz which is transferring there from Chichester in 2018. I saw it last night and found it an unsatisfying theatre experience. The play is based [...]

December 2, 2017 // 0 Comments

How the Other Half Loves/Alan Ayckbourn

Alan Ayckbourn’s play made its debut on the 31st July 1969 at the Library Theatre Scarborough but after that had a troubled time. At Scarborough the actor playing  Frank Foster, Jeremy  Franklin, slipped a disc and Ayckbourn had to take over the role,reading his lines from  a book which [...]

November 24, 2017 // 0 Comments

Table Manners/ Chichester Festival Theatre

Alan Ayckbourn is the supreme and sublime observer of middle class life which might explain his enduring appeal as the only seat to be had in the auditorium was next to me as I quite forgot I purchased  two sometime ago. Table Manners is part of the Norman Conquest trilogy though oddly you  can [...]

October 13, 2017 // 0 Comments

Clemenza di Tito & Don Pasquale/ Glyndebourne Festival

The Glyndebourne Festival ends this Sunday. I have seen four productions but the two I have not reviewed which I saw this week were Clemenza di Tito and Don Pasquale. Clemenza di Tito is the last opera Mozart wrote on the occasion of the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor. It’s not one of [...]

August 24, 2017 // 0 Comments

La Traviata

The role of Violetta the tart with a heart in La Traviata is one of the most demanding in opera. She is on stage virtually the whole opera first as a good time girl, then as a the responsible lover of Alfredo – but initially deemed not worthy enough by his family – and finally the [...]

August 19, 2017 // 0 Comments

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