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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

Fiddler on the Roof/ Chichester Festival Theatre

I’m old enough to recall the sixties version of Fiddler on the Roof starring Topol and Miriam Karlin. It was a wonderful production reflecting how musicals have moved on from Broadway musical comedies to shows with more stirring stories. A musical about a life in an orthodox Jewish community [...]

July 22, 2017 // 0 Comments

42nd Street

I have written before how a traditional musical has been bowdlerised by changes of plot, location or story. 42nd Street did not fall into this trap. You could have seen this production when the film was released in 1933. And why change anything? The musical has three songs which are still well [...]

July 15, 2017 // 0 Comments

Ariadne auf Naxos / Glyndebourne

This innovative production with significant changes of location and period from the original Richard Strauss Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s comedy does not entirely work but fine singing, stage sets and orchestration saved it from disaster. In brief, the first story is a troupe of Commedia del arte [...]

June 29, 2017 // 0 Comments

The Lion King/ Lyceum Theatre

Last night Bob Tickler organised a trip to The Lion King to celebrate the birthday of his Godson. A long term musical branded by Disney is not really my bag but one should go with an open mind. This was helped by a pre theatre meal at Joe Allen’s. This has been going even longer than any [...]

June 10, 2017 // 0 Comments

An American in Paris/Dominion Theatre

There are those high brow theatregoers who often say “I don’t like musicals’, sneering at their perceived lower form of cultural life but not me. Apart from anything else, it demands extraordinary skills from the cast in terms of acting, dancing, singing and energy. At its best [...]

May 24, 2017 // 0 Comments

Forty Years On

I saw the original production of Forty Years On at the Apollo Theatre in 1968 and Alan Bennett’s play made a deep impression on me. It had a strong cast featuring John Gielgud as the headmaster, Paul Eddington as his liberal successor, Alan Bennett as the schoolteacher Tempest and amongst the [...]

May 12, 2017 // 0 Comments

The Boys In the Band

I can remember when  the film The Boys In The Band was released in 1970 after the play had a successful run of 1000 performances in New York. My father liked it as an interesting depiction of diverse gays – my parents were always tolerant of homosexuals which was unusual for middle class [...]

November 11, 2016 // 0 Comments

A Tale of Two Cities/ Theatre Royal Brighton

This season the Theatre Royal have dramatised 4 well known novels: Breakfast at Tiffany’s, A Room With a View,  A Tale of Two Cities and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It’s a challenge to set one art genre, the literary one, on another (the theatrical), but in this superb production [...]

November 2, 2016 // 0 Comments

Breakfast at Tiffany’s/ Theatre Royal

To dramatise on stage a much loved enduring film is an ambitious task and in this case a failed one. My theatre companion a schoolteacher but capable theatre director put his finger on it with his words after curtain call “There is big hole in the centre”.  The leading role was played [...]

October 28, 2016 // 0 Comments

Shakespeare news

‘As any fule no’ [the classic Molesworth quote – from the legendary spoof books first written in 1953 by Geoffrey Willans, illustrated by Ronald Searle] 23rd April this year was widely marked as the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death. While some may seek to argue as to whether [...]

October 23, 2016 // 0 Comments

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