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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

A Room With A View/Theatre Royal Brighton

A literary memory from my school is a discussion on novelists in which the head master termed E. M Forster a “weak writer”. There was much consternation over this but it discoloured my appreciation of him. I have made various attempts to read A Room With a View with little success and [...]

October 13, 2016 // 0 Comments

This House/ Chichester Festival Theatre

If you were an aspiring playwright your  play would be unlikely to be about the machinations of the Whips Offices of both parties in the Labour government of 1974-79. Yet this was precisely what James Graham wrote successfully  in This House. This was first dramatised at the National Theatre in [...]

October 6, 2016 // 0 Comments

The Dresser/ Theatre Royal

The Dresser by Sir Ronald Harwood is a play I know well and have seen many times. The playwright, who was the dresser of Sir Donald Wolfit, in a programme note refutes the suggestion that the central character ‘Sir’ was modelled upon the celebrated actor manager. However it is [...]

September 23, 2016 // 0 Comments

Relatively Speaking

I have written before that critics do not take Alan Ayckbourn as seriously as they should as he is viewed as commercial and popular. Having suffered through Pinter’s No Man’s Land at this very theatre I found two hours of cleverly constructed farce a great source of entertainment and [...]

September 10, 2016 // 0 Comments

Aladdin

Yesterday I went to see Aladdin the musical. It was a slick production as you might expect from Disney which bore little relation to the pantomime version. For a start it was set not in China but in Aqaba and the flavour was Arabian rather than Oriental. The costumes and sets were stunning and [...]

September 4, 2016 // 0 Comments

Half a Sixpence

Having suffered through No Man’s Land it was an unadulterated pleasure to visit  the Chichester Festival Theatre for Half A Sixpence. I remember the impact that musical and film with Tommy Steele had on me for the perception of the cruelty of the upper class provincial snob. The story as [...]

August 26, 2016 // 0 Comments

No Mans Land

There is a considerable body of theatrical opinion that holds that Harold Pinter is Britain’s greatest living playwright and another less vocal one that cannot fathom his works. I belong to the second school. Last night I saw No Man’s Land at the Theatre Royal  Brighton. I was more [...]

August 23, 2016 // 0 Comments

First Light/ Minerva Theatre

In reviewing this play by Mark Hayhurst who had a great success both at Chichester and the West End with Taken at  Midnight I will defer to co-Ruster Henry Elkins on the military aspects. In brief, it tells the story of two deserters from the Manchester pals Regiment – Bert Ingham and [...]

June 30, 2016 // 0 Comments

Ross/Chichester Festival Theatre

Ross/T.E.Lawrence was a complex man and unravelling him is no easy matter. Much of his achievements and sufferings are gleaned from his own work Seven Pillars of Wisdom and therefore uncorroborated. Then we have our own perception of Lawrence of Arabia based on the David Lean film and Peter [...]

June 8, 2016 // 0 Comments

The Threepenny Opera

The Threepenny Opera is itself an adaptation of John Gay’s The Beggars Opera and Rufus Norris, director of this and the National Theatre has again adapted this to the modern world, less by locale as it’s still in the East End, more by values as the cast has many black actors and a [...]

June 4, 2016 // 0 Comments

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