News, reviews, features and podcast on theatre across the UK
The British Theatre Guide Newsletter
No 1237: 9 November 2025
Editorial
Philip Fisher poses an interesting question in his feature this week which almost echoes a hit by The Clash: if a theatre production isn’t working for you, should you stay or should you go?
If you really can’t get into a book you are reading, you can just close it and try another. If you get bored with something on TV, you can switch to something else or even turn it off. Unless you make a discreet exit during the interval, leaving a theatre production before the end is a public statement witnessed by the rest of the audience, the theatre’s staff and probably the actors.
As reviewers, we have a duty to stay till the end, as we should judge the production as a whole, even if we don’t like where it seems to be going, but I’ve never walked out even when I’ve paid for a ticket, although I have watched shows, particularly on the Edinburgh Fringe, where the auditorium had been slowly emptying as the play progressed.
But generally, walk-outs from audiences are quite rare, as while we are there to judge, audiences have made potentially a substantial investment in tickets, programmes and perhaps drinks, snacks and souvenirs and don’t like to feel they have wasted their money, plus this could be a rare and exciting night out whatever they are seeing, so they may be more disposed to feel positive about it and stick it out till the end.
This week’s podcast episode features a company whose name seems to point towards a bad theatre experience, but Sh!t Theatre has been around now for 15 years, and when I last saw them in Manchester, their whole run was sold out in advance. That was about their visit to Dollywood in America, plus an unscheduled visit to a forensic body farm, and it was great fun.
The duo—actually Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole—will be spending this Christmas season at London’s Southbank Centre with a new show, Evita Too, which isn’t quite a sequel to the Rice and Lloyd Webber musical recently revived at the London Palladium but is, in fact, about Juan Perón’s third wife, Isabel. This remarkable woman was a former gogo dancer who married Argentina’s President, whose dead second wife, Eva, was on display in their dining room, and became President herself for a short while—and is, in fact, still alive and living in Spain.
It’s a fascinating and unbelievable true story, told with great enthusiasm in the episode, and they certainly sold me on their show—so I’m hoping it will one day come here to Manchester. We also spoke about the company’s work and creative process, and I asked if their name had ever been an issue that caused them regrets—I was thinking at the time about how I was to title it without getting barred by Apple Podcasts—plus they talked about a future show they’ve already started working on, which I found quite intriguing.
This coming week, I’ll be working on a youth theatre show—although I had a hand in the writing of the script and lyrics, I haven’t seen any rehearsals yet (as I write this in advance on Saturday, but will have been at an all-day rehearsal by it goes out on Sunday) and am really just a techie for the week—so may not get things up quite as quickly as usual, but we will still have all the usual reviews and news from the world of British theatre. All will be back to normal next Sunday when we’ve cleared everything away and handed the keys back to the venue. Theatre is such an ephemeral medium.
Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre and China Plate's new partnership will involve the Birmingham-based company supporting the Belgrade to deliver productions.
Into the Hairy (S-E-D // Sharon Eyal) - Sadler's Wells / Lilian Baylis Studio, London, –
A Midsummer Night's Dream (Headlong and Shakespeare’s Globe, with Bristol Old Vic and Leeds Playhouse) - Shakespeare's Globe / Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London, –
End (National Theatre) - National Theatre, London, –
Hamlet (Sh!t-faced Shakespeare) - Lincoln Performing Arts Centre / The Engine Shed, Lincoln,
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Elliott & Harper Productions and Catherine Schreiber, based on the original Leeds Playhouse production) - Sunderland Empire, Sunderland, –
Dear England (National Theatre) - Theatre Royal, Newcastle upon Tyne, –
Big Ange (Eastlake Productions & Live Theatre in association with Newcastle Theatre Royal) - Live Theatre, Newcastle upon Tyne, –
Yorkshire
Hamlet (Sh!t-faced Shakespeare) - Old Woollen, Leeds,
Death of an Influencer (A Play, A Pie and A Pint with Aberdeen Performing Arts) - The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, –
Tina – The Tina Turner Musical (Stage Entertainment, Joop van den Ende and Tali Pelman, in association with Tina Turner) - Edinburgh Playhouse, Edinburgh, –
FRIENDS! The Musical Parody (Mark Goucher, Matthew Gale and Oskar Eiriksson in association with The Barn Theatre Cirencester) - King's Theatre, Glasgow, –
