News, reviews, features and podcast on theatre across the UK
The British Theatre Guide Newsletter
No 1233: 12 October 2025
Editorial
We’re around three weeks into autumn, and it’s certainly starting to look like it round here, as the trees are turning brown and dropping their leaves and it’s turning colder and darker, especially in the evenings when it’s time to catch a bus to the theatre.
But the autumn seasons are now up and running in many theatres, as you can see from our list of new reviews below. The one I saw this week was a perfect Hallowe’en chiller, although, unfortunately, it closes before the 31st.
In last week’s newsletter, I was writing about theatre education; this week, we have a news item about a new MA degree course in Black British Dance and Performance being offered by Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage, based in Leicester. But we also heard the Leader of the Opposition here in Manchester say that if she became Prime Minister, she would abolish ‘poor quality’ degree courses in order to fund more apprenticeships.
What would constitute a ‘poor quality’ course? Well, she wasn’t specific, but she did claim that “nearly one in three graduates see no economic return”, suggesting that ‘quality’ refers to a return on investment, or whether the course results in employment with a salary that justifies its cost. There are plenty of arguments I could level against this purely transactional view of education that ignores any social or developmental benefits of going to university, but this may also include degrees for subjects in industries that have below-average salaries but make a significant contribution to the economy, such as the arts.
Also on the economic front, Philip Fisher has looked back on the Monsterist movement in theatre, which was born just 20 years ago and campaigned for the ability to stage large-scale, large-cast plays that address big, important issues. Squeezes on funding combined with increased costs and the continuing hangover of the COVID lockdowns have made this even more difficult when even the RSC is cutting jobs and the West End is seeing more small cast shows, even for musicals.
Regionally, we are getting some larger-cast plays, but generally only for co-productions that can pool the resources of a few theatres who will each find a spot in their programme that would, only a few years ago, have been occupied by a production from its in-house team tailored to its specific audience.
You may think that this year’s Edinburgh festivals were done with, but we still had an ongoing issue affecting BTG directly that has only just been resolved. Keith Mckenna has written about how some writers and publications are frightened of writing about some issues or even reviewing productions that deal with them, and some venues are reluctant to take on some productions in case they have to deal with protests or attacks.
Keith’s largely positive review of a play at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe attracted allegations of anti-semitism from the writer-performer in which we saw no merit, but the press office of Summerhall supported them. However, they didn’t tell us until this year that our reviewer had been put on a ‘blacklist’ that didn’t ban him from the venue but deprived him of the services of the press office.
Summerhall has now withdrawn all allegations of anti-semitism and apologised for its handling of the matter, but only after a distressing time for Keith and us that marred an otherwise successful festival season for BTG.
As mentioned last week, Ticketmaster has a lot of offers on West End theatre tickets until 19 October. If you buy tickets from one of the links to them here or on our web site, we will receive a small fee at no extra cost to you.
Tom Wells’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The BFG will visit Singapore’s Esplanade—Theatres on the Bay after its UK première in Stratford and a run in Chichester.
Tom Wells’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The BFG will visit Singapore’s Esplanade—Theatres on the Bay after its UK première in Stratford and a run in Chichester.
Tom Wells’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The BFG will visit Singapore’s Esplanade—Theatres on the Bay after its UK première in Stratford and a run in Chichester.
Tom Wells’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The BFG will visit Singapore’s Esplanade—Theatres on the Bay after its UK première in Stratford and a run in Chichester.
FRIENDS! The Musical Parody Mark Goucher, Matthew Gale, and Oskar Eiriksson In association with The Barn Theatre Cirencester at Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham
The Great Gatsby Derby Theatre and Pitlochry Festival Theatre at Derby Theatre
Black is the Color of my Voice (James Seabright) - The Crucible / Lyceum Theatre / Tanya Moiseiwitsch Playhouse, Sheffield,
iD Reloaded (Cirque Éloize) - New Theatre, Hull, –
Gwenda's Garage (Out of the Archive Theatre in association with Sheffield Theatres) - The Crucible / Lyceum Theatre / Tanya Moiseiwitsch Playhouse, Sheffield, –
