News, reviews, features and podcast on theatre across the UK
The British Theatre Guide Newsletter
No 1252: 22 February 2026
Editorial
I mentioned last week that the Critics’ Circle Awards this year were officially restricted to productions seen in London during the qualifying period, as opposed to just happening to turn out that way. The exception to this is the Empty Space… Peter Brook Award, which “recognises a theatre that embodies the spirit of Peter Brook, both in its use of space and in relationship to its locality”.
The award has had “(In Memory of Blanche Marvin)” added to its name this time as a tribute to its founder, who died last month just before her 101st birthday, as Philip Fisher wrote in his tribute to her at the time. Out of the five nominees this year, two of them are not in London; one isn’t far north of Watford, over in Ipswich, but the other is all the way up in Scotland.
For his latest feature, Philip has considered this week’s announcement from the RSC that it is to stage a Game Of Thrones prequel, scripted by Duncan Macmillan and directed by Dominic Cooke. I’m sure there will be people who are rolling their eyes at the announcement and throwing accusations of ‘dumbing down’ at one of our leading cultural organisations, but it should certainly draw some attention even from the non-theatre media and may attract fans of the stories who aren’t usually theatregoers, which can’t be a bad thing.
I’m one of the few people who has never seen or read any of the Game of Thrones stories, so I can’t really offer an opinion on whether it could work on stage.
I just looked back at our recent reviews, and, just this month, we have reviewed plays, musicals and operas based on stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Stephen King, Hans Christian Andersen, W Somerset Maugham, Roald Dahl, Rick Riordan, Agatha Christie and H G Wells, as well as Dostoyevsky, Goethe and Orwell, so popular fiction can work as well on stage as the ‘classics’, and there is a market for it.
The RSC has had its own page-to-stage successes, from the Matilda musical adapted by Dennis Kelly and Tim Minchin that is still touring and, presumably, bringing money into the organisation right back to the famous eight-hour version of Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby by David Edgar in the ‘80s (I was in an amateur production of this forty years ago), not to mention, of course, Boublil and Schoenberg’s adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. However, adaptations don’t always work out well and can be as much of an artistic risk as an original work, even if a familiar title gives them a bit of an edge at the box office.
I know we haven’t released a podcast episode for a while—I seem to have had a few people recently offer me interviews then stop responding after I’ve accepted—but we do have one or two in the diary, at least one of which is with a well-known veteran of stage and screen. We do, however, have a back-catalogue of 314 episodes on all areas of theatre; while many of them may have been related to a particular production, festival or announcement, we always try to go beyond that into more general areas that will still be interesting and relevant in the future, so do have a look through them if you get chance.
But that is it from me for February—while it feels to me like the year has barely begun, our next newsletter will be on 1 March.
Workshop performances of a contemporary musical set in the music industry about “viral fame, fakery, and identity” are to be held at Birmingham Hippodrome.
Workshop performances of a contemporary musical set in the music industry about “viral fame, fakery, and identity” are to be held at Birmingham Hippodrome.
The Battle Birmingham Rep, Melting Pot and Gavin Kalin at Birmingham Rep
Deep Azure Shakespeare's Globe at Shakespeare's Globe / Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
The Red Shoes New Adventures at New Victoria Theatre, Woking
I Do Dante or Die at Malmaison Piccadilly, Manchester
The boy who harnessed the wind Royal Shakespeare Company in association with Kenny Wax Ltd and Chuchu Nwagu Productions at Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Sherlock Holmes and the Hunt for Moriarty (Blackeyed Theatre In association with Theatre Royal Winchester and South Hill Park) - Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, –
Tina – The Tina Turner Musical (Stage Entertainment, Joop van den Ende and Tali Pelman, in association with Tina Turner) - Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, –
Northern Ireland
To Kill a Mockingbird (Jonathan Church Theatre Productions) - Grand Opera House, Belfast, –
Consumed (Sheffield Theatres, Paines Plough, Women’s Prize for Playwrighting and Belgrade Theatre) - Lyric Theatre, Belfast, –
Animal Farm (Tinderbox Theatre Company) - The MAC Belfast, Belfast, –
The Human Voice (Prime Cut Productions) - Lyric Theatre, Belfast, –
