John Groves

Jan 12, 2025 | londontheatre1.com | John Groves

The French novelist and playwright Jean Genet (1910-86) had a colourful life! Born of a prostitute, spending much of his early life in prison for vagrancy and minor crime, then meeting and being influenced by Cocteau, who got his first novel published, as well as by Jean Paul Sartre, Picasso and Samuel Beckett, he eventually almost became part of the French “establishment”, even getting the Comedie Francaise to stage his work.

Jan 10, 2025 | londontheatre1.com | John Groves

Belly of the Beast is Saana Sze’s first full-length (90 minute) play. It won the Finborough Theatre’s ETPEP award for new plays by emerging writers in 2022, and is a powerful, well-researched piece of theatre. It is written for two actors who play the same role: YoungMartha (Sam Bampoe-Parry) and NowMartha (Shiloh Coke).

Dec 11, 2024 | londontheatre1.com | John Groves

The Legends of Them is a seventy-five-minute one-person play by ‘Sutara Gayle aka Lorna Gee’, co-created by director Jo McInnes and dramaturg Nina Lyndon, plus composer Christella Litras, who has produced some attractive songs that enhance this piece of theatre. Lorna N Gayle, known professionally as Sutara Gayle and as “lovers rock” reggae singer Lorna Gee, was born in 1963, much later training at Webber Douglas and starting her acting career around 2006.

Dec 8, 2024 | lastminutetheatretickets.com | John Groves

Based on Irving Berlin’s 1954 movie musical, White Christmas is a feel-good, sentimental show that makes for ideal Yule Tide entertainment, especially after one of The Mill at Sonning’s delicious two-course Christmas meals (much more than turkey!), included in the ticket price.

Dec 6, 2024 | londontheatre1.com | John Groves

Joan Crawford had been left almost penniless by the death of her fourth husband, Pepsi Cola boss Alfred Steele, when in 1961 she came across a screenplay about a former A-list Hollywood star, Blanche Hudson, elderly and disabled, who lives in fear of her psychotic sister Jane, in what was to become the highly successful psychological thriller “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”.