CANDIDE by Blackheath Halls Opera
Singing an exacting aria is a tough ask on its own but to do it while clowning is surely near-impossible. Yet that is the challenge...
Miles Hedley
- 6 days ago
- 2 min
VOICES FROM WINDRUSH at Greenwich Theatre
Controversy tends to provoke increasingly extreme reactions. But as Voices From Windrush at Greenwich Theatre showed, a more measured...
164 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Sep 25
- 2 min
THE GRETCHEN QUESTION at The Shipwright, Deptford
The Gretchen Question couldn’t have a more serious theme – the catastrophe facing our planet due to manmade climate change. But rather...
100 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Sep 22
- 2 min
ASTRONOMY PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR at the National Maritime Museum
One hundred images make up the final selection of the annual Astronomy Photographer Of The Year award - and all of them are currently on...
101 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Sep 13
- 5 min
GREENWICH+DOCKLANDS INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL across east and south-east London
The theme of this year’s Greenwich + Docklands International Festival was Common Ground, a concept given the greatest possible poignancy...
145 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Aug 12
- 3 min
CHANGELING THEATRE at Severndroog Castle
For a masterclass in the actor’s art, Changeling Theatre’s two-night, two-play sojourn in the grounds of Severndroog Castle was the real...
172 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Aug 8
- 2 min
GFMA COMMONWEALTH FESTIVAL at Charlton Park
As a nation we love a good party – just look at the thousands of public and private beanos to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. So a...
143 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Aug 5
- 2 min
ALLY IN WONDERLAND at Lesnes Abbey
Everything about Ruined Theatre’s Ally In Wonderland is not only entertaining but also really clever because it works on so many levels....
153 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Aug 3
- 2 min
END-OF-YEAR DANCE SHOWS at Trinity Laban
The tropical heat outside may have been close to unbearable but inside the wonderfully air-conditioned Laban building the only heat was...
68 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Jul 28
- 2 min
AN INTERVENTION at Greenwich Theatre
Two fine performances are at the heart of Mike Bartlett’s An Intervention at Greenwich Theatre – and they needed to be good because the...
144 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Jul 14
- 2 min
STROZZI! at Blackheath Halls
Barbara Strozzi is one of those composers who isn’t known nearly well enough, primarily because society has such a shocking history of...
143 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Jun 27
- 2 min
SUN+SEA at The Albany
Sun & Sea, a multiple award-winning opera that is being given its UK premiere by The Albany, is like nothing else you’ll ever see, an...
119 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- May 13
- 2 min
THE BURNT CITY at One Cartridge Place, Woolwich
If you want to know why Punchdrunk leads the world in making theatre that is epic, immersive and immaculate, look no further than the...
304 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- May 11
- 2 min
DREAMACHINE at Woolwich Public Market
It’s almost impossible to describe the extraordinary immersive experience that is Dreamachine, now on at Woolwich Public Market, without...
363 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Mar 31
- 2 min
CANALETTO’S VENICE REVISITED at the National Maritime Museum
Canaletto’s paintings of Venice are among the most famous and instantly recognisable images in all art. So how do you present them in a...
227 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Mar 21
- 1 min
A CHANGE OF SEASON at the National Maritime Museum
What a stunning idea to create a concert programme teaming Vivaldi’s joyful Four Seasons with Melting Shifting Liquid World, Hollie...
141 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Mar 19
- 1 min
YOU HEARD ME at The Albany
On a Tuesday afternoon in February 2019 Luca Rutherford went for a run before she was due to do a show in Hull. It was part of her...
68 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Feb 28
- 3 min
COLAB 2022 at St Alfege’s, Old Royal Naval College and Blackheath Halls
One of the most beguiling aspects of CoLab, the annual festival of musical exploration driven and performed by Trinity Laban students, is...
125 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Feb 11
- 2 min
TRINITY LABAN BA3 DANCE SHOWS at Laban
Dance is a great medium for tackling themes of any magnitude. For example, the range explored in New Choreography Now, a mixed bill...
115 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Feb 2
- 2 min
JARMAN at Greenwich Theatre
Visionary film-maker Derek Jarman became the ultimate icon of iconoclasm before his life was cruelly cut short by AIDS. Yet he packed...
129 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Jan 19
- 2 min
EACH ONE CANCELS THE LAST (HECTOR) at Blackheath Halls
We live in a world where knowledge is power, where we know so much. But we should never underestimate the power of the mysterious, for it...
143 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Jan 12
- 2 min
ALARMS & EXCURSIONS at Greenwich Theatre
It was a brave choice for Greenwich Theatre to take on Alarms & Excursions, Michael Frayn’s comedy about our ever-growing reliance on...
336 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Dec 5, 2021
- 2 min
THE LITTLE PRINCE at Woolwich Works
Luca Silvestrini pulled out all the stops when he decided to adapt The Little Prince for his company Protein Dance by turning what was...
133 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Dec 5, 2021
- 2 min
A CHRISTMAS CAROL at the Old Royal Naval College
We all know A Christmas Carol – indeed, most people are likely to have enjoyed dozens of versions of Charles Dickens’ matchless tale of...
147 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Nov 25, 2021
- 2 min
THE QUEEN OF HEARTS at Greenwich Theatre
A real test of how good a panto is to try it out at 10 o’clock on a freezing November morning more than a month before Christmas in front...
274 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Nov 14, 2021
- 4 min
LONDON INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF EARLY MUSIC at Blackheath Halls and St Michael & All Angels
The odds on this year’s London International Festival Of Early Music returning to Blackheath as a live event must have seemed at times...
183 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Nov 3, 2021
- 2 min
DONUTS at The Albany
As we walked into the auditorium at the Albany to see the new dance work Donuts, three young women on stage were scrunched up together on...
148 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Oct 31, 2021
- 2 min
SAINTS & SINNERS at Mycenae House
Music from the Cross to the crossroads, promised guitarist Ben Tyzack as Saints & Sinners took to the stage at Mycenae House. And he...
121 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Oct 31, 2021
- 2 min
ROD KITSON: BLUE LOTUS at the Art of Isolation gallery
Symbols have always mesmerised our species. One of the world’s oldest artworks is an ivory lion-man carved 40,000 years ago, millions of...
137 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Oct 29, 2021
- 2 min
TRINITY LABAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA at Blackheath Halls
Any concert by Trinity Laban Symphony Orchestra will always be memorable for the awesome musicianship of its young members. If it’s then...
76 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Oct 21, 2021
- 2 min
THE DIGITAL HOME via The Albany
Theatre matters. The world may be reeling under an apparently unceasing rain of disasters and setbacks – global warming, the Covid...
158 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Oct 6, 2021
- 2 min
UNKNOWN at Greenwich Theatre
How does a writer create a fury-driven polemic without seeming to batter an audience into submission? The line that separates engagement...
151 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Sep 29, 2021
- 2 min
VENUS AND ADONIS at Blackheath Halls
John Blow’s 17th century work Venus And Adonis, reputedly the first English opera, contains music that is never less than blissful - but...
637 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Sep 28, 2021
- 0 min
TIGER LADY at Greenwich Theatre
As we arrived at Greenwich Theatre to see Tiger Lady we were greeted by the cast wandering around the auditorium offering shots,...
187 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Sep 26, 2021
- 0 min
NEW REGENCY ORCHESTRA at Woolwich Works
It was appropriate that the Fireworks Factory stage should be the setting for the New Regency Orchestra to play the first public gig at...
153 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Sep 13, 2021
- 4 min
GREENWICH & DOCKLANDS INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL 2021
The true psychological cost of lockdown may not be known for years. But we do know it’ll be high and we’ll need all the help we can get...
148 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Aug 3, 2021
- 2 min
EN ROUTE in Woolwich
Protein Dance’s latest creation, En Route, is a dazzling investigation into the possibilities of live performance. Its essence is, as...
140 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Jul 14, 2021
- 2 min
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM at Severndroog Castle
If you like your Shakespeare accessible, it’s hard to beat A Midsummer Night’s Dream with its lovers, fairies, music, wonderfully...
317 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Jun 27, 2021
- 2 min
BAD NIGHTS AND ODD DAYS at Greenwich Theatre
They may be 40 to 50 years old but, as a brilliant new Greenwich Theatre production of four of Caryl Churchill’s early plays reveals,...
156 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- May 28, 2021
- 4 min
TUDORS TO WINDSORS at the National Maritime Museum
You don’t have to be an arch-monarchist to enjoy Tudors To Windsors, an exhibition celebrating 500 years of royal portraiture which runs...
319 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Mar 18, 2021
- 2 min
THE AFTER-DINNER JOKE at Greenwich Theatre online
The After-Dinner Joke, Caryl Churchill’s great satire on corporate philanthropism, may be 43 years old but shockingly, as director James...
155 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Mar 11, 2021
- 2 min
COLAB 2021 online at Trinity Laban
Lockdown has scuppered the sheer visceral excitement that artists and audiences share in any live performance, forcing creatives to look...
118 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Jan 31, 2021
- 2 min
VISIONS AS OUR EXILE The Albany online
Open Source Collaborations, a pioneering lockdown project launched by The Albany and Foreign Body Productions to help emerging artists...
147 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Dec 30, 2020
- 2 min
THE WOLVES OF WILLOUGHBY CHASE online with Greenwich Theatre
The Christmas lockdown forced Greenwich Theatre to close its doors days before its production of the children’s classic The Wolves Of...
132 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Nov 13, 2020
- 4 min
THE LONDON INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF EARLY MUSIC Online with headline concerts filmed in Blackheath
Online arts are playing a vital role in keeping up our spirits and feeding our souls during the Covid lockdown. And while no one would...
145 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Oct 26, 2020
- 3 min
CHAMBER MUSIC WEEK FINALE at Blackheath Halls and online
It was a daunting task – to cover 900 years of western music from 12th century sacred monophony to 21st century jazz in one afternoon...
222 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Oct 11, 2020
- 1 min
CHARLES HAYWARD VERSUS HARMERGEDDON at The Albany
South-east London is a crucible of cultural excellence and one of its most shimmering ingredients is the phenomenon that is Charles...
137 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Oct 7, 2020
- 2 min
A JOURNEY THROUGH THE RAKE’S PROGRESS Blackheath Halls Opera
The annual Blackheath Halls Opera is always a highlight of the cultural year in south-east London and it’s also a favourite with readers...
280 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Oct 6, 2020
- 3 min
ADRIAN LEGG at Mycenae House
Any gig featuring a true virtuoso is going to be a treat. But sometimes the musical virtuosity is mirrored by a gift for story-telling...
70 views0 comments
Miles Hedley
- Sep 13, 2020
- 4 min
GREENWICH + DOCKLANDS INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL 2020
Considering the country was in deep lockdown only a few weeks ago, it’s amazing that the Greenwich and Docklands International Festival...
131 views0 comments