Friday, 12 December 2025

One Man in his Time

 As my fellow playwright William Shakespeare once observed:


‘All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts’.

He was right, you know. And that one man is Jonathan Hansler. In the course of one hour, our man goes through the wringer, playing, among others, Cubby Broccoli, Elizabeth Taylor, a doctor from Boston, Lady May Lawford, Sir Sydney Lawford, film director Monty Banks, Louis B. Mayer, John F. Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, a Freudian psychiatrist, Marilyn Jimmy Durante, Chuck Pick, Laurence Olivier, Christopher Lawford, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, a young female fan, Robert F. Kennedy, Peter Sellers, Tony Curtis, Orson Welles, Roger Moore, Sean Connery, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Junior. And of course, Peter Lawford.


Does he carry it off? You better believe it.

Starts on Tuesday at the old Red Lion.

Is It Happened To Me a Christmas play?

 It’s about this time of year that people start to debate one of the key issues of the time. Namely, is Die Hard a Christmas movie? I like to think, in years to come, that same will be asked about It Happened To Me. Both are set on Christmas Eve in early Eighties California, and both feature helicopters ( though budgetary constraints mean ours is offstage ). Both have a handsome wisecracking antihero, John Mclane in their case, Peter Lawford in ours. Both have a gorgeous heroine - Holly to our Marilyn Monroe, and both have an evil antagonist: Hans Gruber, to our Frank Sinatra. 


And we have our East End Premiere next Tuesday!



Wednesday, 26 November 2025

Monday, 24 November 2025

Back to the Old Red Lion


I’ve never returned to a theatre before. Fourteen years ago Country Life played for three week in the autumn of 2011. It had started out earlier in the summer at Rada, and  It got me the best reviews I had ever had. Hence the transfer.

And now, here we go again. Same cast, same director, same crew, but a tighter script, I hope.

Friday, 29 August 2025

A Review

 We got one review. Not a bad one, but not the five star knockout you really look for.

Live on Stage 4



 

Live on Stage 3