Radio review: Don Juan

Not for the first time, and to be honest I think it's unlikely to be the last time this year, Covid has caused the show I was due to see tonight to be cancelled. And once again I've turned to BBC radio drama for an alternative, and Robin Brooks' Don Juan, an adaptation of the first few cantos of Lord Byron's epic satirical poem. Byron's version of Juan (Matthew Tennyson) isn't a famed lothario, or at least not yet, but a beautiful but gormless teenager who proves irresistible to all the young women he meets, especially those with husbands or fathers who'd disapprove. So he first catches the eye of neighbour Donna Julia (Pippa Nixon,) unhappily married to a much older man, who seduces Juan and then gets caught with him in a bedroom farce when her husband returns. Juan flees the city and is shipwrecked, and found by Haidée (Dolores Carbonari,) who also falls for him - and this time it's her fearsome pirate father who causes them trouble.

Theatre review: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Lucy:
- Runs off with a suspicious stranger who offers her cake.
- Takes her siblings to Narnia in the full knowledge it'll put them and Mr Tumnus in danger.
- Is a PreCIOUs pRiNCEss.
Edmund:
- Runs off with a suspicious stranger who offers him Turkish Delight.
- Betrays his siblings only because he's enslaved by magic.
- Is a nasty little traitor who's probably going straight to Hell LOL.
Yes, it's one of the most famous stories of Christians living in the closet, C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe getting a new staging as the Bridge Theatre imports Sally Cookson's Leeds Playhouse production. And no, I'm not sure why I booked again to see a story I mainly grumble a lot about, except I probably quite like grumbling about it.

Theatre review: As You Like It (Open Air Theatre)

Second time lucky at the Open Air Theatre's As You Like It - if you thought London hadn't had a drop of rain for weeks you weren't in NW1 last Friday, when it came down so heavily the performance was abandoned before it could even start. Although this afternoon's grey clouds never resolved themselves into another downpour the fates still seemed against me seeing this production: At least two audience members fainted 20 minutes in, leading to a pause in the performance, and the least said about the pigeon that tried to land on my head in the second act the better. But Max Webster's production made it to the end, and the multiple marriages at the end of one of the more music-heavy Shakespeare plays, made even more so here with some original compositions by Charlie Fink.