Asylum-themed musical, dusted-off Vaughan Williams and critical dissent over The Master…

On the site today...

Having a happy time of it with the RSC's Merry Wives of Windsor

Cora Bissett appears to have spun something of a landmark musical (if certain critics are to be believed) from the 2005 political coup pulled off by a group of Glaswegian schoolgirls, when they saved one of their number from deportation back to Kosovo. Whatsonstage.com called Bissett ‘a Justice of the Peace in Scottish political theatre', but you can't bring a message home without good delivery...

The music is great (really great) but the dramatic tension, not so much, is the general consensus on The Pilgrim's Progress, brought out for an airing by the ENO for the first time since 1951...

It is possibly the highest scoring film ever on CultureCritic - The Master currently has seven five-star reviews (eight counting The Observer's ‘First View' post) We thought a alternative voice must surface at some point, but The Observer's Rachel Cooke went so far as to say she was bored, it's a critic's film, and will probably alienate the public. Ouch... 

Superb reviews are still rolling in for The River; The Merry Wives of Winsdor (pictured above) is sending nearly everyone home happy in Stratford; and upcoming theatre includes an up to now ill-fated Sondheim musical at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London.

In Books we have our eye on Amanda Coplin's The Orchardist, called ‘fiercely poetic' by the New York Times; and we're enjoying former Vivian Girl Frankie Rose on the second Teen Daze record of the year...

If you're in the market for winning tickets to One Man, Two Guvnors, or the third series of Downton Abbey or Alan Partridge Mid Morning Matters on DVD, you know where to look...

The 1951 production of Vaughan Williams' 'Morality', The Pilgrim's Progress, revived at the ENO