Theatre review: Road – Northern Stage, Newcastle

First published in The Times, Friday October 15 2021

THREE STARS

Natalie Ibu’s revival of Road is an ambitious calling card for the new artistic director of Northern Stage. Jim Cartwright’s theatrical tapestry, first staged in the mid-1980s, famously weaves together the lives of some 35 characters: residents of a single street in a run-down working-class pocket of Lancashire.

Review: Get Carter – Northern Stage, Newcastle

First published in The Times, Monday February 22 2016

Four Stars

Get Carter, a gritty, cynical gangster film, in which Michael Caine’s antihero wanders Newcastle seeking vengeance for his brother’s murder, has grown in critical reputation since its release in 1971 and is considered by some to be a masterpiece of British cinema. The same cannot be said of the source novel, Jack’s Return Home by Ted Lewis, which languished out of print for many years until being republished under the film’s title in the early Nineties.