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Alice Saville

@alicesaville.bsky.social
557 followers 503 following 40 posts

A surfeit of opinions. Theatre critic for The Independent. Words in Exeunt, FT, The Observer, Time Out & more. Commission me: alice.n.saville@gmail.com

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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
A knockout staging of an odd, incomplete final Sondheim - I entirely get why they went for a reverential approach, but he often wrote to & supported younger musical theatre writers - would have been so interesting to invite other voices to finish it off... www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta....
independent.co.uk
Here We Are is full of wit and flair, but Sondheim’s final musical feels incomplete
Familiar TV faces Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jane Krakowski, and Rory Kinnear make up a formidable if unlikely cast
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
Jessie Buckley was just wonderful in An Oak Tree - I love the way she balanced the vulnerability that comes with being pregnant on stage with cheekiness + clowning, throwing herself to her knees for a virtuoso air piano sesh [paywall - but currently only £1!] www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
independent.co.uk
Tim Crouch’s experimental play An Oak Tree is pure magic
This theatre landmark has been around for 20 years, but it still continues to create something new and uncomfortable
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
Spent yesterday morning perched on a wall watching the Hastings Jack in the Green parade going by and already it feels like a dream - take me back!
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
SO many unhinged choices in this Great Gatsby musical, the way it tramples over the novel would be kind of exciting if there was any particular artistic intention there beyond creating a fun + aggressively sexy 1920s romp [paywall] www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
independent.co.uk
This Great Gatsby musical lacks respect for F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic – review
As Gatsby, Jamie Muscato brings stupendous vocals and a jarringly approachable goofiness to the most elusive of literary creations
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
SO many unhinged choices in this Great Gatsby musical, the way it tramples over the novel would be kind of exciting if there was any particular artistic intention there beyond creating a fun + aggressively sexy 1920s romp [paywall] www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
independent.co.uk
This Great Gatsby musical lacks respect for F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic – review
As Gatsby, Jamie Muscato brings stupendous vocals and a jarringly approachable goofiness to the most elusive of literary creations
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
I can't summarise my thoughts on this examination of male violence in a pithy way, sorry, you're just going to have to read the review www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta....
independent.co.uk
Manhunt is an intense study of Raoul Moat, but its message is uncertain – review
Samuel Edward-Cook is effective as the prowling fugitive, but Robert Icke’s risk-taking production is not as compassionate as it makes itself out to be
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 06/04/2025
Imagine how proud the creator of my local topiary peacock feels every April, when its tail and crest burst beautifully into bloom. You'd just never get over it. Carry pictures in your wallet.
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
I miss getting to write about new writing/live art on small stages but the outlets for this are few - thinking of starting a substack with a weekly write-up if there'd be interest in that?
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
Spotted some beautiful botanical b-sides and rarities at Museum of the Home: daffodils that exploded like fireworks or honked like ducks bills, snakes head fritilleries and glowing golden ferns
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 22/03/2025
Wow the NYT review of Operation Mincemeat is absurd and humourless. Its main criticisms: 1) the show jokes about too many different things 2) the people it's about would NOT have been so larky and silly in real life (otherwise how would they have won the war 😤)
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
The second I finished this list I thought of at least three London theatres that should be on it... what can I say, my brain has been permanently addled by exposure to dizzying amounts of gilt and velvet www.timeout.com/london/theat...
timeout.com
Ranked: the most beautiful theatres in London
The show doesn’t begin when the lights go down
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
Returning to freelancing after mat leave feels a bit like being the baker of Pudding Lane returning to the ashes of his ruined kitchen BUT we shall rebuild! And if you need an arts writer or editor, I'm at alice.n.saville[at]gmail.com
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
This is defo on the better end of the current never-ending supply of teen movie remakes - first act is uncanny valley central, its young cast lab-grown imitations of the OG, then it gradually gets a mind and heart of its own. www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
independent.co.uk
Clueless the Musical – a cynical knockoff? As if!
Original writer Amy Heckerling returns to adapt her iconic Jane Austen remix for the stage
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
I knew I'd love Thomas Ostermeier's The Seagull when it opened with a Billy Bragg song and it only got better from there, with its adolescent skulking and self-obsession and big rants about theatre and art (no paywall) www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
independent.co.uk
The Barbican’s star-studded The Seagull is an utterly engrossing update of Chekov
Cate Blanchett stars in a three-hour production of the classic play that’s languid, thoughtful, and often hilarious
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
I fell in love with Richard II as a student ("I wasted time, now time doth waste me" felt v relatable as finals loomed) - so I was captivated by this production, and Jonathan Bailey's whimsical performance, lightly edged with cruelty and madness www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
independent.co.uk
Jonathan Bailey is charismatic as the queer-coded despot of Richard II – review
The ‘Wicked’ star delights in the extravagant speeches of Shakespeare’s homoerotic text
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 18/02/2025
I know I shouldn't but I love the chaotic slapstick ballet that unfolds when rollerbladers get into London Bridge and station staff try and catch em, solid team lanyard against liquid limbs
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
Did all the theatre companies form a little huddle sometime in 2022 in order to dub this The Long Grim Winter of Greek Drama, for reasons unknown? OR is this a horrible accident, where theatrical soothsayers misread the entrails of birds & told each director their production would stand alone?
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
This is v fair. I'm kind of fed up with the West End box office equation of weird play + massive star, because avant garde theatre fans who might appreciate the production (however flawed) can't get seats, while celebrity chasers who go all out for tickets are feeling tricked
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
You can tell a lot about the mental state of the world from the middle isle of Lidl... & right now apparently everyone just wants to curl up on the floor like sad old dogs
A human pet bed
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
A great read! And a reminder that arts criticism is necessarily a subjective, human, awkward thing - feeling out the space between artists' imaginings and audience experience
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
Words cannot express how much I love Dave Malloy's experiments in dragging musical theatre somewhere new and strange (but I did nonetheless try quite a few different ones in this review) www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
independent.co.uk
Timothy Sheader’s EDM-fuelled Tolstoy rock opera is a thing to marvel at – review
After a decade of anticipation, the much talked-about musical arrives in London
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
Such an intriguing play (and thanks to its probably-Communist author, one with a harsher perspective on white Southern women's culpability than Tennessee Williams' misty-eyed visions) www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
independent.co.uk
Anne-Marie Duff is fascinatingly nasty in Lyndsey Turner’s Little Foxes – review
Duff’s Regina is such a monster in this production that it’s hard to feel any kind of surprise or sympathy, as she manipulates and is manipulated in turn
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
Local hardware store have turned their famous mascot into Santa - maybe he'll fix our dodgy plumbing for Christmas
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
Oh I loved this outpouring of Wicked nerdery - it's high time you signed up to Exeunt's Substack, for theatre chat in your inbox twice a week
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
What a lovely thing the NT's Ballet Shoes is - fun and magical, while also quietly celebrating difference and the power of chosen family www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
independent.co.uk
If you see one show this Christmas season, make it the effusive, lovable Ballet Shoes
Leaping between its period setting and the present, Kendell Feaver’s adaptation of Noel Streatfeild’s 1936 book is as delicately balanced as a dancer en pointe
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
Gosh it's so long since I disliked something this much - looks like the tyranny of endless West End jukebox musicals has been overthrown by a still worse enemy, unimaginative adaptations of millennial nostalgic films www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
independent.co.uk
Even Elton John can’t save this truly diabolical adaptation of Devil Wears Prada
‘Desperate Housewives’ star Vanessa Williams turns in a decent performance as the fearsome Miranda Priestly, but this West End production feels frozen in time
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
Loved this nostalgic but enjoyably sassy eulogy for Theatre Twitter from @mrlukowski.bsky.social - it's been a scary time to relaunch Exeunt because, like so many indie critics, we were horribly reliant on Twitter for visibility and traffic www.thestage.co.uk/opinion/andr...
thestage.co.uk
Andrzej Lukowski: With Bluesky on the horizon, is the sun going down on ‘Theatre Twitter’?
Theatre Twitter is pretty much dead now, for a lot of reasons, but if Theatre Bluesky emerges in its place, it might look very different, says Andrzej Lukowski
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
Fearsome Freya (the Viking fairy) has gone up a little early this year, as have her associates the Pudding Pusses - it's too grey outside to deny ourselves a bit of festive nonsense
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
I loved writing this, about the struggles and joys of seeing shows with my new favourite plus one
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
I loved the way the NT's Earnest is gilded over with queer injokes - from Dalston Superstore to the pair of pink satin pants a butler removes from the sofa with tongs. Gay Christmas has come early! [Paywall] www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
independent.co.uk
The Importance of Being Earnest has never been such fabulous, flamboyant fun – review
Max Webster’s superb cast anchors an innuendo-laden production that leans into slapstick and visual gags with relish
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Alice Saville @alicesaville.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
It's so great to be back doing a good old theatre nerdy dialogue on Exeunt - thinking about cameras on stage, and whether they're a tired trope or the way of the future open.substack.com/pub/exeuntma...
open.substack.com
Are we tired of cameras on stage?
A dialogue.
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