The only problem is that Sam’s old university friend Lauren (Julia Chan) and her working-class builder boyfriend Ben (Jake Wood) have a standing invitation to dinner that night. Now Sam has returned (late) from his trip and she wants him to listen too. She has started to hear ominous noises in their daughter’s bedroom at (you guessed it) 2:22 every morning. Although that said, while the dinner party play tends to have its limits as a genre (some people have a party, get drunk, argue, some secrets are revealed) it’s the extremely cleverly worked supernatural angle that keeps things fresh.Īnd Allen is good! She bring a note of elegant froideur to the otherwise boisterous ensemble as Sam’s wife Jenny, who was left alone with her baby daughter in their creepy new fixer-upper while Sam went off on a star-watching trip to the Channel Islands. He has a fine ear for dialogue and eye for emotional faultlines. But on a basic level Robins has written a cracking dinner party play, alive with wit and tension. I can’t really get into forensic details about ‘2:22’s plot because I think even the wrong veiled allusion might prove spoilery for an ending that completely blindsided me. Number two, writer Robins comes into the West End on the back of a zeitgeisty paranormal podcast (‘The Battersea Poltergeist’), but his actual playwrighting CV is pretty obscure.Īnd number three, it stars Lily Allen: nothing personal against the chart-topping singer (who to be fair has at least dabbled with acting before) but the West End is littered with the bones of forgotten celebrity vanity projects. Number one, horror plays that aren’t called ‘The Woman in Black’ tend to be terrible. Well I can relate to Sam here, as I went into ‘2:22’ firmly believing I had its number, and I’m happy to say I did not. Specifically, we’re talking about the existence of ghosts: Sam does not believe in them, and it’s not really a spoiler to say Sam is proven very wrong. The plot of Danny Robins’s ‘2:22 – A Ghost Story’ revolves around Sam, an astronomer and inveterate know-it-all – played to excruciating perfection by Hadley Fraser – who believes he has the answer to everything. The below review is the from the original summer 2021 run starring Allen. Until September 6 the cast is Tom Felton, Mandip Gill, Beatriz Romilly and Sam Swainsbury.
#Garden story review plus#
She’ll be joined by ex-Busted member (and musicals veteran) Matt Willis, plus actors Tamsin Carroll and Felix Scott.
Is this a terrible idea? We’ll find out soon, but Whitmore is stage trained, and the first cast of ‘2:22’ did feature Lily Allen, who had a similar lack of on-stage experience and turned out to be excellent. The book is beautifully illustrated throughout and includes new photography of some of the most influential gardens in the world, including Sissinghurst.ĭrawn from the National Trust's extensive archives, The Story of the English Garden is the definitive guide to Europe's greatest collection of historic gardens - a rich celebration of World Heritage sites, rare and exotic plants and groundbreaking architectural design.‘2:22 – A Ghost Story’ will commence its fourth West End run from September 6, with the distinctly unconventional casting of ‘Love Island’ presenter Laura Whitmore in the lead role of Jenny. It's a fascinating story about passion - and power and politics too. The Story of the English Garden is the National Trust's accessible history of the nation's gardens, sumptuously illustrated and artfully curated.įrom tiny medieval gardens to vast Georgian parks, from Victorian glasshouses crammed with exotic specimens to the elegant outdoor 'rooms' of the Edwardians and the functional, ecologically aware gardens of today, this book explores the love affair between the English and their gardens for over 500 years.
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