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What's on

• Spicing up Shakespeare

  Review – Much Ado About Nothing, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until September 15, and then September 22 to October 27, 2012, at the Noel Coward Theatre, London. read more

• Experience shows

  Review – The Cemetery Club, at the Festival Theatre, Malvern, from Monday, July 30 until Saturday, August 4, 2012. FAR from as grave as the title might suggest, Ivan Menchell’s pleasant and poignant comedy is always an enjoyable watch. Here, with a hugely experienced primary cast of four – Anita Harris, Shirley-Anne Field, Anne Charleston, and Peter Ellis, along with a bright and breezy brief appearance from Debbie Norman as Mildred, the ‘club’ is in pretty safe hands. It seems few risks were taken, with the action set in the present in the New York suburb of Queens where writer Menchell was brought up, but for a British audience it might sit more comfortably in a leafy suburb of one of our Worcestershire towns and then we could have done away with the phoney American accents. On the subject of sets it was irritating to have the action, already fairly sedate, slowed down by the changes from Ida’s (Anita Harris) living room to the cemetery at Forest Hills. It would have been so much better to have the stage double-set, aka Ladies in Lavender earlier this year when there was a brilliant triple set of a garden, living room and rugged coastline, and would surely have created better continuity. This tale of widowhood – how to live life, as well as love, after death – is a situation familiar to many in the Western world with statistics that make salutary reading for the male population. Whichever way you look at the figures life expectancy comes out in favour of women. And because it’s fact of life - or should that be death - that just about everyone encounters, the ‘club’ continues to enjoy considerable popularity, is regularly performed by both professional and amateur companies, and long may it continue. read more

On this day: What's on | Letters | Round-up | Birthdays In Memoriam