Vanbrugh The City Wives' Confederacy

"the Lions part" at Greenwich Playhouse 14 December

This was one of the most ambitious shows to come to Greenwich Playhouse recently, and it is very timely given the current global financial collapse.

A complicated story about money and jewelry reinvestment, and (mostly) thwarted lust, it is a sharper alternative to most seasonal fare and well worth the journey to Greenwich.

Greenwich Playhouse is a thriving pub theatre in the forecourt of Greenwich Station. The versatile polymath John Vanbrugh contributed to the completion of the former Royal Naval College, now taken over by Greenwich University and Trinity College of Music, where we regularly review, and he lived in the "Castle" he built for himself close by our home.

Musical Pointers only occasionally ventures into the world of straight plays, but makes an occasional exception, this one justified by strong production and the excellence of the musical contribution by Alison Kinder and Tamsin Lewis on baroque recorder and string instruments.

Recommended.

Peter Grahame Woolf