Anna Ledwich                      Director
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Reviews  (or things people have said)


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Photograph 51
Ensemble Theatre, Sydney

Sydney Morning Herald  * * * *
"Director Anna Ledwich's compelling production." John Shand

Broadway World
​"Under Anna Ledwich's direction, this is a powerful piece of theatre." Jade Kops

Sydney Arts Guide
"Anna Ledwich directs a very fine production...her direction is assured and taut". David Kary

State of the Arts  * * * * 1/2
"Directed by Anna Ledwich the show is one of the most memorable I've seen all year."Tolga Canbulat




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Dry Powder
Hampstead Theatre Main Stage

The Times  * * * *
"Anna Ledwich directs with the pace of stiletto heels walking into a boardroom, tap-tap-tap...Slick, staccato and of-the-moment, this was a guilty pleasure." Ann Treneman

Daily Mail   * * * *
"This 100-minute midtown-Manhattan tingler zips along and is slickly staged by Anna Ledwich." Quentin Letts

The Daily Telegraph
"Anna Ledwich’s slick production, in which characters enter through a back wall of revolving mirrors to the strains of a harpsichord, as though they are players in a courtly dance, nods to Restoration comedy." Claire Allfree

The Independent
"Anna Ledwich directs a slick, gleaming, snappily-acted production." Paul Taylor

Broadway World   * * * *
"Crisply directed by Anna Ledwich." Marianka Swain

Theatre Cat  * * * *
"
“It is barkingly funny, played with quartet precision under Anna Ledwich’s direction." Libby Purves

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Kiss Me
Trafalgar Studios

The Independent
"Anna Ledwich's meticulous, beautifully acted production." Paul Taylor

The Guardian
"
Anna Ledwich’s tender production brings out the comedy and the pathos. The initial, entirely silent setup scene, is a little miracle of revelations."
Lyn Gardner

The Telegraph
"Anna Ledwich's finely tuned production finds real tenderness in the emotional collision between two lost souls." Claire Allfree

Time Out  * * * *
"
This is a well-crafted chamber piece given a straightforward yet tender staging by Anna Ledwich." Theo Bosanquet


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Labyrinth
Hampstead Theatre Main Stage

The Times  * * * *
"There’s a great vroom vroom to this play, an energy that lifts it out of the ordinary. The director Anna Ledwich keeps mixing things up... Jagged music discombobulates, people appear out of nowhere, some scenes are paranoiac, others full of fire-in-the-blood swagger." Ann Treneman

The Guardian  * * * *
"Racily exciting work...Played on a wide traverse stage, Anna Ledwich’s production has a hurtling energy." Michael Billington

The Telegraph  * * * *
"Richly researched, it’s insistently useful and almost indecently entertaining.
Anna Ledwich moves everything along at the pace of the Nasdaq data-feed" Dominic Cavendish

Daily Mail  * * * *
"
Anna Ledwich’s
 production enters fully into the carnival spirit... It also sets up a story which is in thrall to these glamorous lowlifes... a great night out." Patrick Marmion



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Four Minutes Twelve Seconds
Trafalgar Studios/Hampstead Theatre

The Times  * * * * *
CRITIC'S CHOICE, Top 10 plays of 2015
"A thoroughly modern morality tale that also turns into a psychological thriller... Anna Ledwich has paced it perfectly, the acting is faultless. It’s the story that matters here and it is riveting." Ann Treneman

The Sunday Times  * * * *
CRITIC'S CHOICE
"Turns on a drip-drip-drip of unease about the digital age...ferociously funny." 


The Guardian * * * *
​"Often shockingly funny and full of little ambiguities...This is a punchy, thoughtful evening that gets an intense, claustrophobic production from Anna Ledwich and boasts a quartet of fine performances." Lyn Gardner

​Evening Standard  * * * *
"A well-merited transfer... Anna Ledwich's pared-back production provides the perfect complement to the tightly coiled script. There’s no fussing with props or scene changes, the better to allow us to focus on the mounting impact of the words." Fiona Mountford

WhatsOnStage  * * * * 
"Compelling and complex.. Anna Ledwich's snappy staging lets the twists and turns land, echoing the ambiguity with a succession of reversals." Matt Trueman


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The Stick House
Raucous Collective/Lo-co Klub

The Guardian  * * * *
"Anna Ledwich’s production piles on atmosphere, and the mingling of performance with technology is brilliantly unobtrusive and effective." Lyn Gardner

The Bristol Post  * * * * *
" A wonderful, sinister, piece of theatre." Steve Mellen

Bristol 24/7 
"With the aid of magical technology and a stunning level of inventiveness, designer Conor Murphy and director Anna Ledwich have created a dreamscape made real, a complete world which wraps itself around the audience as they move from one space to another...
The Stick House needs to be added to the roster of this year’s ‘must see’ events. It is theatre like you’ve never experienced before." Toby O'Connor Morse


How Does a Snake Shed Its Skin?
National Theatre Studio/BAC/Summerhall Edinburgh Fringe

The Independent   * * * *
"Sparkily funny ....warm hearted and intelligent." Holly Williams

Exeunt   * * * *
"a celebratory fruitcake with barely a hint of citrus bitterness." Alice Saville

The Scotsman
"gloriously anarchic and messy."  Sally Stott
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Blue Remembered Hills
Theatre On The Fly at Chichester Festival Theatre

Daily Telegraph  * * * *
"Anna Ledwich's production achieves an ideal fusion if design, direction and performance... The cast is uniformly excellent...The door framed vista of the park lends a particular enchantment to this magical production and Ledwich uses the space with dazzling ingenuity."  Jane Shilling

The Observer
"Anna Ledwich's stage direction troubles the boundaries between fiction and reality by exploiting the possibilities offered by the temporary wooden theatre designed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Chichester's Festival theatre. From a dirt-strewn stage rises a glade of blue scaffolding "trees"; lightbulbs dangle between the "branches".  Beyond these, in the place where the back wall would normally stand, a gaping space gives the audience a clear view over the green field of Oaklands Park. The action flows between these two spaces as precisely playful performances devastatingly convey a tragic tale of childhood innocence lost... As this lucid production demonstrates, we see in disconcerting simultaneous vision, not just the adults these children will become but also the grown-ups who have deformed their childhood. As embodied by this excellent ensemble, it is profoundly unsettling."  Clare Brennan

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Photograph: Donald Cooper
Dream Story
Gate Theatre

The Times  * * * *
"Impressively dramatised by Anna Ledwich...Ledwich powerfully recreates Schnitzler's tale of passion and healing wisdom...Her astonishing achievement is to create disconcerting episodes with a cast of only four actors."
  Jeremy Kingston
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The Guardian  * * * *
"Anna Ledwich's new production shows that, when sex,   dreams and shame are invoked, plenty can still be revealed about the human animal. Ledwich has turned the novella into a cool but nightmarish four-hander, which draws us into its antihero's sexual imagination with miasmic effectiveness...Under her precise direction his p
anic is keenly felt. In Ledwich's potent production the cast are uniformly strong...Helen Goddard's claustrophobic set and Adrienne Quartly's disorientating soundscape heighten the sickliness as fears and desires swarm into life."  Brian Logan


The Spectator
"Anna Ledwich adapts another bewildering masterpiece sprung from the intellectual turmoil of Old Europe. Schnitzler’s Dream Story may be better known now as the basis for Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, but Ledwich’s version is more faithful to the old fashioned Freudianism of the original...Ledwich’s production enthralls...[she] knows exactly how to play with our erotic aesthetics...we’re easily implicated in the intimacy of the erotic exploitation on stage. And the supposed resolution is deeply unsettling, ensuring that Ledwich’s production will haunt you long after you’ve left the theatre." Kate Maltby


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Photograph: Tristram Kenton
LULU
Gate Theatre/Headlong

The Guardian  * * * *
“Ledwich’s production is compelling, even if it makes for an uncomfortable evening of comi-tragedy that casts the audience as voyeurs in a spiralling masturbatory nightmare...there is a great deal to admire, not least in Helen Goddard’s design, which conjures the peep show and perhaps the abattoir, too, as befits the play’s shocking ending...in Sinead Matthew’s performance this Lulu is a wonder: so greedy for life, trailing such throaty laughter that she dazzles like a mirage. Ledwich's production is compelling…[Lulu] is brought into sharper focus than usual in this intelligent, compressed version of Wedekind's original two plays.” Lyn Gardner



The Times  * * * *
"Anna Ledwich [steers] a fine cast through her almost fiendishly, incisive script with a gratifyingly sure hand...
Sinead Matthews is…sensationally apt casting...Lulu is such a multifaceted character that the clarity they bring to her story can be thrilling, especially in the confines of a venue the size of a shoebox...Credit can be shared with the designer Helen Goddard, whose set of rough wood, curtains and stretched canvas is peeled back in layers as the play progresses. The atmosphere of squalid intimacy this production conjures is just right.”
  Donald Hutera


The Sunday Times  * * * *
CRITIC'S CHOICE
“Wedekind’s famous play, so scandalous in its time, gets a powerful adaptation and shocking and moving production from Anna Ledwich. Sinead Matthews plays Lulu like an angel from hell. Do not miss...Lulu (Sinead Matthews) is her own prisoner, a predator and a victim, innocent and cunning, on heat but cold inside...This is more than an adaptation...it’s a reimagination. Ledwich directs with an impeccable sense of darkness [and] Matthews gives a brilliant performance, thrilling, shocking and moving.”  John Peter


The Independent on Sunday
“Flickering between callous materialism, panic and seemingly genuine love, this Lulu is made to seem mercurially complex...Sinead Matthews’s pint-size Lulu is interesting casting, disturbingly like a little girl imitating MTV tarts, or Marilyn Monroe...Helen Goddard’s makeshift set – all rough planks, scaffolding and plastic sheeting – is oddly beautiful, softly side-lit by Emma Chapman...Anna Ledwich is one to watch.”  Kate Bassett


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Lovely & Misfit
Trafalgar Studios


The Daily Telegraph  * * * *
"Lovely & Misfit turns out to be an unexpected pleasure and a genuinely enlightening glimpse into Tennessee Williams's art and heart...fascinating and touching...All credit to the excellent director Anna Ledwich for giving these short, unexpectedly resonant plays such a welcome outing." Charles Spencer

The Sunday Times  * * * *
CRITIC'S CHOICE
"These three one-acters by Tennessee Williams, recently discovered, are like unexpected gifts bequeathed by a long departed friend...the acting is excellent: precise, deeply felt and entirely unsentimental. " John Peter


Metro  * * * *
"Anna Ledwich's production is an excellently staged opportunity to witness Tennessee Williams's emerging theatrical voice...a superbly sensitive portrait of a hidden world." Claire Allfree



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