what’s on in Southwark w izard of o zerhithe

rOTherhiThe’S NeweST theatre space at The hithe is the latest home for phil willmott’s rotherhithe playhouse Company currently performing The wizard of Oz and ibsen’s A doll’s house, writes Ed, Frida and Woody Gray

Willmott’s intention to bring theatre to the heart of the community has certainly been achieved for us because from The Hithe’s garden we could see Rotherhithe Overground, our flat and the kids’ school within a few hundred metres. To quote Oz’s Dorothy Gayle herself, ‘There’s no place like home’.

We have followed Phil Willmott’s extensive career from fantastically creative productions in the Scoop at More London when our young reviewer’s were toddlers, to more recent work.

How often can you see a production of Hamlet at the end of your street?

I can still recall the faces of Thames Path walkers confronted with knife wielding Jacobeans. A pandemic production of Dickens’s Great Expectations outside Rotherhithe’s atmospheric Old Mortuary had our young reviewers spellbound by the pure magic of theatre at a time when narrative experiences were reduced to the dimensions of a screen at home, so we were eager to be cyclonically whisked off to OZ as we ascended to the top floor of

The Hithe.

Inside is a snug theatre with comfortable enough seating for fifty people.

We were a little disappointed that the house lights stayed up throughout the play which took away the intimacy of the collective moment.

Narrator Jan Olivia Hewitt played elderly Dorothy as we embarked