Blaze of Glory (Welsh National Opera)
Caroline Clegg’s staging unerringly hits the precise tone for scenes alternating comedy with heartache while deftly swerving sentimentality.
The Stage ★★★★★
The whole picture is there, painted with precision, wit and huge affection.
The Arts Desk ★★★★★
The theatricality is superb and wildly inventive….This is a feel-good, nostalgic, romantic story embedded in real stories, splendidly directed, acted and gloriously sung. It is black gold. Opera Scene
Two-thirds of Rhondda’s winning creative team are back! Librettist Emma Jenkins and director Caroline Clegg join forces with a new composer – David Hackbridge-Johnson – to create a theatrical hybrid that’s a little bit opera and a lot of everything else.
Telegraph ★★★★
Laugh out loud funny, brilliantly staged… We follow the Bee Gees from first shambolic rehearsal to a triumphant performance at the National Eisteddfod. The opera ends on a high with a rousing WNO Chorus and Community Chorus, finale.
The Times ★★★★
So Blaze of Glory isn’t a traditional opera, a time-piece, it is actually a refreshingly modern , it has American swing, a Welsh version of the Andrews Sisters, it has comedy, it has epic yodelling scenes, it’s wears its Welshness well, and it builds up to the showpiece, the moment the Male Voice Choir stands proud and just performs. And boy is it good! It feels and sounds like the heart of a mountain has been given a voice and from this small troop resonates a million tons of rock. This is a story of working people, for working people. If you get a chance to see Blaze of Glory, grab it.
Southampton Times ★★★★★
A new opera from Welsh National Opera was engaging, funny and surprisingly wide-ranging with broader resonances. Caroline Clegg’s staging hits the spot. One of the most moving operas of the year.
The Stage ★★★★★
George Hall's Opera Pick of the Year, The Stage, 2023
Rhondda Rips it Up (Welsh National Opera)
The show is as maverick as its heroine… Director Caroline Clegg achieves a strongly theatrical dynamic using stage and auditorium.
The Guardian ★★★★
It’s a jolly affair, directed with imaginative gusto by Caroline Clegg...
The Telegraph ★★★★★
Smartly directed by Caroline Clegg this is no serious feminist disquisition or sombre social biography. Rhondda’s response is to rip up the rulebooks and magnificently thumb a nose. Ribald and irreverent, Rhondda’s story becomes an Edwardian-inspired music hall entertainment. They gleefully lampoon everything from the House of Lords to polite ladies’ tea parties and elocution lessons.
The Stage ★★★★★
Rhondda Rips It Up! is a tremendous show, very funny, very tuneful. The direction, by Caroline Clegg is clean and clear enabling the cast to shine. Written specifically for the women of the WNO Chorus, Rhondda Rips It Up! has given them a chance to show off their skills in ways which ‘normal’ chorus work rarely does. Rhondda Rips It Up! has an all-female cast, orchestra and creative team, WNO has put the suffrage movement on stage is itself an emancipation.
Wales Culture Review
What japes, I grinned non-stop! The remarkable story of viscountess Rhondda is a gift and the all-female creative team led by Clegg make the most of it. This is a transparent weave of operetta, cabaret, music hall, opera and jazz with some edgier writing too. Bawdy innuendo and delicious quandaries are deliciously observed. I defy anyone not to be swept away by this rule-breaking production. It is bursting with irreverent joy!
The Times ★★★★★
Slave - A Question of Freedom (Feelgood Theatre Productions)
Slave - A Question of Freedom is, quite possibly, one of the most rewarding theatrical journeys you’ll ever make ... I implore you not to miss it! The Messenger ★★★★★
Clegg directs with sensitivity and much of the success of this production lies in its mixture of narrative, dance and music. A terrific ensemble cast of international artistes... I promise it will provide much food for thought.
The Stage ★★★★★
Such material cannot do anything but affect an audience deep in their souls, but it needs sensitivity in its re-creation in a theatre, to make such horror truly believable. Caroline Clegg's direction does exactly that - knowing that the story is enough, using the minimum of back-projections to suggest the changing locations from the mountains of Africa to the markets of Shepherds Bush.
Broadway World ★★★★
Clegg Director and Co-Adaptor (along with Kevin Fegan) have created a show that is thoughtful, thought-provoking and ultimately inspiring. Feelgood turned Mende Nazer's harrowing autobiographical Slave into an intense, triumphant piece of theatre ... a brilliantly conceived and executed version of [her] book. Helen Jones, WhatsOnStage ★★★★★
Clegg’s production is stylistically very impressive. Rather than simply concentrating upon the harsh realities of child slavery, she is at pains to portray the world that Mende has lost. The realism with which this is done not only forces the audience to reconsider their views on the “barbarity” of such practices but also reinforces the overall point of the play.
Derby News ★★★★
I’ve been to the Unity Theatre to see Slave – A Question of Freedom this is first-class theatre powerful, moving, and disturbing. This show packs a serious punch, but Mende’s indomitable spirit in the face of adversity shines through and challenges us all to make a difference.
Liverpool World ★★★★★
SLAVE - A Question of Freedom is powerful enough to move you to tears. An enlightening exploration of the human condition. Ebony Feare’s performance doesn’t tug at the heart strings it rips them out. Director Caroline Clegg has ensured this production hits you right between the eyes emotionally. Liverpool Echo ★★★★★
Lowry Theatre “The play's integrity and timeliness staged by Feelgood Theatre Productions had the audience at The Lowry rapt. Clegg's production asks us to make a difference by standing up and being counted.
Manchester Evening News. Winner of The first Pete Postlethwaite award – Best New Play
“It is an astonishing account, well told and simply staged, in an adaptation by Kevin Fegan and Caroline Clegg. The latter is to be particularly commended for her dogged determination to translate the story to stage and especially for the way it uses a Sudanese style of storytelling, music and dance. But when it is performed in the House of Lords next week – as part of the education and awareness campaign coupled to the production – you would hope that it all starts to cause more than just diplomatic discomfort, at home and abroad.”
David Upton, Lancashire Evening Post
Marilyn Forever and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland)
Clegg deftly directs and couches the action in post-war movie terms, the tragic and predominant central focus on Marilyn offset by the pseudo-vaudeville Tritones.
Caroline Clegg’s effecting production, with stage designs by Finlay McLay and lighting by Davy Cunningham, places the action simply and unpretentiously in an elegant domestic drawing room, the six-piece ensemble visibly raised side-stage.
Tokaido Road (Goldfield Productions)
Tokaido Road was a true collaboration of several talents.
Tokaido Road is an existential journey in speech, song, mime and dance…Every word is audible; every movement is eloquent.
The Times ★★★★
It’s not often one experiences a piece on this scale that’s so emphatically intimate throughout… The stuff of memories at the heart of Tokaido Road is something to which we can all very intimately relate.
5against4
Die Dreigroschenoper (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland)
Bracingly savage, gritty and subversive performances. Director Caroline Clegg took an ensemble approach, her lively libertine players mingled with the audience beforehand and remained onstage throughout, when not in the action joining us as onlookers, a large mirror adding emphasis to our complicity. BachTrack ★★★★
Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill would recognise, and approve, very much of Caroline Clegg’s vibrant staging of their 1928 masterpiece.
Scottish Herald ★★★★
Dead Man Walking (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland)
Caroline Clegg’s staging kept the narrative admirably fluent...
Opera Magazine
Director Caroline Clegg took us through the dynamic 18-scene journey simply and effectively making full use of mobile cell bars. Clegg’s fluid movement of chorus and nuanced characterisation of the principals kept the momentum going.
Bachtrack ★★★★
Under the stage direction of Caroline Clegg, and conducted by James Holmes, this student cast and orchestra give it every opportunity to shine.
The Scotsman ★★★★
...is given a terrific performance by the students of the Alexander Gibson Opera School in this cleverly-directed production by Caroline Clegg. There is a very profound story told here, with a great deal to say about faith, the value of truth and human society and this staging – the first full production in the UK – is top quality.
Herald Scotland ★★★★
Orfeo and Euridice (Scottish Opera)
Not only is it an impeccably staged and delivered production by Clegg, the Young Company shows hope for the future of opera in Scotland.
Glasgow Theatre Blog ★★★★★
Caroline Clegg’s seductive, evocative staging was bathed in a mirage of blues ad purples and brought into focus by Finlay McLay’s silhouetted set and modern-mythical costumes. For the ‘happy end’, Clegg decorated the stage with discreet snapshots of modern-day poster couples (JFK and Jackie, Richard and Judy etc.), driving home the chasm between our own realist and that of Gluck’s neo-Classical ideal.
Opera Magazine
One of the impressive and inspired aspects in this production was the inventive staging used to full advantage, breaking the fourth wall by forcing the audience to become part of the performance, made aware of their own presence as blurred faces on the stage. The other key to audience engagement was the pace that Clegg - add Clegg had the story unfold. The storytelling felt seamless – told as concisely and precisely as possible...Suffice to say, it appears that the future of Scottish Opera is in safe hands.
Scots Whay Hae ★★★ ★★
Sāvitri and Emperor of Atlantis (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland)
The sets, although simple, were very effective and the staging was excellent in Caroline Clegg’s superb production.
The Herald Scotland ★★★★
Director Caroline Clegg chose to play out the action in a deserted theatre...The Emperor of Atlantis is supposed to be edgy and disturbing, and this production captured the unsettling parallels perfectly, allowing us to take our own conclusions away.
Bachtrack ★★★★
Dracula the Blood Count (Feelgood Theatre Productions)
Clegg’s production excels in long shot - it’s pretty good in close-up as well!
Guardian ★★★★★
...one of the best productions I have seen in the last decade and I don’t make comments like that lightly… if you see nothing else this year, see this.
The Messenger ★★★★★
Ingenious ... A triumphant return for Feelgood and a tantalising promise of great things to come in the park!
Manchester Evening News ★★★★★
Down by the Greenwood Side, (UK/Los Angeles Festival)
Perhaps less easily forgotten, because more showy, is Harrison Birtwistle’s Down By The Greenwood Side, directed with tremendous verve and imagination by Caroline Clegg. She stressed the Mummers’ Play side of the piece, with some hilarious clowning on stage before any music began; and the instrumentalists took time off later to juggle, dance and generally fool around.
Guardian ★★★★
Sometimes a little nonsense is good for the soul. With just such low humour, with medieval jousts on hobbyhorses, with wonderfully silly costumes Clegg’s joyful “Greenwood” turns out to be exactly the kind of inspired nonsense that only the British seem to create.
Timothy Mangal, Los Angeles Times
Mis Bach Du, (Welsh National Opera)
Community opera projects often aspire to little more than an earnest worthiness but at their best – and this project is one of the best I have ever seen – they can pull together entire communities in a creative process that both enriches and celebrates the innate skills and talents of the community involved. It was evident from the outset that the professional input from Caroline Clegg had produced nothing short of an alchemical reaction.
A Feast of Fables, (Manchester Camerata)
It wasn’t a concert, and it wasn’t really an opera, but it was a brilliant night’s entertainment for the opening of the Bridgewater Hall, using its potential as a theatrical venue to the full. There’s a tremendous value in the place for shows like this, and it was obviously an inspiration to ask Caroline Clegg, who has directed so many music theatre events before (including one that helped win our Theatre Award for opera) to mastermind it. In fact, it was a remarkable community effort for Manchester. Manchester Evening News,
Robert Beale ★★★★★
Burning Waters, (Buxton Festival)
There were strange goings-on in the Pavilion Gardens after dark, with spooks among the trees and Druids in white cloaks. There were wandering musician’s lights on water and a spectacular firework finale. And this was Buxton’s first community opera, performed by professional opera singers and chorus and 300 locals. An ambitious project to herald in the new millennium, directed by the genius site-specific director Caroline Clegg. Clegg’s vision knows no bounds and as if led by the Pied Piper, several hundred of us followed the action from one location to another, behind mummers, and a mysterious woman from space. It is a brilliantly creative artistic adventure led by soprano Adey Grummet, bass Keel Watson and tenor Hubert Francis along with a full chorus, horses and singers on motorbikes!
Philip Radcliffe, Manchester Evening News ★★★★★
Il Campanello di Notte (The Night Bell) Buxton Festival, Opera House
Donizetti’s little comedy of the old chemist was brilliantly updated by Clegg to a Derbyshire town in the 1950s. In fact Caroline Clegg’s production recalled the engaging early Fellini film The White Shark a comic family drama fraught with emotional crises. The whole thing came over with affection, polish and sheer fun. The audience enjoyed it all hugely.
Martin Hoyle, Financial Times ★★★★
Anya17, (Ten Ten Festival)
The work resonated sharply from a bare concert staging — the director was Caroline Clegg whose direction was visceral and direct. The event was part of a festival but this deserved to stand alone.
Sunday Times
Seven Deadly Sins, (Hallé Orchestra)
An eccentric programme of music centred on the early years of the 20th century went down a storm at the Bridgewater Hall...The semi-staged performance, directed by Caroline Clegg, was an impressive success...The drama was striking from early on: little was held in reserve...It was a strong piece of drama, very successfully pulled off on the concert stage to the credit of all involved.
BachTrack ★★★★