He wrote that "Morgan is a very likable young Merlin" and the show "looks splendid — colourful, exciting, and yes, magic".
With names like Black Dragon Holds a Splendid Flower, Better Than Jade With Triple Magic and Tipsy Imperial Concubine, these ancient plants may galvanize jaded gardeners into yet another obsession.
Five splendid musical masques, on themes of drunkenness, nocturnal magic, sex, the seasons, and marriage, amplify themes of the play.
Some of it is conjured by CG magic (the Red Queen's palace is splendid, and the White Rabbit's ears a masterwork), and some by just good storytelling and performer chemistry, which Lowe and Socha have in abundance.
Last year, I saw choreographer Christopher Wheeldon's splendid Cinderella, with its equally splendid dancing, sets, costumes, and theatrical magic, as performed by San Francisco Ballet.
This prompts the question: can a reënactment of a movie, in however splendid a setting, hope to revive the precision with which the original wrought its magic?
When she performed her heptathlon magic, finishing with 6,955 points after winning the 800m, the aggregate of her splendid points gathering over two days in the other six disciplines, she did so without presumption.
The Americans' reaction to the situation is to give larger parties, but these are overshadowed by a feeling that a bad magic is plunging them, just at a moment when they thought they were travelling along the splendid width of history, into something smaller than the smallest town they ever fled.
He takes Jasmine on a magic carpet ride and sings to her that he wants to show her "a whole new world, shining, shimmering, splendid".
