Theatre
The Bay at Nice, Menier Chocolate Factory review - David Hare talkfest takes intermittent wingWednesday, 20 March 2019
David Hare knows a thing or two about sustaining an onstage face-off. Skylight and The Breath of Life consist tantalisingly of little else and so, for the most part, does his 1986 curiosity The Bay at Nice, which I caught back in the day during a... Read more... |
The Rubenstein Kiss, Southwark Playhouse review - slick spy drama doesn't quite come togetherWednesday, 20 March 2019
It's an ideal time to revive James Phillips's debut The Rubenstein Kiss. Since it won the John Whiting Award for new writing in 2005 its story, of ideological differences tearing a family apart, has only become more relevant. Joe Harmston directs a... Read more... |
Richard II, Sam Wanamaker Theatre review - electrifying mixed-race all-female productionMonday, 18 March 2019
Richard II has become the drama of our times, as it walks us through the impotent convulsions of a weak and vain leader brought down by in-fighting among his men. While the Almeida’s recent production starred Simon Russell Beale as a solipsistic... Read more... |
Betrayal, Harold Pinter Theatre review - Tom Hiddleston anchors a bold, brooding revivalThursday, 14 March 2019
The grand finale of Jamie Lloyd’s remarkable Pinter at the Pinter season is this starry production of one of the writer’s greatest – and certainly most personal – works, inspired by his extramarital affair with Joan Bakewell. The 1978 play is... Read more... |
10 Questions for Candice Edmunds of Theatre Company Vox MotusThursday, 14 March 2019
“When we graduated we were seeing lot of theatre as a literary form,” explains Candice Edmunds of the theatre company Vox Motus, “But we were really excited by it as a visual form and everything we make, from our earliest scratch pieces up to Flight... Read more... |
Admissions, Trafalgar Studios review - topical and whiplash-smartWednesday, 13 March 2019
Joshua Harmon knows how to stir and excite an audience and does that and more with Admissions, newly arrived in the West End as part of the ongoing tsunami of American theatre across the capital just now. Opening the same day as news reports of... Read more... |
The Twilight Zone, Ambassadors Theatre review – retro wit for our new space ageWednesday, 13 March 2019
As China and the US arm-wrestle for world domination in everything from trade to military power, we find ourselves in the throes of a space race again. After China became the first nation to land on the dark side of the moon this January, it seems... Read more... |
Angry Alan, Soho Theatre review - superb monologue about the rise of 'meninism'Monday, 11 March 2019
Penelope Skinner's monologue was a critical and audience hit at last year's Edinburgh Fringe, when its talking point found its moment. Here is Roger, a divorced father who lives in Walnut Creek and has lost his senior management job at AT&T,... Read more... |
Waitress, Adelphi Theatre review - sweet if sometimes silly musical arrives from BroadwayFriday, 08 March 2019
There's a lovely, quietly subversive musical lurking somewhere in Waitress, and for extended passages in the second act that show is allowed to shine through. The flip side means putting up with an often coarse first act that seems to have taken its... Read more... |
Medea, Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, Barbican review - lacerating contemporary tragedyThursday, 07 March 2019
Hallucinatory theatre has struck quite a few times in the Barbican's international seasons. On an epic scale we’ve had the Shakespeare compendiums Kings of War and Roman Tragedies from Toneelgroep Amsterdam, newly merged with the city's... Read more... |
Alys, Always, Bridge Theatre review - mildly perverse but rather dispiritingThursday, 07 March 2019
Okay, so this is the play that will be remembered for the character names that have unusual spellings. As in Alys not Alice, Kyte not Kite, etc. Anyway, Lucinda Coxon's adaptation of journalist Harriet Lane's 2012 bestseller for the Bridge Theatre... Read more... |
Inside Bitch, Royal Court review - brave, hilarious yet very slenderWednesday, 06 March 2019
Dear Clean Break, Thank you very much for your latest, called Inside Bitch, a show which is billed as "a playfully subversive take on the representation of women in prison". It's a great celebration of your 40th anniversary. I saw this at the Royal... Read more... |
