Theatre
The Lorax, Old Vic Theatre review - a sage tale for young theatre goersWednesday, 25 October 2017
With mentions of Theresa May, cricket jumpers and DMs, Trump slurs and a host of characters with Northern accents, The Old Vic's return version of Dr Seuss' The Lorax, proves itself to be poles apart from the recent, popular Universal Pictures movie... Read more... |
Witness for the Prosecution, London County Hall review - favourable verdict on Agatha Christie classicTuesday, 24 October 2017
Some site-specific theatre feels like a really good fit. You could say, in this case, that it seems like poetic justice. Agatha Christie’s 1953 play, Witness for the Prosecution, used to be a rep standard, and now gets a compelling new production in... Read more... |
Of Kith and Kin, Bush Theatre, review - comic but confused gay surrogacy dramaSaturday, 21 October 2017
A new baby is like an alien invasion: it blows your mind and it colonises your world. For any couple, parenthood can be both exalting and devastating, with the stress hugging the relationship so tightly that eventually all its lies pop out. In his... Read more... |
The Lady from the Sea, Donmar Warehouse review - Nikki Amuka-Bird luminous in a sympathetic ensembleThursday, 19 October 2017
What a profoundly beautiful play is Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea. It stands in relation to the earlier, relatively confined A Doll’s House, Ghosts and Rosmersholm as Shakespeare's late romances do to the more claustrophobic tragedies. And with what... Read more... |
The End of Hope, Soho Theatre review - initially bold but not quite enoughThursday, 19 October 2017
In David Ireland's new hour-long two-hander – a co-production between Soho Theatre and west London's Orange Tree – two strangers, Janet and Dermot, meet for a casual hook-up arranged over the internet. The glitch, or at least... Read more... |
Venus in Fur, Theatre Royal Haymarket review - pain and pleasure in a starry two-handerWednesday, 18 October 2017
A hit on Broadway, David Ives’s steamy two-hander now boasts Natalie Dormer and David Oakes, well-known for their screen work, in its West End cast, with Patrick Marber on directing duties. That plus the tabloid panting over Dormer’s skimpy S&M... Read more... |
Albion, Almeida Theatre, review – Victoria Hamilton’s epic performanceWednesday, 18 October 2017
Prolific writer Mike Bartlett is the most impressive penman to have emerged in British theatre in the past decade. The trouble is that his work is so uneven. Although he wrote the amazingly imaginative play, Earthquakes in London, and the... Read more... |
Fierce: the Birmingham festival which reaches out to Europe and beyondWednesday, 18 October 2017
Since its inception in 1997 Fierce, Birmingham’s International Festival of Live Art & Performance, has championed the work of performance makers not often seen in Britain. The pantheon of body artists under Mark Ball’s era as director included... Read more... |
A Woman of No Importance, Vaudeville - Eve Best is superb as a woman scornedTuesday, 17 October 2017
In a rather clever wheeze, Dominic Dromgoole, former artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe – who therefore knows a thing or two about historically accurate stagings – has established Classic Spring, a new company dedicated to celebrating work by... Read more... |
David Oakes: 'I haven’t done anything as bad as my characters'Monday, 16 October 2017
“He has something of Dillane about him.” Thus Patrick Marber on David Oakes. “I rate him very highly indeed. One of the very best of his generation.” Audiences at the Theatre Royal Haymarket will be able to judge for themselves this autumn. Oakes,... Read more... |
Beginning, National Theatre review - assured, intimate, but short of surprisesSaturday, 14 October 2017
Loneliness: in the age of the digital hook-up and the flaunting narcissism of social media, it’s become a strange sort of taboo – a secret shame, the unsexy side of singledom. So it’s good to see playwright David Eldridge putting it centre-stage in... Read more... |
The Seagull, Lyric Hammersmith review – is Lesley Sharp's Irina a sex addict?Saturday, 14 October 2017
The awful mother, the celebrity-obsessed teenager, the mediocre old writer who wants some young sex in his life – there are motifs in Chekhov’s The Seagull that fly merrily from one century to another, and Simon Stephens and Sean Holmes’ new modern-... Read more... |
