Theatre
Old Bridge, Bush Theatre review - powerful, poetic and profoundWednesday, 03 November 2021![]() Is the Bosnian conflict of 1992–95 the war that Europe forgot? Maybe, although most fans of new writing for the British stage will remember its massacres as the inciting incident for Sarah Kane’s 1995 modern classic, Blasted. Certainly, this... Read more... |
Brian and Roger: A Highly Offensive Play, Menier Chocolate Factory review - not for the squeamishWednesday, 03 November 2021![]() What counts as offensive in these days of cancel culture? Ham-fisted pronoun usage? Culturally appropriated hairstyles? To remind us that other options are still available, the Menier’s new space, the Mixing Room, is staging a world premiere of a... Read more... |
'Night, Mother, Hampstead Theatre review - despair in sotto-voceTuesday, 02 November 2021![]() ‘Night, Mother remains a play of piercing pessimism, something that’s not necessarily the same as tragedy, though the two often run congruently. The inexorability of the development of Marsha Norman’s 1983 Pulitzer Prize winner certainly recalls the... Read more... |
The Magician's Elephant, Royal Shakespeare Theatre review - family musical doesn't fully deliverSaturday, 30 October 2021![]() Trigger warnings have become commonplace in theatres these days, but few chill the blood like the description "a new musical" on a playbill. There are so many things to go wrong, so few ways to get things right and, never far away, the dissenters... Read more... |
albatross., Playground Theatre review - interconnected intimaciesWednesday, 27 October 2021![]() "You need to get better at communicating", says one character to another in Isley Lynn’s albatross. Indeed, the same advice would fare well with many of those in the Anglo-American Lynn’s new play, where miscommunication plagues a range of... Read more... |
A Place for We, Park Theatre review - perceptive, but rather flabbyWednesday, 27 October 2021I’ve lived in Brixton, south London, for about 40 years now, so any play that looks at the gentrification of the area is, for me, definitely a must. Like many other places in the metropolis, the nature of the urban landscape has changed both due to... Read more... |
Royal Opera House lullabies for Little AmalTuesday, 26 October 2021![]() “I want to tell her that people will be good,” Tewodros Aregawe of Phosphoros Theatre confided to us as Little Amal closed her eyes on the giant bed made up for her in the Paul Hamlyn Hall, “that all the people with kind eyes who have walked... Read more... |
Vanara, Hackney Empire review - fine singing, but a plodding book and one-pitch score in this new musicalTuesday, 26 October 2021![]() Two tribes, both alike in dignity in fair Vanara, trade goods and insults in a post-apocalyptic world in which fire is known to The Kogallisk but not to The Pana. When The Oroznah, a shaman respected by both feuding factions, foretells a long winter... Read more... |
The Shark Is Broken, New Ambassadors Theatre review - how Spielberg's first blockbuster almost didn't happenSaturday, 23 October 2021![]() Jaws was the Moby Dick of late 20th century capitalism, a fantasy about fear and the unknown for a society that had rarely felt more secure and powerful. Despite the tremors caused by the Watergate scandal and the loss of the Vietnam war, the US... Read more... |
Grenfell: Value Engineering, The Tabernacle review - bruising, necessary theatreWednesday, 20 October 2021![]() Grenfell: Value Engineering isn’t actually a play. It’s an edited version of the testimony heard by the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, particularly Phase 2, from January 2020 to July 2021. Along with director/producer Nicolas Kent, Richard Norton-Taylor... Read more... |
Love and Other Acts of Violence, Donmar Warehouse review - snappy and tightly intelligent but flawedTuesday, 19 October 2021![]() This is simultaneously a love story and an archaeology of hate, a sparky, spiky encounter between two individuals whose chemistry proves as destructive as it is explosive.Love and Other Acts of Violence opens with a comedic encounter on a dance... Read more... |
Rice, Orange Tree Theatre review - whip-smart, but unsure where it standsTuesday, 19 October 2021![]() “Careful, there’s a hole in the floor.” The warning’s an unusual one, passed along conscientiously by the stewards at the door of the tiny Orange Tree Theatre.The hole in question is long and angular and will soon be filled with water, stretching... Read more... |
