Theatre
Oleanna, Arts Theatre review - Mamet on power and tragedyThursday, 29 July 2021
Before seeing this play, I decided to eat a steak. It seemed the right culinary equivalent to David Mamet, one of America’s most provocative and, at times, especially past times, red-blooded writers. This play, whose British premiere was at the... Read more... |
The Two Character Play, Hampstead Theatre review - tender, poetic and piercingly cruelTuesday, 27 July 2021
It’s the trivia question no one ever thought to ask: where was the only Tennessee Williams play premiered outside America first performed? The unlikely answer (so unlikely that even artistic director Roxana Silbert apparently didn’t know it until... Read more... |
Lava, Bush Theatre review - poetic writing, mesmerically performedThursday, 22 July 2021
What’s in a name? In Benedict Lombe’s incendiary debut play at the Bush Theatre, the answer to this question encompasses a whole continent, an entire existential experience - the Black experience, to be exact - though not in the way that "roots... Read more... |
Hamlet, Windsor Theatre Royal review - the age is out of jointThursday, 22 July 2021
So it wasn’t Cinderella but Hamlet who was first out of the post-lockdown starting blocks – Andrew Lloyd Webber’s much trumpeted musical premiere being foiled by a ping at the weekend. Instead the historic first curtain-up was 20 miles up the River... Read more... |
ANNA X, Harold Pinter Theatre review - lacking in substanceTuesday, 20 July 2021
There just isn’t enough there, with ANNA X. Daniel Raggett’s production is the third and final of the RE:EMERGE season at the Harold Pinter Theatre, with Emma Corrin of Lady Di fame in the lead. The graphic design – the brightly-striped faces of... Read more... |
Mr and Mrs Nobody, Jermyn Street Theatre review – as comfortable as afternoon tea with jam puffsTuesday, 20 July 2021
If you’re looking for a distraction from the apocalyptic headlines that seem to be the norm right now, then it may appeal to descend into the pleasantly air-conditioned surroundings of Jermyn Street Theatre and take a trip to 1888. Here you will be... Read more... |
South Pacific, Chichester Festival Theatre review - gloriously revived and also refreshedSaturday, 17 July 2021
We’ve come to learn what socially distanced means but, 72 years ago, the distance that concerned Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers was that between racial groups in the United States. With a catalogue of hits behind them, they turned to ... Read more... |
Last Easter, Orange Tree Theatre review - over-performative and strangely off-puttingSaturday, 17 July 2021
Last Easter has become a lot more relatable since it was forced to postpone this run at the Orange Tree Theatre, originally scheduled for 2020. It’s about a group of theatre-makers – an actor, a drag performer, a prop-maker, and a lighting designer... Read more... |
King Lear, The Grange Festival review - friendship in adversityFriday, 16 July 2021
Much has been made of the raison d’etre for this King Lear as the slowly gestated, Covid-delayed brainchild of the director Keith Warner, assembling a company of acting singers who have made their names on the opera stage. How this played out on the... Read more... |
The Dumb Waiter, Old Vic: In Camera review - more in sorrow than in angerSaturday, 10 July 2021
Pinter wrote The Dumb Waiter in 1957 (although it wasn't seen in London until 1960) the year before The Birthday Party received its notorious première at the Lyric Hammersmith. When a friend described them both as political plays, about power and... Read more... |
Romeo & Juliet, Shakespeare's Globe review - unsatisfactory mix of clumsy and edgySaturday, 10 July 2021
"It is dangerous for women to go outside alone," blares the electronic sign above the stage of the new Romeo and Juliet at Shakespeare's Globe. This disquieting sentiment obviously takes some of its resonance from the Sarah Everard case, yet it also... Read more... |
The Invisible Hand, Kiln Theatre review - balanced on a knife edgeThursday, 08 July 2021
A lot’s changed since Kiln Theatre boss Indhu Rubasingham directed The Invisible Hand’s first UK outing in 2016, not least the theatre’s name (it was known as the Tricycle back then). But in Rubasingham’s capable hands, American Ayad Akhtar’s taut... Read more... |
