Theatre
The Son, Duke of York's Theatre review - a piercing drama of depressionTuesday, 03 September 2019
A tale of teenage depression and its family resonances, Florian Zeller’s The Son has a devastating simplicity. It’s the final part of a loose trilogy, following on from the playwright’s The Father and The Mother, but the new play eschews the... Read more... |
Bartholomew Fair, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - Jonson's chaotic slice of 17th-century lifeFriday, 30 August 2019
It was a bold choice by director Blanche McIntyre to stage Ben Jonson's seldom performed, sprawling slice-of-life play in the bijou Sam Wanamaker Playhouse rather than Shakespeare's Globe's main stage – even if she has pared down both the script and... Read more... |
Fleabag, Wyndham's Theatre review - superb swansong for modern classicThursday, 29 August 2019
We're saying goodbye to a much treasured friend. Fleabag will live on, of course – other actresses have and will inhabit the role – but Phoebe Waller-Bridge, its creator, has said this short run at Wyndham's Theatre is the last time she will perform... Read more... |
The Secret River, National Theatre review - turbulent tale of Australia's pastWednesday, 28 August 2019
Neil Armfield’s resonant, turbulent production of Kate Grenville’s classic Australian novel The Secret River sing out from the stage of the Olivier like an epic, with its conflicts, culture clashes, and quest for new territories. But there are no... Read more... |
Appropriate, Donmar Warehouse review - fraught family reunion blisteringly toldFriday, 23 August 2019
You can’t fail to feel the ghosts in Appropriate at the Donmar Warehouse: they are there in the very timbers of the ancient Southern plantation house that is the setting for Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s fraught – and often very funny – family... Read more... |
The Doctor, Almeida Theatre review - Robert Icke's long goodbyeWednesday, 21 August 2019
After six years, associate director Robert Icke bids farewell to the Almeida Theatre. In this time he has pioneered contemporary versions of classic stories, such as 1984, Oresteia, Uncle Vanya, Mary Stuart and Hamlet with Andrew Scott. Against the... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2019 reviews: The Red/ Gone Full HavishamSaturday, 17 August 2019
The Red Pleasance Dome ★★★★Comic Marcus Brigstocke has spoken in the past about his addictions and now he has written this two-hander, which he directs, that goes some way to explain the constant internal dialogue he and others like him... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2019 review: How Not to DrownFriday, 16 August 2019
Urgent, fast-paced, seemingly never pausing for breath, How Not to Drown is a real-life boy’s own adventure, an appeal for compassion towards refugees, and an interrogation of nationality and identity. That’s quite a mix for a show of 100 minutes.... Read more... |
Once on This Island, Southwark Playhouse review - folkloric Caribbean musical charmsThursday, 15 August 2019
As British summer really kicks in (umbrellas at the ready), our thoughts might turn fondly to the sunny Caribbean. Good timing, then, for the return of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s 1990 musical set in the French Antilles. Based on Rosa Guy’s... Read more... |
Edinburgh International Festival 2019 review: Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial SalvationWednesday, 14 August 2019
It’s the end of the world as we know it. At least according to Miles, scientist turned messiah, who lost his son in an accident at a frozen lake, and who experienced visions of an impending apocalypse in his subsequent coma.He’s established a colony... Read more... |
Edinburgh International Festival 2019 review: RootsTuesday, 13 August 2019
A fat cat who gobbles up everything in sight. A king who tests his wife’s fidelity with increasingly horrific trials. A man whose flatmate is Poverty. It’s hard to ignore the scathing contemporary resonances in theatre company 1927’s sly, witty new... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2019 reviews: Darren McGarvey AKA Loki: Scotland Today / Scottee: ClassTuesday, 13 August 2019
Darren McGarvey AKA Loki: Scotland Today The Stand's New Town Theatre ★★★★★ Darren McGarvey (aka Loki the Scottish Rapper) won the Orwell Prize for political writing in 2018 for his book Poverty Safari, a startling,... Read more... |
