Theatre Reviews
Brighton Festival: Operation Black Antler, secret locationSunday, 08 May 2016
You’ve arrived at a party in a pub, tagging along with a guy you just met. You’re attempting to catch the barman’s eye, while scouting for a friendly face. The band declares that everyone must dance to the next one, and you wish you’d ordered a double. A man you’d like to speak with keeps walking past, but you can’t think of a single opening line. This situation is seriously awkward. And that’s before you factor in the real reason you’re here. Read more... |
Lawrence After Arabia, Hampstead TheatreSaturday, 07 May 2016
There’s something endlessly fascinating about T E Lawrence. In popular culture, he has been immortalised by Peter O’Toole’s dazzlingly blue-eyed performance in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, but is there more to this English eccentric than freedom fighting on the side of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks? Read more... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare's GlobeFriday, 06 May 2016
In this 400th anniversary year, amid what feels like 400 million shows and tributes, it’s increasingly difficult for a Shakespeare production to stand out. No such problem for Emma Rice’s opening salvo, which responds to those critical of her appointment in resolute fashion. Never thought you’d see fireman’s poles, amplification, Indian sitar and disco lights at the Globe? Think again. Read more... |
An Enemy of the People, Chichester Festival TheatreThursday, 05 May 2016
If Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes were (a lot) more like Ibsen, our national viewing habits would be in good hands. But then, as the hero of An Enemy of the People discovers, presuming to know what’s good for the public is a dangerous game. In his first full stage role in 12 years, the Earl of Grantham, AKA Hugh Bonneville, returns to his local Chichester Festival Theatre as a whistleblower who thinks he’s doing his town a favour. Read more... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Middle Temple HallTuesday, 03 May 2016
You rarely see a full production of Shakespeare's dream play so magical it brings tears to the eyes. But then you don't often get 42 players and 14 voices joining the cast to adorn the text with Mendelssohn's bewitching incidental music, plus the Overture composed 16 years earlier – certainly the most perfect masterpiece ever written by a 17-year-old. Read more... |
The Iliad, Royal Lyceum Theatre, EdinburghThursday, 28 April 2016
And so, it’s farewell to Mark Thomson with his final production as artistic director of Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre, after 13 years in the job (incoming artistic director David Grieg unveils his new season next week). Read more... |
Elegy, Donmar WarehouseThursday, 28 April 2016
Playwright Nick Payne has carved out a distinctive dramatic territory – neuroscience. In his big 2012 hit, Constellations, he explored the effect on memory of living with a brain tumour, while two years later in Incognito, the story of what happened to Albert Einstein’s brain was married to the case of a man who had parts of his grey matter removed to cure his epileptic seizures. Read more... |
Travels with My Aunt, Chichester Festival TheatreWednesday, 27 April 2016
Smoking weed on the Orient Express. Drinking at a brothel in Paris. Tricking the military police in Istanbul. Smuggling a Da Vinci into Paraguay. As travel itineraries go, it’s certainly no Saga break. But then Graham Greene’s Augusta is no ordinary literary aunt. The antidote to Oscar Wilde’s Augusta Bracknell, Greene’s 75-year-old heroine is a lusty free spirit who terrorises Victorian values and turns her nose up at the law. Read more... |
Show Boat, New London TheatreTuesday, 26 April 2016
The Cotton Blossom looks mighty fine in its latest London iteration, Daniel Evans's winning Sheffield Theatre revival of Show Boat joining the ongoing runs of Guys and Dolls and Funny Girl to offer West End audiences a synoptic view of Broadway musical history. Read more... |
Doctor Faustus, Duke of York's TheatreTuesday, 26 April 2016
Blood, sexual violence, power games and lashings of nudity. Not Game of Thrones, whose new season has just premiered (yes, he’s really dead. Well, for now) – and whose shadow Kit Harington is trying to escape – but Jamie Lloyd’s graphic take on Marlowe. It’s a production determined to hold your attention, and, thanks to its comic carnival of excess, largely successful in that pursuit. Read more... |
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★★★★★
‘A compulsive, involving, emotionally stirring evening – theatre’s answer to a page-turner.’
The Observer, Kate Kellaway
Direct from a sold-out season at Kiln Theatre the five star, hit play, The Son, is now playing at the Duke of York’s Theatre for a strictly limited season.
★★★★★
‘This final part of Florian Zeller’s trilogy is the most powerful of all.’
The Times, Ann Treneman
Written by the internationally acclaimed Florian Zeller (The Father, The Mother), lauded by The Guardian as ‘the most exciting playwright of our time’, The Son is directed by the award-winning Michael Longhurst.
Book by 30 September and get tickets from £15*
with no booking fee.
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