Theatre Reviews
Jack and the Beanstalk, Birmingham HippodromeWednesday, 31 December 2014
Birmingham Hippodrome claims to stage the UK's biggest pantomime – a proud boast that highlights its productions' West End-level of investment. And this year's venture, Jack and the Beanstalk, is certainly glitzy and star-laden, while the sets and costumes are fabulous, and there's a 3D sequence as well as a live band, so the claim seems a fair one. Read more...
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Best of 2014: TheatreMonday, 29 December 2014
That old canard about there being no good roles for women needed revising time and again in the theatre year just gone, so much so that end-of-year judging panels for the year's best faced far more competition among the female contenders than they did among the men (such supreme all-male ensembles as the My Night with Reg team notwithstanding). Read more... |
Widowers' Houses, Orange Tree TheatreSaturday, 20 December 2014
When the Orange Tree lost all its Arts Council funding earlier this year it was hard to get too outraged. An institution that has made a niche in giving the good folk of Richmond exactly the kind of wig-and-britches, RP theatre that they like is hardly an urgent cause. But this is a new era for the Orange Tree in many ways, not least the arrival of new artistic director Paul Miller. Read more... |
Eric and Little Ern, St James TheatreFriday, 19 December 2014
The audience for this show could probably be divided into to two camps: those who fondly remember watching Morecambe & Wise on ITV or the BBC, and those who weren't even born when Eric Morecambe died in 1984. The latter group may know the double act from repeats, of course (which remind us of how great they were and how many of their successors pale by comparison), but if they are new to Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, then Jonty Stephens and Ian Ashpitel's show is a good entry point. Read more... |
City of Angels, Donmar WarehouseThursday, 18 December 2014
Drop-dead dames, a hard-bitten gumshoe, an ambitious writer and a sleazy movie mogul: this slick, sassy 1989 musical by Cy Coleman, David Zippel and Larry Gelbart serves up two parallel tales of Forties Tinseltown – and both of them are swell. Directing her first musical, Josie Rourke tackles this dazzling collision of noir thriller fantasy and garish Hollywood machinations with seductive brio. Read more... |
Almost, Maine, Park TheatreThursday, 18 December 2014
For a Christmas-weary Brit who's already had it up to here with commercial bonhomie and festive schmaltz, there were going to be barriers to overcome. Here is an avowedly sweet American play – actually nine playlets – on the subject of love, set in snowy Maine, in a small town "that doesn't quite exist". In John Cariani's two-handers, lovers most often – although not quite always – overcomes disappointment, misunderstandings or awkwardness to reach mini-happy endings. Read more... |
The Frozen Scream, Wales Millennium CentreThursday, 18 December 2014
There are moments in this collaboration between performer and theatre impresario Christopher Green and best-selling novelist Sarah Waters, where, rather like with a Stewart Lee stand-up routine, the audience has to make a conscious decision whether they are going to go all the way not so much with the idea presented, but with the mode of presentation. There are times in The Frozen Scream when it feels like the punchline is getting further away rather than closer. Read more... |
The Merchant of Venice, Almeida TheatreTuesday, 16 December 2014
All that glisters is not gold in the casino and television game-show world of Rupert Goold’s American Shakespeare, first staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2011. Not all the accents are gold either, though working on them only seems to have made a splendid ensemble underline the meaning of every word all the better – and having come straight from the often slapdash verse-speaking of the RSC’s Henry IV, that comes as all the more of an invigorating surprise. Read more... |
Henry IV, Parts One and Two, RSC, BarbicanSunday, 14 December 2014
Heritage Shakespeare for the home counties and the tourists is just about alive but not very well at the Royal Shakespeare Company. If that sounds condescending, both audiences deserve better, and get it at Shakespeare’s Globe, where the verse-speaking actually means something and the communication is much more urgent. Read more... |
Golem, 1927, Young VicSaturday, 13 December 2014
British theatre company 1927 celebrate their 10th birthday next year. Over this nearly-decade they have produced just three shows (plus a reimagining of The Magic Flute for Berlin’s Komische Oper). If that seems a little like slacking then you’ve obviously never seen one of their creations. To say they are meticulous is true, but also fails to reflect the sense of imaginative excess, of abundance, that pulses through everything they make. 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*
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