Theatre Reviews
Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare's GlobeFriday, 02 May 2014
Lucy Bailey’s Titus Andronicus doesn’t pull any punches (or stabbings, smotherings and throat-slittings, for that matter). Bursting into a Globe smoky with incense, with shouts and drums, forcing itself at us and on us, this is a production whose physicality is its true language. Read more...
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Sunny Afternoon, Hampstead TheatreFriday, 02 May 2014
The Kinks’ music deserves more than another jukebox musical. Joe Penhall has instead collaborated with Ray Davies on a show about the pain and compromise musicians go through to fill those jukeboxes. Most of The Kinks’ biggest hits are here somewhere. But, in the Hampstead Theatre’s first musical, they’re used in a way reminiscent of the site of two previous Davies productions, Theatre Royal Stratford East. Read more... |
The Believers, Tricycle TheatreSaturday, 26 April 2014
A play about belief? I must admit I was immediately intrigued. After all, most of the people I know are either atheists or don’t usually talk about a world beyond our own. To use a hackneyed phrase, they don’t do God. But what if something happened to a group of us that challenged our mindset? No, that’s much too weak. What would happen if one evening something occurred that took our beliefs and smashed them into a thousand pieces? Like, definitively. Read more... |
Uncle Vanya/Three Sisters, Wyndham's TheatreFriday, 25 April 2014
London has had its fair share recently of Chekhov productions from Russia, though none anywhere near as quietly truthful as these from Moscow's Mossovet State Academic Theatre. Veteran film and theatre director-designer Andrey Konchalovsky understands how lives may fall apart or hang in the balance while human beings sip a cup of tea, strum an out-of-tune piano or push a pram. Read more... |
The Silver Tassie, National TheatreThursday, 24 April 2014
"I don't think it makes a good play, but it's a remarkable one," Sean O'Casey famously remarked of The Silver Tassie, his late-1920s drama about the depredations of war, and how simultaneously right and wrong he was. To be sure, his four-act play set before, during, and after the ravages of World War One isn't "good" if one is referring to something theatrically tidy and manicured and all of a piece. Read more... |
Under Milk Wood, York Theatre RoyalThursday, 24 April 2014
A spiralling stage, horned with two raised prongs. A circular display, mounted on the back wall, which presents the buildings and coastline of a seaside town from a bird’s eye view. Subtle blues, yellows and reds that light up the stage to reflect the time of day. Spirited actors buzzing around like heated molecules in an educational science video as they each take on several roles. Read more... |
Dorian Gray, Riverside StudiosWednesday, 23 April 2014
Adapted by Linnie Reedman and with music by Joe Evans, Oscar Wilde’s only novel – the more scandalous original version serialised in 1890, which Wilde himself later expurgated – finds a new lease of life narrated by one of its minor characters: theatre impresario and Sibyl Vane’s manager Mr Isaacs. Read more... |
Privacy, Donmar WarehouseTuesday, 22 April 2014
How careless are we about the details of our private life? Well, unsurprisingly the answer is “very”. To make this point, playwright James Graham explores the subject not only by means of verbatim testimonies from public figures, but also by involving the audience, taking a look at how members of the public leave a digital footprint on Facebook and Twitter, as well as the personal details we all share when we buy anything online — like theatre tickets. Read more... |
The School for Scheming, Orange Tree TheatreMonday, 21 April 2014
Usually, to describe a play as "of its time" is a criticism. It is suggestive of drama that hasn't aged well, that doesn't work quite as well for today's audience as it did for the original crowd. First performed in 1847, Dion Boucicault's The School for Scheming seems at first glance to fall into this category, with its mannered language, twisting plot and moral overtones. Read more... |
A View From the Bridge, Young VicFriday, 18 April 2014
What is it with the London theatre and this particular Arthur Miller play? In 1987, Michael Gambon reached a career-best peak playing the Italian-American longshoreman, Eddie Carbone, in a defining National Theatre revival of A View From the Bridge directed by Alan Ayckbourn, and Ken Stott was arguably even more scorching in the same role on the West End five years ago. Read more... |
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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.
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