Theatre Reviews
Gabriel, Shakespeare's GlobeSunday, 21 July 2013
If there’s a more thinly written, loosely structured and hammily acted play than Samuel Adamson’s panorama of Purcell’s London, then I have yet to endure it. Baffling, because this is the writer who brought us Southwark Fair, a lively depiction of the local scene which never so much as hinted as the village-institute clichés and banalities piled high here in a production by Dominic Dromgoole which does little to finesse the sorry situation. Read more...
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Josephine and I, Bush TheatreSunday, 21 July 2013
Cush Jumbo could very easily have put on a hit show about Josephine Baker. There would have been a chorus line of flappers, replete with spangles and feathers. She would have belted out some of the more enduringly popular hits from Baker’s glory days in Paris. Perhaps the infamous banana skirt would even have made an appearance in what could, essentially, have been a crowd-pleasing jukebox musical. Read more... |
The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable, Temple StudiosThursday, 18 July 2013
A decaying London outpost of the Hollywood movie-making machine, where dreams are spun on celluloid, and reality and fantasy intertwine in a nightmarish danse macabre of desperation and dark desire... that’s the concept behind this new immersive piece by the acclaimed site-specific innovators Punchdrunk. In execution, the experience is rather less mesmerising. Read more... |
A Season in the Congo, Young VicWednesday, 17 July 2013
No theatre in London, surely, has offered us more miracles of transformed space than the Young Vic. Small it may be, but its productions often feel big in every way, and none more so than Joe Wright’s total-theatre take on Aimé Césaire’s A Season in the Congo. Read more... |
The Color Purple, Menier Chocolate FactoryTuesday, 16 July 2013
A joyful noise? Hell, yes. Alice Walker’s Pulitzer-winning 1982 feminist novel set in Georgia and spanning more than 30 years is crammed with suffering, injustice and cruelty. But in its characters’ journeys towards a realisation of identity – racial, sexual, spiritual – it is glorious. Read more... |
Too Clever by Half, Royal Exchange, ManchesterTuesday, 16 July 2013
You know it must be the holiday season when comic caper-loving Told by an Idiot run riot in the Royal Exchange. Expect the theatre of the absurd, with glimpses of Keystone Kops and Marx Brothers-style zaniness. This time, director Paul Hunter has delved into 19th-century Russia and come up with Alexandr Ostrovsky’s self-styled “savagely funny comedy” Too Clever By Half, in the late Rodney Ackland’s adaptation. Read more... |
The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, Royal Court Theatre LocalTuesday, 16 July 2013
There’s a united nations of Great Britain feel about this site-specific Royal Court show: it is a National Theatre of Scotland piece played at the London Welsh Centre as a co-production with the top English new writing company. It’s an entertaining treat — a riotous romp of rhyming couplets, devilish encounters and wild karaoke — curated by Vicky Featherstone, formerly head of the NTS, which premiered the show in Glasgow in 2011, and now supremo of the Royal Court. Read more... |
The Machine, Campfield Market Hall, ManchesterSunday, 14 July 2013
It isn’t so much man versus machine as man versus the man behind the machine. Famously, in 1997 the Russian chess grandmaster and world champion Garry Kasparov faced IBM's supercomputer RS/600SP, known as Deep Blue, in New York City. But behind the faceless machine was another genius, its Taiwan-born architect Dr Fen Hsiung Hsu. Both had much at stake – and not just a game of chess. Read more... |
Circle Mirror Transformation, Royal Court Theatre LocalSaturday, 13 July 2013
With site-specific shows it’s a natural urge to start by reviewing the location. And I’m not strong enough to resist this temptation. So here goes. This new piece by American playwright Annie Baker takes place at the Rose Lipman building in Haggerston, north London. This is a community centre, and first impressions are not encouraging: duck-egg blue walls, dirty windows, faded carpet squares, discoloured ceiling tiles, encrusted neon strips, cluttered notice boards. Read more... |
Dusa, Fish, Stas and Vi, Finborough TheatreFriday, 12 July 2013
Some plays have such historic significance that it is surprising that they are not revived more often. I blame the obsession with novelty that characterises our culture. So it’s great to see this venue, under its ever-enterprising supremo Neil McPherson, stepping up to the plate and offering us the late Pam Gems’s 1976 feminist classic, Dusa, Fish, Stas and Vi, a play that is more often found hidden in the history books than out in the open on stage. 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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