Theatre Reviews
The Thrill of Love, St James TheatreThursday, 04 April 2013
Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, is a cultural icon, the image of the peroxide blonde who spells big trouble. An influence on Diana Dors in the 1956 film Yield to the Night, she was played by Miranda Richardson in Dance with a Stranger in 1985. Last year, a new biography, Carol Anne Lee’s A Fine Day for a Hanging, was published. Now, playwright Amanda Whittington tracks down this fraught and troubling figure. Read more...
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Molly Sweeney, The Print RoomWednesday, 03 April 2013
Molly Sweeney has been blind since early childhood. Supported by her understanding father, she has grown into a confident, independent woman. Then her new husband Frank and an ambitious ophthalmologist, Mr Rice, suggest that it might be possible to restore Molly's sight and she undergoes two operations. Partially sighted, she has to learn how to find her way in a mysterious new world where nothing is as she has experienced it. Read more... |
Before the Party, Almeida TheatreFriday, 29 March 2013
Faced with an unfamiliar play, it’s usually hard to spot exactly where the writer stopped and the director started. Not here. This is one of those occasions where a director’s voice is considerably and almost constantly louder than the playwright’s. You might think you’re seeing Rodney Ackland’s Before The Party but what you’re getting is Matthew Dunster’s assault upon it. |
Ryoji Ikeda: superposition, Barbican TheatreThursday, 28 March 2013
It’s not often that a performance’s technological properties leaves you simply slack-jawed. Robert Wilson’s very long Swedish-language version of Strindberg’s A Dream Play did – at the same venue, though this time in 2001 – when the surtitle machines broke down (the audience gave an audible gasp of horror and then settled to its collective fate), but that was for altogether different reasons. Read more... |
The Low Road, Royal Court TheatreThursday, 28 March 2013
“My honest instinct,” says Jim, the hero of Bruce Norris’s The Low Road, “is one of resentment.” And while this contemporary fable of industrious bees, aka capitalist speculators, is set in the past, and is full of good jokes, it is also laced with emotions that are a tougher sell. Here a humorous tale of a life of entrepreneurship comes hand-in-hand with some satire that is bitter as well as being funny. Read more... |
Peter and Alice, Noël Coward TheatreTuesday, 26 March 2013
What becomes of children “born out of sadness and loneliness”, exiled from Wonderland or Neverland, longing for remembered golden afternoons, but forced to confront the chilly twilight of adulthood? This new play by John Logan brings Alice Liddell and Peter Llewelyn Davies – the real-life inspirations for Lewis Carroll’s Alice books and JM Barrie’s Peter Pan – face to face, not just which each other, but with their creators and their fictional selves. Read more... |
The Bloody Ballad, Riverfront Theatre, NewportMonday, 25 March 2013
If you’re one of those who always felt the opening credits of True Blood held more substance and delicious dark corners than the comic-book titillation of the programme that followed, then The Bloody Ballad could be exactly what you’re looking for. Read more... |
Three Birds, Bush TheatreSaturday, 23 March 2013
The best horror stories take place in mundane surroundings. The envelope of the ordinary gives a context of credibility to the practically incredible. In Janice Okoh’s new play, which won the 2011 Bruntwood prize at the Royal Exchange theatre in Manchester, and was seen there earlier this year, everyday life at first seems, well, entirely everyday, but soon things get worse. Much worse. In fact, almost unbelievably bad. Horror indeed. Read more... |
The Book of Mormon, Prince of Wales TheatreFriday, 22 March 2013
It’s one of the most anticipated theatrical openings of the year, with tickets allegedly changing hands for astronomical sums and some pundits rushing to issue dire warnings of the depths of its lewdness and its shattering shock factor well before its official first night. So can this musical by Robert Lopez and the incorrigible South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker possibly live up the hype? Read more... |
Steptoe and Son, Lyric HammersmithThursday, 21 March 2013
What’s this? Harold and Albert turfed out of their old stamping ground of Shepherd’s Bush and turned into West Country natives? Any change to a cherished sitcom comes at the theatre director’s peril, but a change of accent? Somehow, this sounds a jarring note more dissonant than any changes to script or action, though, in fact, Emma Rice’s adaptation has remained remarkably faithful to Galton and Simpson’s original 1962 pilot, as well as to three later episodes. 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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