Theatre Reviews
King Lear, RSC, RoundhouseThursday, 27 January 2011
But this comes at the expense of scale, both in characterisation - Jacobi is also simply too feathery - and in terms of space and time. We don't feel the outdoors at the Donmar, ever see and hear boorish Lear's knights, properly sense the passage of years from Cordelia's banishment to her return, or suffer the weight of battle. Read more... |
Three Sisters, Sovremennik, Noël Coward TheatreTuesday, 25 January 2011
Anyone who's imbibed the common wisdom that Russians play Chekhov for the comedy - one eye wet, the other dry and smiling - might have been alarmed to find the Moscow Sovremennik Theatre's second London offering so doomy and subdued. And the more subdued it got, the more the majority of the company went in for what's become its trademark mumbling. Read more... |
Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales, Lyric HammersmithTuesday, 25 January 2011
The spinning roulette wheel, the revolver, the devil’s mask, and above all that lissom semi-naked female gyrating in silhouette against flickering infernal flames: we all remember the opening titles to Tales of the Unexpected, which made its first TV appearance in 1979. Read more... |
Little Platoons, Bush TheatreMonday, 24 January 2011
The second play in this venue’s ambitious Schools mini-season is the first drama to tackle the currently contentious subject of Free Schools. While the earlier play, John Donnelly’s The Knowledge, was a powerful account of how a young teacher is blooded in her encounters with a group of unruly kids, the second, by Steve Waters, focuses more on parents, and shows how a fortysomething teacher, Rachel, joins a group of middle-class west Londoners in order to set up a Free School. Read more... |
Less Than Kind, Jermyn Street TheatreSunday, 23 January 2011
“There’s no situation in the world that can’t be passed off with small talk,” claims hostess extraordinaire Olivia Brown in Terence Rattigan’s Less Than Kind. It’s a maxim that could well serve as Rattigan’s theatrical epitaph, the philosophy that allows him to smuggle desperation, frustration and steel-capped social critique in amongst the silk peignoirs and smoking jackets of his drama. Read more... |
Into the Whirlwind, Sovremennik, Noël Coward TheatreFriday, 21 January 2011
Tradition has often bedded down very comfortably in the Russian performing arts, which ought to be an asset in the current vortex but brings mixed blessings. Detailed ensemble work, the Moscow Sovremennik Theatre's strongest asset, takes time to develop, yet actors with roles for life may be slow to yield to fresh blood. Read more... |
Becky Shaw, Almeida TheatreFriday, 21 January 2011
Becky Shaw is lonely, unattractively needy, nervous, hungry for affection, affirmation, security. We are all Becky Shaw. That’s a gross generalisation, of course – but then, generalisation is the language of Gina Gionfriddo’s play, which premiered in Louisville, Kentucky, prior to a 2009 off-Broadway run. Read more... |
Seduction: An Erotic Black Comedy, Above the Stag TheatreThursday, 20 January 2011
Have you ever found onstage nudity sexy? Unlike a friend of mine, for whom the epiphany of the National Theatre's Bent was the giant member in the first five minutes, I honestly haven't. Sensuous, once, in the Maly Theatre's skinny-dipping Platonov, and even sweet, in ATS Theatre's strong adaptation of Forster's Maurice. Since the... Read more... |
Twelfth Night, National TheatreThursday, 20 January 2011
Set at a pivotal point in Shakespeare's canon, Twelfth Night is a glass-half-full kind of play. Is it a joyous, clear-eyed, compassionate comedy of human foibles by a writer reaching maturity, a wild and crazy ride through a season of carnival misrule and role reversal? Or, on the other hand, an ominous harbinger of the troubling, darkening work still to come? Read more... |
Tiger Country, Hampstead TheatreWednesday, 19 January 2011
Playwright Nina Raine has a gift for evocative play titles. Her 2006 debut was called Rabbit, and her sellout success at the Royal Court last year was Tribes. This time, we seem to be on safari with Tiger Country, but appearances can be deceptive. 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.
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