Theatre
Booby's Bay, Finborough Theatre review - a bit fishySaturday, 03 February 2018
Carry on out of London past the Finborough Theatre and you hit the A4. Follow it east as it becomes the M4, take a southern turn at Bristol for the M5 and you’re in the West Country. Bude and Bodmin, Liskeard, St Austell, Padstow, Mousehole, Newquay... Read more... |
Julius Caesar, Bridge Theatre review – blood, sweat and bulletsFriday, 02 February 2018
All hail! Shakespeare’s Roman drama may be enjoying something of a resurgence at present, but it rarely proves as vital and arresting in performance as this. Last summer in the US, a staging at the Public Theater caused a furore and frightened away... Read more... |
The Open House, The Print Room review - razor wit, theatrical brioMonday, 29 January 2018
The American family has seldom looked more desperate. Will Eno’s The Open House depicts a gathering of such dismal awfulness that it surely sets precedents for this staple element of American drama. Yet for viewers who relish humour in its most... Read more... |
The Believers Are But Brothers, Bush Theatre review - a gimmick in search of a storySaturday, 27 January 2018
Do boys never leave the playground? Just when I was reasonably sure that the crisis of masculinity was an old-fashioned trope – I mean, so very 1990s – along comes a one-man show that investigates how lonely young men, seething with resentment, surf... Read more... |
Mary Stuart, Duke of York's Theatre review - superb teamwork from Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams in Schiller's thrillerFriday, 26 January 2018
Casting decisions do not usually make gripping theatre. But in Robert Icke’s version of Friedrich Schiller’s 1800 political thriller, newly transferred from the Almeida to the West End, settling the question of which of two actresses will play the... Read more... |
John, National Theatre review - in for the long haul?Thursday, 25 January 2018
On their return home from Ohio to New York, young couple Jenny and Elias (Anneika Rose and Tom Mothersdale, main picture) make a detour to Gettysburg for a few days’ sightseeing. Elias has been fascinated by the town and its bloody history since he... Read more... |
The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, Kneehigh on tour review - sweetest musical ChagallianaThursday, 25 January 2018
Time flies so much more beguilingly in Daniel Jamieson and Emma Rice's 90-minute musical fantasia than it ever has, for me, in Bock and Harnick's Fiddler on the Roof – and the songs aren't bad, either. The inspiration here – and inspiration's the... Read more... |
Beginning, Ambassadors Theatre review - funny and richly moving comedy about lonelinessWednesday, 24 January 2018
Awkwardness is a challenging effect in drama, and one so rewarding when it works. When the movement isn’t easy, when the dialogue doesn't flow; when, with emotional revelations broken and coming with difficulty, the pauses speak more powerfully than... Read more... |
Lady Windermere's Fan, Vaudeville Theatre review - Wilde abandonedTuesday, 23 January 2018
Imagine, if you will, discovering a ninth-rate old melodrama about upper-class nonsense, hiring a bunch of actors including a couple of starry friends big in comedy and putting it on stage. And then realising there’s a paying audience so, to make it... Read more... |
Jeremy Irons: 'I was never very beautiful' - interviewMonday, 22 January 2018
In 2016 the Bristol Old Vic turned 250. To blow out the candles, England’s oldest continually running theatre summoned home one of its most splendid alumni. Jeremy Irons – Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited, an Oscar winner as Claus von Bülow in... Read more... |
The Birthday Party, Harold Pinter Theatre review - starry cast create a stunning masterpieceFriday, 19 January 2018
Is modernism dead and buried? Anyone considering the long haul of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party from resounding flop in 1958 to West End crowd-pleasing classic today might be forgiven for wondering whether self-consciously difficult literary... Read more... |
All's Well That Ends Well, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - feisty, prickly and topical, as wellThursday, 18 January 2018
It's the people who are problematic, not the play. That's one take-away sentiment afforded by Caroline Byrne's sparky and provocative take on All's Well That Ends Well, that ever-peculiar Shakespeare "comedy" (really?) whose title is in ironic... Read more... |
