Theatre
Cinderella, London PalladiumThursday, 15 December 2016
What a joy it is to have pantomime back at the Palladium, the first at this glorious theatre in 29 years. And the producers of Cinderella have pulled out the stops; a star-studded cast, a large ensemble, fabulous costumes and a live orchestra make... Read more... |
Love, National TheatreWednesday, 14 December 2016
For a play that ends with 15 minutes of breath-stopping, jaw-dropping theatre that is surely as powerful as anything the departing year has brought us, Alexander Zeldin’s Love has a challenging relationship to the concept of drama itself. For the... Read more... |
Hedda Gabler, National TheatreTuesday, 13 December 2016
Theatre conventions are a funny thing. Today, it’s actually quite difficult to see a modern classic dressed in the clothes and performed on the set of its specific historical period. It has to be in contemporary dress. And in a contemporary setting... Read more... |
Fleabag, Soho TheatreSaturday, 10 December 2016
It’s television, not theatre, that has real power. Real cultural force. Cultural muscle. Take the case of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s one-woman show, Fleabag. First staged in 2013 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, it has appeared twice at the Soho since... Read more... |
Wild Honey, Hampstead TheatreSaturday, 10 December 2016
This Chekhov-intensive year comes to a muted climax with a rare sighting of Wild Honey. Michael Frayn's reappraisal of the Russian master's untitled early text is more commonly known as Platonov. There was a scorching production of the play this... Read more... |
She Loves Me, Menier Chocolate FactoryThursday, 08 December 2016
There are no cartwheels, and no one does the splits, in the new London revival of that most cherishable of Broadway musicals, She Loves Me, which immediately sets Matthew Wright's Menier Chocolate Factory entry apart from the fresh sighting of the... Read more... |
Seasons of love: Rent 20 years onThursday, 08 December 2016
On January 25 1996, after Rent's final dress rehearsal at the off-off-Broadway New York Theater Workshop, its composer Jonathan Larson went home to his scuzzy loft round the corner, switched on the electric kettle and, before the water had boiled,... Read more... |
Strictly Ballroom, West Yorkshire PlayhouseThursday, 08 December 2016
Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom started life as a short stage play in 1984, drawing on its creator’s own experiences in the heady world of amateur ballroom dancing. That the iconic 1992 film exists at all is something of a miracle; production... Read more... |
Once in a Lifetime, Young VicWednesday, 07 December 2016
An amplified crunch in the dark, sound without vision, kicks off this take on Moss Hart and George S Kaufman's light comedy about the advent of the talking pictures. It's a typical Richard Jones leitmotif, not as fraught with horror as the baked... Read more... |
10 Questions for Director Christopher LuscombeTuesday, 06 December 2016
When Shakespeare visits the bearpit of the West End, it is usually in the company of a big name: Judi Dench, Sheridan Smith, Martin Freeman. This Christmas the bard enters the Theatre Royal, Haymarket without any such support. And there is a... Read more... |
Peter Pan, National TheatreMonday, 05 December 2016
The cry "Let's pretend" must have been heard often when J M Barrie played with the Llewelyn Davies boys in Kensington Gardens or at Black Lake Cottage in Surrey. The five sons of Arthur and Sylvia, orphaned as children and adopted by Barrie, almost... Read more... |
Buried Child, Trafalgar StudiosSaturday, 03 December 2016
What stroke of prescience brought two Sam Shepard plays to London in the very month America voted for Trump? The kind of people we’re learning to call the disenfranchised have been Shepard’s focus for the last 40 years, and now they’re global news.... Read more... |
