Theatre
Edinburgh 2016: Angel by Henry Naylor/ Horse in Careful/ Lucy McCormick: Triple ThreatTuesday, 23 August 2016
Angel by Henry Naylor, Gilded Balloon ★★★★Rehana tells us what her hometown Kobane, in Syria, is like – “A small border town where nothing happens … like Berwick-on-Tweed” – a typically wry and smart line in Henry Naylor's final instalment of... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2016: Alan Cumming/ The Glass Menagerie/ Mark ThomasMonday, 22 August 2016
Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs ★★★★★ Is this even theatre? Hardly – cabaret, more like, as Scottish actor-author-provocateur Alan Cumming sings his way through songs by Sondheim, Weill, Lady Gaga and more, interspersing them with anecdotes... Read more... |
Groundhog Day, Old VicWednesday, 17 August 2016
The New York theatre is so consistently awash in "star is born" moments when one or another British actor crosses the Atlantic to copious praise that it's lovely for a change to be able to reverse the kudos. And as Phil Connors, the jaded weatherman... Read more... |
Allegro, Southwark PlayhouseTuesday, 16 August 2016
Southwark's golden triangle – the Menier, the Playhouse and the Union – has given us so many "lost" musicals which only a decade or so ago would have been lucky to get in-concert airings. Chief gap-fillers in the Rodgers & Hammerstein oeuvre... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2016: Alix in Wundergarten/4D Cinema/Bucket ListSaturday, 13 August 2016
Alix in Wundergarten ★★★★Think Alan Ayckbourn on acid: a commonplace (well, almost) set-up, exaggerated further and further beyond what we’d ever anticipate. In François Pandolfo’s wild, freewheeling and hugely entertaining satire on the acting... Read more... |
Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, National TheatreThursday, 11 August 2016
If you like the feeling of leaving a show, surrounded by the gently glowing faces of happy fellow audience members, then this is one for you. It’s a musical evening full of joyful singing – mixing classics by Mendelssohn and Bartok with a best-of... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Venice: Shylock comes homeWednesday, 10 August 2016
"In such a night as this..." begins Lorenzo's beautiful speech in Act V of The Merchant of Venice. Watching Shakespeare's play in the Campo del Ghetto Nuovo on a balmy evening under a darkening navy blue sky, with cicadas providing a busy background... Read more... |
Yerma, Young VicSaturday, 06 August 2016
Billie Piper vaults to the top rank of British theatre actresses with Yerma, Australian writer-director Simon Stone's rabidly free rewrite of Lorca's 1934 play that posits its young star as the sort of take-no-prisoners talent whose gifts come not... Read more... |
Young Chekhov, National TheatreThursday, 04 August 2016
"Yes, from life," Nikolai Ivanov (Geoffrey Streatfeild) says in passing of a painting midway through the early Chekhov play that bears his name. But the phrase could serve as the abiding achievement of the largely thrilling triptych of plays that... Read more... |
What are the arts doing here?Sunday, 31 July 2016
The raising of a temporary structure theatre in the middle of the “Jungle” refugee camp in Calais (pictured below) has brought the issue of arts in situations of crisis into sharp focus. This big brave act by two young Brits, opening a creative... Read more... |
Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Theatre Royal HaymarketFriday, 29 July 2016
Think of Holly Golightly, and it’s more than likely that the face you’re picturing is Audrey Hepburn’s. And, while this adaptation by Richard Greenberg of Breakfast at Tiffany's is much closer to Truman Capote’s novella, it doesn’t have an ounce of... Read more... |
Rotterdam, Trafalgar StudiosFriday, 29 July 2016
How many genders are there? The simplistic answer is two, but if you really think that then it’s time to go to the back of the class. In recent years, the rapid growth in perception of the fluidity of gender identity has meant that although there... Read more... |
