Theatre
Small Island, National Theatre At Home review – big-hearted story hits every beatFriday, 19 June 2020
A British-Jamaican man is confused. It's the Second World War, and he signed up for the RAF on the understanding that he would serve as a pilot overseas. But instead he's ended up as ground crew in a grey Lincolnshire village. "You are overseas,... Read more... |
Theatre Lockdown Special 10: Epic plays from the National Theatre and Broadway alongside voices raised in protestThursday, 18 June 2020
As lockdown continues, National Theatre at Home has announced its final sequence of plays, and several of the very best are being saved for last. That certainly applies to this week's offering, Small Island, whose dissection of Britain's racist past... Read more... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare's Globe online review - a seasonal treatTuesday, 16 June 2020
What could be better for a lockdown summer night "out" than a virtual visit to Shakespeare's Globe? Simultaneously in a theatre and the open air, we can share the visible enjoyment of hundreds of others, the very opposite of self-isolation and... Read more... |
The Madness of George III, National Theatre at Home review – a powerful, elegant depictionFriday, 12 June 2020
It has been the fate of George III – who on many levels was a visionary and accomplished monarch – to go down in history as a comic figure, most famed for losing first America and then his mind. This Nottingham Playhouse production tells his story... Read more... |
Theatre Lockdown Special 9: Alan Bennett revisited, and so is OzThursday, 11 June 2020
The government may occupy shifting sands when it comes to handling Covid-19, but the arts thank heavens continue to step up to the plate with a dizzying array of online options. This week's output mixes a soul musical from 1970s Broadway alongside a... Read more... |
Reasons To Be Cheerful, Graeae review - raunchy working-class nostalgiaWednesday, 10 June 2020
If any musical can live up to this title in these troubled times, it must be this show from Graeae, a theatre company whose mission is to champion the work of Deaf and disabled artists. Founded in 1980, its name alludes to the three sisters of Greek... Read more... |
Coriolanus, National Theatre at Home review – gritty 21st century updateFriday, 05 June 2020
An arrogant leader contemptuous of his people. Could there be a more perfect timing for Josie Rourke’s taut, visceral production of Coriolanus? As opinion polls reveal that following Cummings’ flit to Durham, trust in the government has nose-... Read more... |
Theatre Lockdown Special 8: A film star plays tough, and several familiar titles are examined anewThursday, 04 June 2020
As we continue into a third month in lockdown, the arts continue to suggest ever-changing worlds beyond. The invaluable National Theatre at Home this week looks across the Thames to a smaller venue's large-scale Coriolanus, starring a certain... Read more... |
This House, National Theatre at Home review – timely revival of brilliant House of Commons dramaFriday, 29 May 2020
There is a line of argument that – unfairly – blames playwright James Graham for Dominic Cummings. Would Cummings, some might ask, have achieved the influence he has now if it hadn’t been for his depiction in Graham’s brilliant TV drama Brexit... Read more... |
Theatre Lockdown Special 7: Party politics and a Broadway titan or twoThursday, 28 May 2020
The live-ness of theatre seems further away with every passing week, but at least the art form itself lives on to tantalise and entertain, whetting the appetite until such day as we are sharing an auditorium once again. National Theatre at Home... Read more... |
Larry Kramer: 'I think anger is a wonderful useful emotion'Thursday, 28 May 2020
Larry Kramer, who has died at the age of 84, was the Solzhenitsyn of AIDS who indomitably reported from the gay gulags of Manhattan’s quarantined wards and revolving-door hospices. “I felt very much like a journalist who realises that he has been... Read more... |
A Streetcar Named Desire, National Theatre at Home review - world on fireFriday, 22 May 2020
The National Theatre’s triumphant march through its archive of NT Live recordings continues this week with a glorious blaze of a show. Starring Gillian Anderson, Ben Foster and Vanessa Kirby, this 2014 revival of Tennessee Williams’s 1947 modern... Read more... |
