Theatre
Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration, Broadway.com/YouTube review - slick, often sombre, but when funny, hilariousTuesday, 28 April 2020
Maybe you can't compare incomparables, but it was instructive to watch this Broadway lockdown gala feting nonagenarian Stephen Sondheim a night after the Metropolitan Opera's galaxy of stars welcoming us into their homes. More slick, no doubt (once... Read more... |
#aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei, Hampstead Theatre online review – imbued with an urgent new relevanceTuesday, 28 April 2020
London’s Hampstead Theatre has recently been very successful in bringing some of its best shows to a wider public – despite coronavirus. This week, it’s the turn of Howard Brenton’s #aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei, which was first staged at this... Read more... |
Theatre Lockdown Special 2: Birthdays aplenty, songs of hope, a starry quiz - and moreThursday, 23 April 2020
As lockdown continues, so does the ability of the theatre community to find new ways to tantalise and entertain. The urge to create and perform surely isn't going to be reined-in by a virus, which explains the explosion of creatives lending their... Read more... |
Tiger Country, Hampstead Theatre online review - a taut drama of NHS pressure and painWednesday, 22 April 2020
If ever there was a “play for today”, it’s surely this. Nina Raine’s 2011 A&E drama follows hospital staff – doctors senior and junior, surgeons, registrars, consultants, nurses – as they confront, individually and collectively, the stress of a... Read more... |
Treasure Island, National Theatre at Home review - all aboard this thrilling adventure storyFriday, 17 April 2020
Swaggering pirates, X marks the spot, a chattering parrot, “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum”? All present and correct. But Bryony Lavery’s winning 2014 adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson for the National, directed by Polly Findlay, also features... Read more... |
Theatre Lockdown Special 1: Starry podcasts, late-career Shakespeare, a celebrity basement - and moreThursday, 16 April 2020
The lockdown has been extended, but here's the good news: each week whereby we are shut inside seems to bring with it ever-enticing arrays of theatre from across the spectrum, from online cabarets to freshly conceived podcasts and all manner of... Read more... |
Twelfth Night, RSC/Stratford-upon-Avon online review - inventive but underfeltWednesday, 15 April 2020
Twelfth Night is rarely long-absent from the British stage and nor is it in our current climate of streaming aplenty. This 2017 production for the RSC from the director Christopher Luscombe will soon be followed online by the National Theatre’s... Read more... |
Wise Children, BBC online review – beautifully bizarreTuesday, 14 April 2020
Reviewing theatre now means reviewing film. Knowing that Emma Rice’s Old Vic 2018 production of Wise Children, her typically rambunctious version of Angela Carter’s last novel, published in 1991, has been recorded by The Space immediately raises... Read more... |
Drawing the Line, Hampstead Theatre online review - modern history becomes dark farceTuesday, 14 April 2020
This week’s gem from the Hampstead’s vaults is Howard Brenton’s political drama from 2013, telling the extraordinary, stranger-than-fiction story of Cyril Radcliffe and his 1947 mission: to arrange the Partition of India in just five weeks. A tale... Read more... |
Flowers for Mrs Harris, Chichester Festival Theatre online review - a warmly open-hearted weepieMonday, 13 April 2020
18 months or so after it opened in Chichester, Flowers for Mrs Harris launches a sequence of streamed productions from the West Sussex venue just in time to allow a new British musical to join the ever-swelling ranks of theatrical offerings online.... Read more... |
Jane Eyre, National Theatre at Home review - a fiery feminist adaptationFriday, 10 April 2020
The National Theatre’s online broadcasts got off to a storming start with One Man, Two Guvnors – watched by over 2.5 million people, either on the night or in the week since its live streaming, and raising around £66,000 in donations. Let’s hope... Read more... |
Gators, Tramp Productions online review - the glittering darkThursday, 09 April 2020
She’s an ordinary young woman, and she really doesn’t know what to think. After all, things are way out of control. She knows that the natural world is pretty fucked, and that nothing grows in the earth any more — well, at least not on her patch.... Read more... |
