Theatre Reviews
Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson, Corn Exchange, BrightonMonday, 25 May 2015
Margaret Atwood’s Forties childhood was spent knocking around the Canadian backwoods with her forest entomologist, proto-ecologist dad, and it shows. Interviewed alongside her husband Graeme Gibson on the Brighton Festival’s closing night, the international literary prizes, like the gushing reverence with which she’s introduced by Festival director Ali Smith and received by the sell-out crowd, seems to have made little impression. Read more... |
King Lear, Northern Broadsides, TouringMonday, 25 May 2015
Jonathan Miller’s new King Lear is rustic to its core, spoken in broad Northern accents, and the whole production could be packed onto a travelling theatre’s wagon and taken around Britain pulled by a couple of shire horses. Read more... |
Peter Pan, Regent's Park Open Air TheatreFriday, 22 May 2015
“All children, except one, grow up.” So begins J. M. Barrie’s iconic tale of arrested development, given new power and poignancy in this high-flying production. A century after one of Barrie’s youthful collaborators, George Llewelyn Davies, was killed at Ypres, it tells their familiar story through the prism of the brutalising First World War, in which context Peter’s neverending youth becomes an escapist beacon. Read more... |
McQueen, St James TheatreThursday, 21 May 2015
"You make clothes that make the darkness in me matter": If such an accolade strikes you as profound, make a beeline for McQueen, the James Phillips play about the tortured, all-too-brief life of the maverick talent Alexander McQueen that constitutes the longest 100 minutes I have spent in a theatre in many a month. Read more... |
As You Like It, Shakespeare's GlobeThursday, 21 May 2015
The Forest of Arden takes many forms, but in Blanche McIntyre’s meticulously purist production, it’s strictly a state of mind – no leafy bowers in sight. Here, the unspoken can be voiced, the bounds of gender and class broken, and courtly conventions stripped away to reveal folksy values. Read more... |
L'Oublié(e)/The Forgotten, Brighton DomeThursday, 21 May 2015
Those expecting an evening at the circus tonight, such as L’Oublié(e)’s advertising hinted at, were in for a shock. I saw a few children in the foyer and would be intrigued to know what they made of it. There were moments of pure nightmare amidst its parade of striking imagery. Read more... |
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, RFHWednesday, 20 May 2015
Frank Loesser seems to be known in Britain for one show and one show only, which seems a shame given that the composer-lyricist of Guys and Dolls has a CV that includes the ravishing The Most Happy Fella and his 1962 Pulitzer prize-winning How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which was last seen locally a decade ago at Chichester but remains unproduced in London since, well, whenever. Read more... |
Periplum 451, Preston Barracks, BrightonMonday, 18 May 2015
Free events at celebratory citywide occasions such as the Brighton Festival are a mixed blessing. Unfortunately, the fact they’re free means we’re supposed to be thankful even when they’re actually a bit ramshackle and rubbish. We are British, after all, and “putting up with” is a national characteristic. Read more... |
High Society, Old Vic TheatreFriday, 15 May 2015
It took approximately 30 years for High Society to first make its laborious transition from screen to stage and there are good reasons for that. The indelible impression left by the movie and its star, Grace Kelly, was undoubtedly the biggest, and before that, of course, was the source play (The Philadelphia Story) and the equally indelible movie made of that. Read more... |
Skin in Flames, Park TheatreFriday, 15 May 2015
The premise might seem familiar: a famous photograph, taken by a Western journalist in fraught military and political circumstances, has repercussions many years later. The subject of the picture, a representative of an entirely different culture from that of the photographer, is anonymous, but the image is familiar all over the world. Attempting to bridge the gulf between subject and journalist leads only to further bitter misunderstanding. Read more... |
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★★★★★
‘A compulsive, involving, emotionally stirring evening – theatre’s answer to a page-turner.’
The Observer, Kate Kellaway
Direct from a sold-out season at Kiln Theatre the five star, hit play, The Son, is now playing at the Duke of York’s Theatre for a strictly limited season.
★★★★★
‘This final part of Florian Zeller’s trilogy is the most powerful of all.’
The Times, Ann Treneman
Written by the internationally acclaimed Florian Zeller (The Father, The Mother), lauded by The Guardian as ‘the most exciting playwright of our time’, The Son is directed by the award-winning Michael Longhurst.
Book by 30 September and get tickets from £15*
with no booking fee.
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