Theatre Reviews
Making Noise Quietly, Donmar WarehouseTuesday, 24 April 2012
“It’s easy for me to talk to you; we don’t know each other”. Robert Holman’s Making Noise Quietly is a work that, like its title, lives in the delicate push-pull of contradiction: intimate strangers; bloodless wars; silent screams. Not one play at all but three short pieces – panels in an inscrutable triptych – its process is oblique, its emotional momentum cumulative, the impact devastating. Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Troilus & Cressida, Shakespeare's GlobeTuesday, 24 April 2012
So, what's the "problem"? All is right with the world - or the theatre at least - in the Maori-language staging of Troilus and Cressida from the Auckland-based Ngakau Toa troupe that pierces right to the troubling heart of this first of Shakespeare's three so-called "problem plays". Read more... |
Written on the Heart, Duchess TheatreTuesday, 24 April 2012
Unlike the National, the RSC has not had a good record of producing exciting new plays in the past 20 years or so. But one exception to this rule is the theatre’s support for the work of David Edgar, whose masterpiece Pentecost was put on by them in 1994. Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare's GlobeSaturday, 21 April 2012
"Shakespeare’s Coming Home," boasts the strapline of a highly ambitious strand of London 2012’s Cultural Olympiad. Between now and 9 June, 37 productions of the complete canon by Shakespeare (with apologies to Two Noble Kinsmen fans) will be seen at Shakespeare’s Globe by 37 different theatre companies from all over the world. Read more... |
Wild Swans, Young Vic TheatreSaturday, 21 April 2012
The Young Vic together with American Repertory Theater, Boston have taken on a huge challenge in staging the lengthy yet gripping memoir by Chinese writer Jung Chang that became an instant success when first published in 1991. Wild Swans was one of the first accounts of mainland China to be introduced to the West and as such it paved the way for other stories to be told from China. Read more... |
The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning, National Theatre WalesThursday, 19 April 2012
Looking at CCTV footage of a school hall in Cardiff through Adobe Flash Player in the corner of a webpage and listening to the attendant interference, bells, buzzes and bleeps might not sound like the cutting edge of theatre. Read more... |
Misterman, National TheatreThursday, 19 April 2012
Religious mania is bad for your love life. In Enda Walsh’s revamped 1999 play — which has already been seen in Galway and New York, and opened in London last night — a 33-year-old man (played with immense conviction and enormous presence by Cillian Murphy) invites us inside his mind to explore the dark and dangerous caverns of religious enthusiasm and psychological collapse. Be warned: it is a strange, tormented and rather weird trip. Read more... |
Miss Julie, Royal Exchange, ManchesterTuesday, 17 April 2012
Seeing Miss Julie played in-the-round would, I suspect, have delighted Strindberg. In his preface to the play, he was much exercised about the setting, presuming a proscenium stage: a single set, asymmetrical scenery, no clutter, no “tiresome” exits through doors, no footlights. And so on. Read more... |
Big and Small, Barbican TheatreSunday, 15 April 2012
It’s the star factor. Tickets for Big and Small, by the controversial German writer Botho Strauss, are selling fast because Cate Blanchett is in it. Her protean presence in this production by the Sydney Theatre Company, of which she is the co-artistic director, casts a glow over the whole event — she’s on stage for almost the entire running time of two and three-quarter hours. Read more... |
Chalet Lines, Bush TheatreFriday, 13 April 2012
When Madani Younis became the new artistic director of the Bush, some questioned his commitment to new writing, while others asked what he would bring to this small but high-profile venue. With this, his inaugural production, which opened last night, some answers suggest themselves: he’s chosen a solid new play, and he has introduced London audiences to a Lee Mattinson, a northern voice. 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*
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