Theatre Reviews
End of the Rainbow, Trafalgar Studios 1Monday, 22 November 2010
"Can't go on, ev'ry thing I had is gone". Hear Judy Garland deliver those lines from Arlen's "Stormy Weather" live at Carnegie Hall in 1961 and you'll know that no singer, not even Callas, could go further turning heartbreak into art and serving up the naked truth. I wasn't expecting this production of Peter Quilter's play, previously seen in Northampton, to do much more than echo your average queen's "such a tragic life" line, nor Tracie Bennett to go beyond a Star Impersonation. Read more... |
The Master Builder, Almeida TheatreSaturday, 20 November 2010
Halvard Solness and Hilde Wangel have stalked each other among the shadow goblins of Henrik Ibsen’s extraordinary symbol-laden drama in two major productions this year. In Chichester, Philip Franks’s staging and David Edgar’s new version of the text gave us a shivery, haunted-house interpretation. Now comes American director Travis Preston’s modern-dress offering, starkly designed by Vicki Mortimer, but performed with such over-deliberate mannerism and stylised Expressionist movement by... Read more... |
The Glass Menagerie, Young Vic TheatreThursday, 18 November 2010
Just about the time you're losing patience with the Young Vic revival of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie - wondering at some of the variable accents and directorial overembellishments and the heavy sledding accompanying this most fragile and beautiful of plays - along comes one... Read more... |
Fela!, National TheatreWednesday, 17 November 2010
For me there is a trinity of black musicians, visionaries who reshaped music in the last half-century: James Brown, Miles Davis and Fela Kuti. And just as it’s hard to imagine a biographical musical of James Brown or Miles Davis coming off - because which mere actor is ever going to have their charisma, attitude or moves - likewise it seemed a stretch to imagine Fela! being much more than sophisticated karaoke. Karaoke with a message and some groovy dancing, no doubt. Read more... |
Inside, Studio Theatre, RoundhouseTuesday, 16 November 2010
It’s just the luck of the draw. I’ve been sent to prison twice now in the past four days. Last Friday it was Clean Break’s day-long six-play epic in Soho. Last night it was an 80-minute all-male affair at the Roundhouse. Needless to say the encounters were planets apart. Men, after all, come from Mars, already primed for battle, women from Venus. Philip Osment’s Inside,... Read more... |
Charged 1 & 2, Soho TheatreSunday, 14 November 2010
Facts first. In the last decade the number of women in prison has increased by 60 per cent: 63 per cent are in prison for non-violent offences. Between 2002 and 2009 there were 55 self-inflicted deaths by women prisoners; in 2008, there were 12,938 reported incidents of self-harm. Goodness knows how many more went unreported. Too few plays reflecting the reality of women’s lives appear on our stages - only 17 per cent of productions in English theatre are by female playwrights. Read more... |
A Festival of Brian Friel, The Curve, LeicesterSaturday, 13 November 2010
Last year Brian Friel became an octogenarian. Yet the Irish playwright who has been greeted by the English like no other has so far failed to have that fact either celebrated or acknowledged with a retrospective festival by theatre’s major shakers and movers. It’s been left to The Curve in Leicester (that remarkable glass-fronted, inside-out, state-of-the art high-tech new theatre designed by Uruguyan, American-based architect Rafael Viñoly) to take the initiative. Read more... |
An Ideal Husband, Vaudeville TheatreThursday, 11 November 2010
Directing an Oscar Wilde play is rather like being a chaperone at a party: at best you are invisible, at worst actively intrusive. Marshalling Wilde’s politicos, dandies and duchesses through this latest ball of An Ideal Husband, Lindsay Posner is quick to lose himself among the elegant riot of gilded sets and gorgeous dresses. Read more... |
The Train Driver, Hampstead TheatreTuesday, 09 November 2010
Few playwrights have been so successful at moulding our view of a nation as Athol Fugard. It’s impossible to think of South Africa, especially during the apartheid years, without thinking of his Sizwe Bansi is Dead, The Island or Statements after an Arrest under the Immorality Act. Since the end of the old regime in 1994, the moral fuel that powered his plays may have evaporated, but this new work, one of nine premiered by the 78-year-old author in the past 15... Read more... |
Shun-kin, Complicite, Barbican TheatreSaturday, 06 November 2010
Complicite’s Shun-kin delivers sex and violence aplenty. A warped, wilfully kinky fusion of the two lies at the core of the play and its central relationship – sexy, edgy material with just the right degree of poetry to help smooth its way across the sophisticated palate of London’s theatre-goers. Yet to dwell on this is both to misunderstand and misrepresent Simon McBurney’s generous drama... 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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