Theatre Reviews
Paradise Found, Menier Chocolate FactoryThursday, 27 May 2010
There's bizarre, and then there's Paradise Found, a new musical that falls so short of the not always clearly defined mark that audiences may likely be mulling over what went wrong for years. What do the two acts have to do with one another? What in heaven's name is the point? How much weight in water is leading man Mandy Patinkin losing per performance? Read more... |
Ingredient X, Royal Court TheatreWednesday, 26 May 2010
Nick Grosso is a good example of the “now you see him, now you don’t” playwright. In the mid-1990s, he was feted as a lads’ writer for his funny plays about masculinity, such as Peaches, Sweetheart and Real Classy Affair. Then he dropped out of view. He resurfaced briefly in 2002 with the deliciously surrealistic Kosher Harry. Then nothing. Until now. Read more... |
Henry VIII, Shakespeare's GlobeWednesday, 26 May 2010
After Wolf Hall and The Tudors, Shakespeare's Globe is arriving rather late at this particular historical party, especially given that the Bankside venue brings with it a closer connection to the period than most. Can this theatre animate a rarely performed Shakespeare play - well, make that Shakespeare and John Fletcher, in accordance with... Read more... |
Canary, Hampstead TheatreMonday, 24 May 2010
One of the least lamented (by me at least) genres that has fallen foul of social changes in the past two decades is the 1980s gay drama. You know the kind of thing: right-on coming-out speeches, painful but ridiculous instances of homophobia, and the compulsory dying-of-AIDS scene. The irony is that Jonathan Harvey, whose 1993 classic Beautiful Thing did so much to pull the gay play out of its ghetto, has now returned to this 1980s genre. His latest play, which opened last night and... Read more... |
I Am a Warehouse, Newhaven Fort, Brighton Festival FringeSaturday, 22 May 2010
Just say "Gaza" and it's like throwing a bombshell marked "Darwin" in among the Creationists. Only in this case it's not always clear who the antagonists might be. Several seemingly liberal theatre venues in Israel, where this project originated as a clear statement of the UN Relief and Works Agency's humanitarian role, cancelled at the last minute; more recently, supposedly enlightened sponsors suddenly withdrew substantial support. None had seen or read the content. It seems that telling the... Read more... |
Ditch, Old Vic TunnelsWednesday, 19 May 2010
Dystopia is a genre that works like a rhetorical device. Take a government policy — let’s say the war in Afghanistan — then list the bad effects that this has had on the British people, exaggerate by a factor of ten, or more, add some obscure but sinister language, extrapolate by throwing in some nightmarish horrors, and then wrap it all up for a small cast. If you’re lucky, as Beth Steel has been with her debut play which opened last night at the Old Vic Tunnels, you’ll get a really... Read more... |
Peter Pan, Barbican TheatreFriday, 14 May 2010
“All over the world children are safe – but not here, not on my ship.” Despite its wild pack of homeless children, a flesh-eating crocodile and some of the most gut-punching depictions of parental grief in all literature, J M Barrie’s Peter Pan has somehow been consigned to the theatrical remainders bin, its old-fashioned sentimentality acceptable really only at Christmas, or in pantomime form. Read more... |
A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky, Lyric HammersmithWednesday, 12 May 2010
During the past week, as the first coalition government for 70 years has been formed in the UK, we were frequently warned that failure to find a solution might be the end of the world. It’s a solid, if usually over-used, metaphor. But what would happen if we really did face the end of life on Earth? You know, the real thing: a total catastrophe — the implosion of the universe — which we could predict, but not prevent? That is the premise of this unusual new play, a joint effort by playwrights... Read more... |
Love the Sinner, National TheatreTuesday, 11 May 2010
Religion, and a sense of the revival of belief, is such an important part of everyday life in the wider population that it is one of the stranger facts about contemporary theatre that so few plays tackle this subject. In fact, the last new British play to do this at the National was David Hare’s Racing Demon in 1990. Now, 20 years later, the same Cottesloe theatre space bears witness to a new play, which opened last night, about the same subject. Read more... |
Eurydice, Young Vic TheatreTuesday, 11 May 2010
Since Eurydice was the ill-fated wife of Orpheus, master musician, it’s not inappropriate that this reworking of the classical myth by the award-winning US writer Sarah Ruhl should be so much like a song. Her language has a kind of blunt lyricism, and the action of her drama, with its recurrent waves of water imagery, has a vivid, surreal fluidity that eddies and flows like an elusive melody. Sometimes the playfulness is beguiling; sometimes it merely seems arch. And in Bijan Sheibani’s stark... 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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