Hampstead Theatre
The Humans, Hampstead Theatre review - a riveting family portraitFriday, 07 September 2018
Transatlantic theatrical traffic is busier than ever, and now here at the Hampstead is not just Stephen Karam’s Tony-winning play, first seen in 2015, but director Joe Mantello and his full Broadway cast. It seems fitting that they should travel... Read more... |
Genesis Inc, Hampstead Theatre review - Harry Enfield in ungodly messFriday, 29 June 2018
We are now pretty familiar with the idea that human reproduction (making babies) has been turned into big business, and there have already been several good recent plays about desperate couples and surrogacy – Vivienne Franzmann’s Bodies and... Read more... |
The Strange Death of John Doe, Hampstead Theatre review - ambitious but not entirely successfulWednesday, 06 June 2018
Regular air travel is a hassle. All that queuing, all that security, all those hot halls, and then the endless waiting, the bawling kids and the limited legroom. Basically air travel sucks. But at least it’s reasonably safe. The same cannot be said... Read more... |
Describe the Night, Hampstead Theatre review - epic take on the mythology of PutinFriday, 11 May 2018
Five years ago, when New York playwright Rajiv Joseph started on his fantasy disquisition on truth, lies and the recent history of Russia, no one was talking about a new Cold War and trump was still a thing you did in a game of cards. Now, at the... Read more... |
Caroline, or Change, Hampstead Theatre review - Sharon D Clarke conquersWednesday, 21 March 2018
It's long been a theatrical given, especially in musicals, that characters need to be seen to change: a climactic duo in the eternally crowd-pulling Wicked makes that abundantly clear. ("Because I knew you," goes the lyric, "I have been changed for... Read more... |
Dry Powder/Yous Two, Hampstead Theatre review - Hayley Atwell has competitionMonday, 05 February 2018
Sometimes it pays to come in under the radar. By way of proof consider two simultaneous Hampstead Theatre premieres, one boasting star wattage courtesy Hayley Atwell fresh off TV's Howards End, the other a debut play from a young writer... Read more... |
Best of 2017: TheatreSaturday, 30 December 2017
Year-end wrap-ups function as both remembrances of things past and time capsules, attempts to preserve an experience to which audiences, for the most part, have said farewell. (It's different, of course, for films, which remain available to us... Read more... |
Cell Mates, Hampstead Theatre review - intriguing yet opaqueMonday, 11 December 2017
The play that famously got away when one of its stars (quite literally) jumped ship is back. In 1995, Stephen Fry abandoned the West End premiere of Simon Gray's espionage drama Cell Mates, leaving co-star Rik Mayall in the lurch and prompting Gray... Read more... |
The Slaves of Solitude, Hampstead Theatre review - crude, over-dramatic and under-motivatedTuesday, 31 October 2017
The Second World War is central to our national imagination, yet it has been oddly absent from our stages recently. Not any more. Nicholas Wright’s new play, an adaptation of Patrick Hamilton’s 1947 novel about lonely English women and American... Read more... |
Prism, Hampstead Theatre review - a life through the lensFriday, 15 September 2017
Jack Cardiff was one of the all-time greats of cinematography, the man who shot such Powell and Pressburger classics as The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death, worked on John Huston’s The African Queen with Humphrey Bogart and Katharine... Read more... |
Gloria, Hampstead Theatre review – pretty gloriousFriday, 23 June 2017
As with life, so it is in art: in the same way that one can't predict the curve balls that get thrown our way, the American playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins defies categorisation. On the basis of barely a handful of plays, two of which happen now... Read more... |
Kiss Me, Trafalgar Studios review - Richard Bean two-hander is affecting if slightTuesday, 20 June 2017
Hampstead Theatre Downstairs' habit of sending shows southward to Trafalgar Studios continues with Richard Bean's Kiss Me. A character study set in post-World War One London, it's a two-hander concerning the attempts of a war widow to conceive a... Read more... |
