tragedy
Selva Almada: Brickmakers review – men dying for loveMonday, 01 November 2021
To make bricks you torment the soft, moist and fluid material of clay and sand in a prison of fire until it becomes dry, hard and unyielding. In Selva Almada’s rural Argentina, that’s also how you make – and break – men. Brickmakers is the third of... Read more... |
The Memory of Water, Hampstead Theatre review – uneasy tragi-comedyMonday, 13 September 2021
Memories are notoriously treacherous — this we know. I remember seeing Shelagh Stephenson’s contemporary classic at the Hampstead, when this venue was a prefab, and enjoying Terry Johnson’s racy staging, which starred Jane Booker, Hadyn Gwynne and... Read more... |
Paradise, National Theatre review - war, woe, and a glimmer of hopeFriday, 13 August 2021
Philoctetes, Odysseus, Neoptolemus: the men’s names in Sophocles’ Philoctetes are all unnecessarily long and weighed down by expectations. Poet Kae Tempest’s lyrical new adaptation for the National Theatre focuses on the chorus, spinning out the... Read more... |
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai: The Mountains Sing review - a lyrical account of Việt Nam’s brutal pastSunday, 30 August 2020
“The challenges of the Vietnamese people throughout history are as tall as the tallest mountains. If you stand too close, you won’t be able to see their peaks. Once you step away from the currents of life, you will have the full view…” This is the... Read more... |
Elektra, Salzburg Festival, Arte review - distancing, but not in the physical senseTuesday, 04 August 2020
So much for the assertion that nowhere in the world would be staging the big Strauss and Wagner operas for the indefinite future. With a combination of lavish funding and good pandemic management on Austria's part, it’s been possible in Salzburg.... Read more... |
Theatre Unlocked 2: A starry premiere and musical revival alongside Greek tragedy where it beganThursday, 23 July 2020
Theatres will begin gently unlocking their doors as we head into August. In the meantime, a beleaguered community continues to find fresh and startling ways to sustain interest and excitement, whether that be the premiere of a new play starring... Read more... |
Blueprint Medea, Finborough Theatre online review – well-meaning but clunky updateThursday, 16 July 2020
Medea is the original crazy ex-girlfriend: the wronged woman who takes perfectly understandable revenge on the man who made her life hell. In Blueprint Medea, a new adaptation premiered at the Finborough Theatre in May 2019 and available on YouTube... Read more... |
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld: The Discomfort of Evening review - lovelessness, loneliness, bodies and their limitsSunday, 03 May 2020
“I was ten and stopped taking off my coat.” This bare beginning marks the opening of Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s startling and lyrical novel, translated from the Dutch by Michele Hutchison: an introduction to ten-year-old Jas and the dislocated world... Read more... |
Women Beware Women, Shakespeare's Globe, review – wittily toxic upgrade of a Jacobean tragedyFriday, 28 February 2020
This raunchy, gleefully cynical production takes one of Thomas Middleton’s most famous tragedies and turns it into a Netflix-worthy dark comedy. Where the themes of incest, betrayal, cougar-action and multiple murder would be spun out over several... Read more... |
The Accident, Series Finale, Channel 4 review - ambitious mini-series leaves many unanswered questionsFriday, 15 November 2019
Channel 4’s The Accident closed with a bang and a whimper. Jack Thorne provided a definitive answer to his series’ central question, but his characters and subplots petered out in the meantime.Over four episodes, this series examined the fallout of... Read more... |
Medea, Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, Barbican review - lacerating contemporary tragedyThursday, 07 March 2019
Hallucinatory theatre has struck quite a few times in the Barbican's international seasons. On an epic scale we’ve had the Shakespeare compendiums Kings of War and Roman Tragedies from Toneelgroep Amsterdam, newly merged with the city's... Read more... |
The Son, Kiln Theatre review - darkly tragicThursday, 28 February 2019
Well, you have to give it to French playwright Florian Zeller — he's certainly cracked the problem of coming up with a name for each of his plays. Basically, choose a common noun and put the definite article in front of it. His latest, The Son, is... Read more... |
