Theatre Reviews
Theatre 2009-10: Looking Back and AheadSunday, 03 January 2010
How to encapsulate the theatre year just gone, one in which the critics - not always to the benefit of an increasingly imperilled profession - made headlines of their own, whether for being drunk (as if!)... Read more...
|
Twelfth Night, Duke of York'sTuesday, 22 December 2009
When I saw Gregory Doran’s production of Twelfth Night for the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in October, I thought it unsubtle and underpowered, but that it would settle in during its run. Apparently not, as, in its transfer to London’s West End, it has gathered neither pace nor depth. That’s a real shame as there are some terrific performances at its heart. Read more... |
Rope, Almeida TheatreThursday, 17 December 2009
A banner year for the Almeida Theatre continues with Rope, director Roger Michell's taut, tense production of the 1929 Patrick Hamilton play better known from the subsequent Hitchcock film, starring a peculiarly cast James Stewart. Read more... |
The Misanthrope, Comedy TheatreThursday, 17 December 2009
She’s the most famous young pout in Hollywood. And her first West End appearance has already sparked a media frenzy, making this contemporary version of Molière’s The Misanthrope the hottest ticket in town, with massive advance bookings already guaranteeing anyone associated with the show a credit-crunch-proof Christmas. Read more... |
Camille O'Sullivan, ApolloWednesday, 09 December 2009
It is telling that there were drama critics at the Apollo to review Camille O’Sullivan’s show, The Dark Angel. The half-French, half-Irish woman is ostensibly a singer, but so unique is her delivery that each song is a piece of theatre in its own right. My companion confessed to being just a little scared of O’Sullivan, who has a distinctive look - part vamp, part cabariste, but... Read more... |
Red, Donmar WarehouseWednesday, 09 December 2009
He was the biggest hitter in an A-team of mid-20th-century American painters: Jackson Pollock, Barnet Newman, Willem de Kooning. Mark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkovitz in what has become Latvia, was Abstract Expressionism's shaman, its restless thinker and febrile poet, an artist who fashioned from an investigation into the power of pure colour a philosophy of art as potent as Crick and Watson's contemporaneous unravelling of the double helix. Read more... |
Darker Shores, Hampstead TheatreTuesday, 08 December 2009
What’s the appeal of the traditional ghost story? Is it the knowledge that while the victims of the tale quake in their boots, you are perfectly safe and grinning like the Cheshire Cat? Or is it because the supernatural gives us a chance to journey into the weird and fearsome corners of our psyche, all the time kidding ourselves that we are just normal human beings? In Michael Punter’s new ghost story, Darker Shores, which opened last night at the Hampstead Theatre, all the rooms of... Read more... |
The Stefan Golaszewski Plays, Bush TheatreSaturday, 05 December 2009
Passion, pain and loss: they are companions in life more faithful than many a lover. This duo of solo dramas by Stefan Golaszewski, which opened last night in London after success in Edinburgh, turns its perceptive gaze upon them through the eyes of both eager youth and desolate old age. Poignantly, true emotional maturity remains elusive. Read more... |
Sweet Charity, Menier Chocolate FactoryThursday, 03 December 2009
"Fun! Laughs! Good times!" Anyone remember them? That snatch of lyrics from Sweet Charity, the 1960s musical that lifted Broadway to newly brassy heights and has been frequently revived on both sides of the Atlantic, serves as an apt summation of the Menier Chocolate Factory's latest musical crowd-pleaser, which, like Sunday in the Park with George, A Little Night Music, and La Cage aux Folles before it, surely has the West End in its sights. Read more... |
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Novello TheatreTuesday, 01 December 2009
The voice has landed, and what an astonishing sound it makes. Read more... |
Pages
Advertising feature
★★★★★
‘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.
latest in today
Album: Ani DiFranco - Unprecedented Sh!t
Having moved out of her mother’s apartment aged 15 to become “an emancipated minor” and set up her own record label, Righteous Babe, just four...
Music Reissues Weekly: Little Girls - Valley Songs
The name, Caron and Michelle Maso explained to Los Angeles radio DJ Rodney Bingenheimer, was a literal description. “We’re both like five feet. We...
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes review - a post-human para...
Planet of the Apes is the most artfully replenished franchise, from the original series’ elegant time-travel loop to the reboot’s rich,...
Sappho, Southwark Playhouse Elephant review - a glitzy celeb...
Who is Sappho? What is she? Not much is known about the...
Gomyo, National Symphony Orchestra, Kuokman, National Concer...
No soloist gets to perform Shostakovich’s colossal First Violin Concerto without mastery of its fearsome technical demands. But not all violinists...
The Winter's Tale, Royal Ballet review - what a story,...
If there is a more striking, more moving, more downright enjoyable way to experience...
Sansara, Manchester Collective, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester...
Manchester Collective have come a long way since their early days of chamber music in dark and dingy Salford basements and former MOT test centres...
La Chimera review - magical realism with a touch of Fellini
Italian director Alice Rohrwacher (The Wonders, Happy as...
Twelfth Night, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review -...
In Shakespeare's day theatre was regarded as "wanton" by those of a Puritan disposition who feared boys dressed as girls could engender wicked...