Theatre
Saskia Baron
How do you tell a story as complex as the eugenics movement, which is pursued afresh in writer-director Stephen Unwin's new play All Our Children? Its idealistic origins lie in Britain with Francis Galton in 1883, before leading to forced sterilisation of the disabled in several countries, starting in America in the 1920s and continung in Sweden into the 1970s; its legacy is today’s screening for conditions such as Down Syndrome.One way is to focus on eugenics’ nadir in Nazi Germany, when mentally and physically disabled children and adults were deemed "lives unworthy of life". Unwin, a Read more ...
Matt Wolf
"We live past hope," or so remarks the AIDS-afflicted drag queen-turned-prophet, Prior Walter (Andrew Garfield), late in Angels in America. But surely not even Tony Kushner, author of the eight-hour theatrical landmark that some while ago entered the canon of contemporary classics, could have hoped for lightning to strike twice when it comes to the National Theatre and his play.Twenty-five years ago, this same address launched Kushner as a major name on the back of Declan Donnellan's flinty British premiere of the diptych's first and more immediately accessible half, Millennium Approaches, Read more ...
David Nice
Time runs on different lines in Russian theatre to our own. The 83-year-old Galina Volchek co-founded Moscow's Sovremennik Theatre in 1956, and has been its artistic director for the past 45 years; Three Comrades has held its place in the Sovremennik repertoire since 1999. Search the British theatrical tradition for long-running shows and you may come up with one or two, like An Inspector Calls and The Mousetrap; but those have had regular cast changes. The Moscow public, it seems, likes to hold on to its stars. That made for some difficulties in age credibility last night, but there's no Read more ...
aleks.sierz
I hate the kind of hype that sells out a new play within minutes of tickets becoming available. I mean, isn’t there something hideously lemming-like about this kind of stampede for a limited commodity? It almost makes me want to hate the show – before a word has been spoken on stage. On the other hand, there is also something delicious about the prospect of another Jez Butterworth play. After his triumphs with Jerusalem in 2009, and its follow-up The River in 2012, it’s fascinating to see what he does next. And, as a plus, this new one stars Paddy Considine. And it’s directed by Sam Mendes, Read more ...
Will Rathbone
James Shirley is a rarely performed 17th-century playwright whose oeuvre has generally been consigned to theatrical study and research. Written for King Charles I at a time of great political upheaval and with the English Civil War looming, not to mention the shutdown of London theatres, his 1641 play The Cardinal represents Shirley's self-confessed masterpiece. It's an all-but-forgotten work that emerges with renewed clarity and pace thanks to the director Justin Audibert, whose gift for period classics dates back to the RSC's recent The Jew of Malta and well beyond. The revenge drama Read more ...
David Kettle
Time travel, Britpop, Sleeping Beauty. Classical ballet, the ravages of alcoholism, serial poisoning. There’s plenty going on in Douglas Maxwell’s idiosyncratic Charlie Sonata at Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre – so much, in fact, that it’s hard to know what it all adds up to.Girvan-born Maxwell is known for his poignant dissections of contemporary issues – he had big Fringe hits in the early 2000s with Decky Does a Bronco and Our Bad Magnet, plus plenty of well-received productions since then. Charlie Sonata feels like his most ambitious offering so far, but also his most uneven. It’s clearly a Read more ...
theartsdesk
The Arts Desk is delighted to announce a new partnership with The Hospital Club in Covent Garden. There are plenty of private members club in central London, but The Hospital Club is uniquely a creative hub with its own television studio, gallery and performance space, which for certain events are open to non-members.The Hospital Club, which takes its name from the hospital built on the same site in Endell Street in 1749, puts considerable effort into supporting the arts and media. The most tangible evidence of this is its own annual awards for innovative achievements in the creative Read more ...
Marianka Swain
It’s a bigly Trump-fest over at the Donmar, with adaptor Bruce Norris determined to make Brecht great again – or at least pointedly contemporary. Despite a legal disclaimer in the knowing prologue, the current tangerine regime looms large, replacing (or indeed merging with) Hitler as the main target in this parable of emerging demagoguery, set in Thirties gangland Chicago.All the Trump greatest hits are here, covered by Lenny Henry (pictured below with Simon Holland Roberts and Philip Cumbus) in the title role, from “nasty woman”, “losers”, “paid protestors” and “I have all the best words” to Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Jez Butterworth is back. Even before the critics have uttered a single word of praise The Ferryman, directed by Sam Mendes and set in rural Derry in 1981 at the height of the IRA hunger strikes, sold out its run at the Royal Court in hours. It transfers to the West End in June. That’s good news for British theatregoers. in 2012, the last time Butterworth had a new play at the Court, almost no one saw it: The River starring Dominic West ran for three weeks in the theatre’s tiny upstairs space. Two years later it turned up on Broadway with Hugh Jackman in the lead.Will The Ferryman match the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
After the first preview of Mike Leigh’s play Two Thousand Years at the National Theatre, a young Guardian reporter accosted an audience member for his view of the play. The audience member gave his name as Nigel Shapps, his age as 42, his background as Jewish, and his opinion that it was one of the most brilliant things he’d ever seen. Much to Leigh’s delight, he was quoted in the paper the next day.Nigel Shapps was in fact Nicholas Hytner, the artistic director who commissioned the play. The reporter hadn’t recognised him. An easy mistake. “I have no idea who you are Read more ...
Stephen Unwin
“I’ve got a terrible confession to make”, I said to my long-suffering partner who had been away for the weekend with our young daughter. “Oh yes,” I could see her thinking, “what have you done now?” “Well, I’ve written a play about the Nazi persecution of the disabled,” was my shifty reply. The truth is it’s such a disgusting subject, I was almost ashamed of what I’d done.All Our Children has its roots in historical fact. I’d been reading Richard Evans’s remarkable three-part history of the Third Reich and was fascinated and moved by his account of the deeply conservative and aristocratic Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Playwright Martin Crimp’s 1993 satirical epic, The Treatment, is a fabulous work, but it’s rarely revived. Although much of his back catalogue – especially Attempts on Her Life (1997) – has been revisited, The Treatment has often been ignored, perhaps on account of its large cast, or because of its large scale. Now that the Almeida Theatre has decided to stage this story of how art cannibalises life we have the chance to judge its relevance 25 years after its premiere.Set in New York, the play tells the story of Anne, a young woman whose husband, Simon, likes to tie her up, silencing her with Read more ...