Theatre
Gary Naylor
Mark was teased about the fallout shelter at the bottom of his garden by his co-workers (that wasn’t the only thing – every friendship group has a target for micro-aggressions) but his foresight pays off when terrorists explode a suitcase bomb on a Friday evening. Louise, hungover after her leaving do, wakes up down there, Mark having rescued her from the rubble and sealed the door against the radiation. She faces 14 days locked down with him waiting for the air to clear.When the director Lyndsey Turner planned her revival of Dennis Kelly’s 2005 two-hander, she could hardly have expected the Read more ...
David Nice
Sharp suits swapped for combat fatigues, a people’s commander: you’d think that Max Webster’s production of Shakespeare's surprisingly nuanced propaganda history-play would have special resonance in a week which has seen horrors and heroism unleashed in equal measure. Yet despite input from former Royal Marines Commando Tom Leigh, this is too much of a gimmicky show of war to chime with what’s churning us up now.Parallels with President Zelenskyy have been overstated in previous reports: despite plenty of lines about mercy which leap out at us, plus the key idea of “all things are ready Read more ...
Gary Naylor
We open on “Seventeen is Swell”, the antithesis of Janis Ian’s 70s angsty anthem, “At Seventeen”. Megan is living it large as the cheerleader’s leader with her football captain boyfriend, two loving if strict parents and a golden future of all-American domestic bliss ahead. In short, she has all her pom poms in a row.Well, except she doesn’t really enjoy the more intimate moments with the dim jock, Jared; she has pin-ups of Eva Herzigová where Johnny Depp should be; and she’s, horror upon horrors, a vegetarian! In the kind of Midwest town where you might expect Louis Theroux to turn up to Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Few critics become playwrights, but Tim Walker has done just that with Bloody Difficult Women, his debut. It's taking a risk; should any of his less generous critical colleagues wish to take a shot at the poacher turned gamekeeper, it's open season. On the other hand, it could place a friendly critic in an uncomfortable position; what if it's awful? Full disclosure: I used to deputise for Tim Walker at The Sunday Telegraph (he now writes for The New European) but before this press night we had met only once, so I think it's safe to proceed.The play follows the clash between anti-Brexit Read more ...
David Nice
In Ibsen's last and shortest play, further cut here, four people nominally climb a mountain, but actually seem to be crossing waste land towards the land of Samuel Beckett. It’s an amazing play in which reality is symbolic and symbols are real, where not one character is likeable and all speak with hallucinatory directness. The Norwegian Theatre Company, very much welcome back to the Coronet Theatre, do much of its strangeness justice.Everyone who’s seen either the play or the film of Willy Russell’s Educating Rita will remember the protagonist’s response to the essay title “Suggest how you Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Football stories are never just about a game — they are also about life and how to live it. In Tyrell Williams’s Red Pitch, his debut play now getting an enthusiastically staging at the Bush Theatre after a shorter version wowed audiences at the Lyric Hammersmith in 2019, three young black teens meet at a five-a-side pitch in South London. They have different characters, but are united in a singular vision of what success means: being a star footballer and buying the best car in the neighbourhood. But, just as they are beginning on the journey to realise their dreams, that neighbourhood is Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
Steven (David Ames) is having a birthday party. He’s invited his closest friends – two of whom have recently started dating their personal trainer, Steve – and his partner, of course: Stephen (Joe Aaron Reid). Their eight-year-old son, Stevie, is being babysat by his grandma. Even the handsome Argentine waiter (Nico Conde) is called Esteban.As homages to Stephen Sondheim go, Steve, a play by Mark Gerrard previously seen Off Broadway and now inaugurating the Seven Dials Playhouse, is pretty obvious.Andrew Keates’ direction and Lee Newby’s set design make great use of the theatre Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
It’s the vulnerability of the robot that strikes you in this subtle, intelligent production from the German theatre group Rimini Protokoll. From the Maschinenmensch in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to Roy Batty in Blade Runner, there’s no shortage of automatons providing their different takes on the human condition, yet few exude the sheer existential exhaustion of the narrator of Uncanny Valley.The German author Thomas Melle agreed to have his animatronic double created for this show as part of an investigation of the elusive sense of self for someone who – like him – suffers from bipolar disorder Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
At first glance, it was the most unlikely of friendships, even for the solipsistic milieu of the New York art scene. Andy Warhol: crown prince of Pop art, uber-celebrity, one of the most iconic figures in the world; and Jean-Michel Basquiat, the rebellious, dreadlocked, graffiti artist turned neo-expressionist wunderkind. One white, middle aged, his star fading, the other black, in his twenties and on the rise. And yet, for a few years in the Eighties, they were friends, inseparable ones, as well as highly productive collaborators. Their relationship has been frequently Read more ...
Tim Walker
The divide between theatre critics and the theatrical profession has always been a chasm, but occasionally a wire has been thrown between the two and plucky or foolhardy individuals have attempted to traverse it. A three-times-unsuccessful applicant to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in my teens, I managed to turn actor in middle age in Top Hat and Spamalot in the West End. These were, however, merely stunts dreamt up by producers to promote their shows and my performances were unstartlingly overlooked in the Olivier Awards. Now I am on the tightrope once again as I make my Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
“You could read at home,” says Bettina (Anoushka Chadha), Year 10, her school uniform perfectly pressed, hair neatly styled. “You could be an annoying little shit at home,” retorts her sister Asha (Safiyya Ingar), Year 13, all fire and fury in Doc Martens and rainbow headphones. Two Billion Beats, Sonali Bhattacharyya’s new play for the Orange Tree, draws us in with snappy lines and raucous energy before delivering an emotional wallop.Asha is waiting to go home until their mum has left for work so she doesn’t have to talk about her history essay. She got 85%, but her mum only cares about the Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Carey Crim’s 2017 play arrives from the US at north London's Park Theatre trailing a feminist playwriting award for its dissection of what happens when a smart college senior raised by two women starts to question her parentage. Eleanor wants to know who her biological father was and to this end has employed a private investigator. Her mother Allison is aghast. What will Eleanor do if what she unearths about her father is not what she hopes for, and indeed is abhorrent to her?Cracks begin to appear almost immediately in (Caucasian) Allison’s relationship with her long-term partner Nadine, an Read more ...