Theatre
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... |
Terror, Lyric Hammersmith review – more gimmick than dramaFriday, 23 June 2017
Can the theatre be a courtroom? A good public place to debate morality and to arrive at profound decisions? You could answer this with a history lesson that ranges from the ancient Greeks to more recent tribunal plays in the 1960s and 1990s. But I’... Read more... |
Bat Out of Hell, Coliseum review - Jim Steinman's rockin' dystopia hits the stageWednesday, 21 June 2017
Opera-lovers coming to St Martin's Lane may feel confused to be confronted by an unrecognisable Coliseum, which now has huge girder-like structures adorning the stage and ceiling and a rather ugly skyscraper looming out of the wings, called Falco... Read more... |
Hir, Bush Theatre review – transgender home is sub-primeWednesday, 21 June 2017
Donald Trump’s electoral success was, we have been told, fuelled by the anger of the American working class. But how do you show that kind of anger on stage, and how do you criticise its basis in traditional masculinity? One way, and this is the... 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... |
Hamlet, Harold Pinter Theatre review - dislocatingly fresh makeoverSaturday, 17 June 2017
Midway through Hamlet a troupe of actors arrives at Elsinore. Coaching them for his own ends, the prince turns director, delivering an impassioned critique: “O! it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious, periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to... Read more... |
Tristan & Yseult, Shakespeare's Globe review - terrific visual and musical élanFriday, 16 June 2017
This show feels like an end-of-the-exams party, and in a way that’s exactly what it is. If the fruits of Emma Rice’s short tenure as Artistic Director at the Globe were a series of tests that she is deemed to have failed, then Tristan & Yseult,... Read more... |
Anatomy of a Suicide, Royal Court review - devastatingly brilliantMonday, 12 June 2017
Dorothy Parker’s take on suicide is called “Resumé”: it goes, “Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren’t lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live.” Although this seems to cover the... Read more... |
Barber Shop Chronicles, National Theatre review - foot-stompingly pleasurableThursday, 08 June 2017
The strapline for this joyful show is: “One day; six cities; a thousand stories.” Allowing for hyperbole, this is just about right. Performance poet Inua Ellams’s new show is set in a handful of cities that stretch across one part of the globe, from... Read more... |
Common, National Theatre review - Anne-Marie Duff fails to igniteWednesday, 07 June 2017
History is a tricky harlot. She is bought and sold, fought for and thrown over, seduced and betrayed – and always at the mercy of the winners. In a general election week, it is hard to deny that still now we are the progeny of the possessive... Read more... |
h.Club 100 Awards: Hope Mill Theatre, ManchesterTuesday, 06 June 2017
The Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester is an irresistible example of the can-do spirit. Less than two years ago the ground floor of a disused mill was being advertised on Gumtree as a storage space. Two actors who had been working as waiters – William... Read more... |
Annie review - a 12-year-old star is bornTuesday, 06 June 2017
Forty years after Annie swept on to Broadway, brimming with shining-faced optimism amidst wearying times, along comes Nikolai Foster's West End revival of the show to do much the same today. A tentative-seeming Miranda Hart may be the name player,... Read more... |
