Theatre
Rust, Bush Theatre review - slender yet invigoratingTuesday, 02 July 2019
The best kind of two-hander is the play about couples. And the most dramatic way of saying something about relationships is to show a couple who are in trouble, bad trouble. Crisis. Especially if they start off well together. Kenny Emson's smart,... Read more... |
Summer Rolls, Park Theatre review - racism laid bare to mixed resultsSaturday, 29 June 2019
There’s a moment in Summer Rolls, at the Nguyen family dinner table, when a veil is briefly pulled back on the ugly racism so many Asian immigrant communities must endure in the UK. The treasured son, Anh, who has been rejected for jobs despite his... Read more... |
Europe, Donmar Warehouse review - timely, tender, brutal and brilliantFriday, 28 June 2019
In the middle of the current decade, there was a mild vogue for reviving a handful of the great plays of the 1990s, such as Mark Ravenhill's Shopping and Fucking and Patrick Marber's Closer. Now the Donmar Warehouse's new artistic director, the... Read more... |
On Your Feet!, London Coliseum review - Gloria Estefan bio-musical hits familiar notesFriday, 28 June 2019
This well-meaning biographical jukebox musical about icons Gloria and Emilio Estefan, which did two years on Broadway and a US tour, is good summer scheduling, what with its Latin-pop bangers, infectious dance routines and “Dreams come true”... Read more... |
The Hunt, Almeida Theatre review - tense Scandinoirland dramaThursday, 27 June 2019
For a while, child abuse has been banished from our stages. After all, there is a limit, surely, to how much pain audiences can be put through. Now, however, the subject is back, thanks to the Almeida Theatre's new stage adaptation of the 2012... Read more... |
Present Laughter, Old Vic review - Andrew Scott continues his rise and riseWednesday, 26 June 2019
"Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?" can be heard pulsating through the Old Vic auditorium as the curtain rises on its wondrous revival of Present Laughter: a decisive feather in the cap of artistic director Matthew Warchus's regime. But all Garry... Read more... |
Cash Cow, Hampstead Theatre review - timely look at pushy tennis parentsTuesday, 25 June 2019
“How much does she owe us?” So ponder the now estranged parents of a former tennis pro, as they calculate the very literal investment they’ve put into their daughter. This probing new play from Oli Forsyth – well timed for Queen’s and Wimbledon –... Read more... |
The Damned, Comédie-Française, Barbican review - slow-burn horrors in devastating imagesFriday, 21 June 2019
Is the terrifying past of Germany in 1933 also our future? Having had nightmares about the brilliant dystopian TV soap opera Years and Years, which built like all the best of its kind on present fears, I wasn't expecting to be confronted so soon by... Read more... |
Bitter Wheat, Garrick Theatre review - Malkovich monologue is more chaff than wheatThursday, 20 June 2019
John Malkovich is back in town - and he's starring in the most controversial play of the year. Trouble is, it might well also be the worst. When the subject of veteran American playwright David Mamet's new drama was announced as being about a... Read more... |
Three Sisters, Maly Drama Theatre, Vaudeville Theatre review - a Chekhov of luminous clarityThursday, 20 June 2019
Lev Dodin has been artistic director of the famed Maly Drama Theatre for some three and a half decades now, over which time the St Petersburg company has earned itself the highest of international reputations. London audiences have been fortunate to... Read more... |
The Light in the Piazza, RFH review - Broadway musical looks good and sounds even betterWednesday, 19 June 2019
A Broadway show as melodically haunting and sophisticated as it is niche, The Light in the Piazza has taken its own bittersweet time getting to London. A separate European premiere in 2009 at Leicester's Curve Theatre whetted the local appetite for... Read more... |
Citysong, Soho Theatre review - big writing, big heartWednesday, 19 June 2019
Irish playwright Dylan Coburn Gray's new play won the Verity Bargate Award in 2017, and his reward is a fine production of this beautifully written account of one Dublin family over several decades. It is a light-touch epic which is partly a... Read more... |
