farce
Twelfth Night, Royal Shakespeare Theatre review - comic energy dissipates in too large a spaceSunday, 22 December 2024
It is not just Twelfth Night, it’s Twelfth Night, or What You Will in The Folio, a signpost of the choices the inhabitants, old and new, of Illyria must make. Perhaps it’s also an allusion to Will’s own choices as an actor/playwright in the all... Read more... |
French Toast, Riverside Studios review - Racine-inspired satire finds its laughs once up-and-runningWednesday, 09 October 2024
It’s always fun jabbing at the permanently open wound that is Anglo-French relations, now with added snap post-Brexit, its fading, but still frothing, humourless defenders clogging up Twitter and radio phone-ins even today. So it’s probably timely... Read more... |
The Cabinet Minister, Menier Chocolate Factory review - sparkling tour de force of a farceTuesday, 01 October 2024
The stock of the late 19th century playwright Arthur Wing Pinero has just received a significant boost, thanks to the brilliant work of the actress Nancy Carroll – not only as a superb performer but as a dab hand with an adaptor’s pen. Not seen... Read more... |
Pandemonium, Soho Theatre review - satire needs a shot of Pfizer's finest to revive tired storylinesWednesday, 13 December 2023
In 2020, throughout the country, many people’s lives were affected adversely by an ever-present threat to our already fragile society. Though most got over it, many people still bear the cost every day, sapping them of energy, making them cough and... Read more... |
Mathias Énard: The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild review - a man of infinite deathSaturday, 09 December 2023
"Death, as a general statement, is so easy of utterance, of belief", wrote Amy Levy, "it is only when we come face to face with it that we find the great mystery so cruelly hard to realise; for death, like love, is ever old and ever new". In Mathias... Read more... |
Oh What A Lovely War, Southwark Playhouse review - 60 years on, the old warhorse can still bare its teethMonday, 27 November 2023
In Annus Mirabilis, Philip Larkin wrote,"So life was never better than In nineteen sixty-three (Though just too late for me) – Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban And the Beatles' first LP."That might be the only point... Read more... |
La Cage Aux Folles, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - 40 years on, the drag show still entertains and educatesWednesday, 16 August 2023
Forty years ago, the world was very different for gay men. AIDS was devastating their communities, especially in the big cities where hard-won enclaves of acceptance were being hollowed out, one sunken-eyed friend after another. Media screamed “Gay... Read more... |
Tony Williams: Cole the Magnificent - fantastical tale blends myth, poetry and comedyTuesday, 15 August 2023
Cole the Magnificent is a picaresque, fantastical tale of the life (or lives) of a man, Cole, following his adventures as he progresses through a mythical pre-Norman Britain, from adolescence to old age, and beyond. It is episodic and poetic, by... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: The Grand Old Opera House Hotel / YOU ARE GOING TO DIETuesday, 15 August 2023
The Grand Old Opera House Hotel, Traverse Theatre ★★★The Traverse Theatre’s biggest, most lavish production for the 2023 festival is bold, colourful and joyful. It’s also, however, a somewhat patchy creation. Aaron (a gangly, gormless Ali... Read more... |
The Unfriend, Criterion Theatre review - dark comedy is (largely) audience-unfriendlySaturday, 21 January 2023
We all have that friend. The person you met on holiday and couldn’t shake off. You added each other on Facebook, but they posted so much you’ve quietly unfollowed them. You can’t quite bring yourself to unfriend them, though. In The Unfriend, a new... Read more... |
The Tempest, Shakespeare's Globe review - occasional gales of laughter drown out subtletySaturday, 06 August 2022
Alexei Sayle, in his angry young man phase, once said that you can always tell when you’re watching a Shakespeare comedy, because NOBODY'S LAUGHING. That’s not entirely true, of course, but sometimes a director has to go looking for the LOLs and... Read more... |
The Comeback, Noël Coward Theatre review - frantic farce with touches of vaudevilleMonday, 14 December 2020
Ben Ashenden and Alex Owen together form The Pin, a sketch duo who have won much critical acclaim and full houses in the Edinburgh Fringe shows. They have also added a huge social media following in 2020 with their lockdown skits spoofing the new... Read more... |
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