Theatre Reviews
Gently Down the Stream, Park Theatre review - gay history sifted for compact dramaTuesday, 19 February 2019
Ripeness is sometimes all. 80-year-old Martin Sherman's recent play, receiving its UK premiere at canny Park Theatre, says more about gay history in 100 selective minutes than The Inheritance managed in six and a half hours. True, it's not aiming at the visionary: Sherman knows that's best left to Larry Kramer, recalled as prophet and patriarch in AIDS-ravaged New York, and to Tony Kushner's Angels in America. Read more... |
Come From Away, Phoenix Theatre review - a necessary corrective to our traumatic timesTuesday, 19 February 2019
Against the grimmest of backdrops, generosity and even grace can be possible. Read more... |
Agnes Colander, Jermyn Street Theatre review - Naomi Frederick shines in 'new' Granville BarkerTuesday, 19 February 2019
Remembering meeting Harley Granville Barker when casting him as Marchbanks in Candida, Shaw described the 23-year-old as, "altogether the most distinguished and incomparably the most cultivated person whom circumstances had driven into the theatre at that time." He judged his performance as the romantic poet "perfect". Read more... |
9 to 5 the Musical review - Dolly Parton's film returns as retooled version of a Broadway flopMonday, 18 February 2019
A musicals-intensive season gets off to a wan start with 9 to 5, a retooled West End version of a 2009 Broadway flop based on the beloved 1980 film that proffered a sisterhood for the ages in the combo of Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda, and Lily Tomlin. Read more... |
The Lady from the Sea, Print Room at the Coronet review - freedom to choose?Monday, 18 February 2019
Ellida (Pia Tjelta) has a choice to make, the outcome of which will bind her future to her past or her present, each represented by a man. On the one hand, there is the tempestuous seafaring Stranger (Øystein Røger) to whom, long ago and in a fit of delirium, she pledged herself; on the other, there is her devoted and rational doctor husband Wangel (Adrian Rawlins). Read more... |
Berberian Sound Studio, Donmar Warehouse review – improves the originalFriday, 15 February 2019
Two men called "Massimo" face the audience, one very tall, one very, well, minimo. The tall Massimo (Tom Espiner, pictured below) sports wavy shoulder length blond hair and an exuberant pearl rosary, the minimo Massimo (Hemi Yeroham) has dark hair, a beard and glasses, and intense stare. Read more... |
The American Clock, Old Vic review - Arthur Miller's musical history lesson dragsThursday, 14 February 2019
This year’s unofficial Arthur Miller season – following The Price and ahead of All My Sons at the Old Vic and Death of a Salesman at the Young Vic – now turns to his 1980 work, The American Clock, inspired in part by Miller’s own memories of the 1929 Wall Street Crash and subsequent Great Depression. Read more... |
All About Eve, Noel Coward Theatre review - less a bumpy night than an erratically arresting oneThursday, 14 February 2019
Women spend a lot of time gazing at themselves in the mirror in the Belgian auteur director Ivo van Hove's latest stage-to-screen deconstruction, All About Eve, which is based on one of the most-beloved of all films about the theatre: the 1950 Oscar-winner of the same name. Read more... |
The Price, Wyndham's Theatre review - David Suchet stands supremeTuesday, 12 February 2019
There’s a rather sublime equilibrium to Arthur Miller’s 1968 play between the overwhelmingly heavy weight of history and a sheer life force that somehow functions, against all odds, as its counterbalance. Read more... |
The Good Person of Szechwan, Pushkin Drama Theatre, Barbican review - slick Russian BrechtMonday, 11 February 2019
"In our country the capable man needs luck," belts out Shen Te, the Good Person of Szechwan in the most powerful song of Brecht's epic "parable play" of 1941. Read more... |
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