Theatre Reviews
The Hunt, Almeida Theatre review - tense Scandinoirland dramaWednesday, 26 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 Danish film thriller Jagten, by Dogme 95's Thomas Vinterberg and Tobias Lindholm, and which memorably starred Mads Mikkelsen. 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. 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? 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 Hollywood mogul, who, like Harvey Weinstein, is accused of abusive behaviour there was a predictable outcry. How dare Mamet write about this? 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. 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. 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. Read more... |
Napoli, Brooklyn, Park Theatre review - lacking substanceTuesday, 18 June 2019
According to their mother, Luda (played by Madeleine Worrall, pictured below), each of the three sisters (pictured top) in Napoli, Brooklyn, bears one of their father’s admirable traits. Tina (Mona Goodwin), the oldest, who left school early to earn money for the family in a factory job, has his strength. Read more... |
While the Sun Shines, Orange Tree Theatre review - frothy, yes, up to a pointThursday, 13 June 2019
Terence Rattigan completists, and count myself among them, will leap at the chance to see a rare production courtesy the Orange Tree Theatre of While the Sun Shines, a 1943 monster hit for this great English writer that has languished in semi-obscurity ever since. Read more... |
Sweat, Gielgud Theatre review - searing drama of working lifeThursday, 13 June 2019
There’s a joke early on in Sweat, Lynn Nottage's superlative drama about American working lives, in which a lively bar-room conversation turns to the seemingly unlikely subject of NAFTA. Read more... |
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