Theatre Reviews
Charlie Sonata, Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh review – 'too much of everything'Thursday, 04 May 2017
Time travel, Britpop, Sleeping Beauty. Classical ballet, the ravages of alcoholism, serial poisoning. There’s plenty going on in Douglas Maxwell’s idiosyncratic Charlie Sonata at Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre – so much, in fact, that it’s hard to know what it all adds up to. Read more... |
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui review - 'Lenny Henry covers Trump's greatest hits'Wednesday, 03 May 2017
It’s a bigly Trump-fest over at the Donmar, with adaptor Bruce Norris determined to make Brecht great again – or at least pointedly contemporary. Read more... |
Sunday Book: Nicholas Hytner - Balancing ActsSunday, 30 April 2017
After the first preview of Mike Leigh’s play Two Thousand Years at the National Theatre, a young Guardian reporter accosted an audience member for his view of the play. The audience member gave his name as Nigel Shapps, his age as 42, his background as Jewish, and his opinion that it was one of the most brilliant things he’d ever seen. Read more... |
The Treatment, Almeida Theatre, review - exhilarating Crimp never more relevantSaturday, 29 April 2017
Playwright Martin Crimp’s 1993 satirical epic, The Treatment, is a fabulous work, but it’s rarely revived. Although much of his back catalogue – especially Attempts on Her Life (1997) – has been revisited, The Treatment has often been ignored, perhaps on account of its large cast, or because of its large scale. Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's Globe review - 'too much brouhaha'Friday, 28 April 2017
“Everything in extremity”. That announcement that the Capulet party is about to begin could just as well serve to describe Daniel Kramer’s Romeo and Juliet as a whole. Opening the Globe's new season, it will provoke reactions as conflicting as the play’s warring families. Read more... |
City of Glass, Lyric Hammersmith review - ‘thrilling and enthralling Paul Auster adaptation’Thursday, 27 April 2017
Playwright Duncan Macmillan has had a good couple of years. In 2015, his play People, Places and Things was a big hit at the National Theatre, winning awards and transferring to the West End. Read more... |
Obsession, Barbican review - Jude Law on serious form in Ivo van Hove's latestWednesday, 26 April 2017
There is a distinctive look, feel, even sound to a stage production directed by Ivo van Hove, which is becoming rather familiar to London theatregoers after two cult hits, A View From the Bridge and Hedda Gabler. Read more... |
Nuclear War, Royal Court review - ‘deeply felt and haunting’Saturday, 22 April 2017
Text can sometimes be a prison. At its best, post-war British theatre is a writer’s theatre, with the great pensmiths – from Samuel Beckett, John Osborne and Harold Pinter to Caryl Churchill, Martin Crimp and Sarah Kane – carving out visions of everyday humanity in all our agonies and glee. Read more... |
The Philanthropist, Trafalgar Studios review - 'Simon Callow's direction is underpowered'Friday, 21 April 2017
Christopher Hampton's witty comedy, first performed in 1970, ingeniously inverts Molière's The Misanthrope, centring as it does on a man whose compulsive amiability manages to upset just about everyone. Read more... |
Whisper House, The Other Palace review - 'a delicately calibrated human story struggling to be heard'Thursday, 20 April 2017
It used to be said that the devil had all the best music. But the devil seems to have lost his touch in this ghost-story rock musical from Duncan Sheik, composer of the stage version of American Psycho and the award-laden Spring Awakening. If the plot seems familiar, it’s because it is – in essence, anyway. An isolated location. Childhood innocence in peril. Read more... |
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★★★★★
‘A compulsive, involving, emotionally stirring evening – theatre’s answer to a page-turner.’
The Observer, Kate Kellaway
Direct from a sold-out season at Kiln Theatre the five star, hit play, The Son, is now playing at the Duke of York’s Theatre for a strictly limited season.
★★★★★
‘This final part of Florian Zeller’s trilogy is the most powerful of all.’
The Times, Ann Treneman
Written by the internationally acclaimed Florian Zeller (The Father, The Mother), lauded by The Guardian as ‘the most exciting playwright of our time’, The Son is directed by the award-winning Michael Longhurst.
Book by 30 September and get tickets from £15*
with no booking fee.
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