Theatre Reviews
Doctor Faustus, Duke of York's TheatreTuesday, 26 April 2016
Blood, sexual violence, power games and lashings of nudity. Not Game of Thrones, whose new season has just premiered (yes, he’s really dead. Well, for now) – and whose shadow Kit Harington is trying to escape – but Jamie Lloyd’s graphic take on Marlowe. It’s a production determined to hold your attention, and, thanks to its comic carnival of excess, largely successful in that pursuit. Read more... |
Kings of War, Toneelgroep Amsterdam, BarbicanMonday, 25 April 2016
Banished from the Barbican are the hollow kings of the mediocre RSC Henrys IV and V. In their place comes a whole new procession of living, breathing monarchs in a vision that's light years away from bad heritage Shakespeare. Read more... |
Funny Girl, Savoy TheatreThursday, 21 April 2016
Vaudeville is having quite the West End moment, with Funny Girl inheriting the Savoy from Gypsy and Mrs Henderson Presents over at the Noël Coward. Gypsy is the pick of the bunch dramatically, delivering theatre history with real psychological heft, but Sheridan Smith’s luminous Fanny Brice gives Funny Girl a fighting chance. Read more... |
The Flick, National TheatreWednesday, 20 April 2016
A Pulitzer Prize and numerous walkouts: The Flick, infamously, courts extreme reactions. Yet this latest American import is dedicated to minutiae. In Annie Baker’s slow-burning (three hours-plus), microscopic epic, her lens is trained on ordinary people, mundane tasks, arid pauses and inarticulate speech that trails… off. Read more... |
My Mother Said I Never Should, St James TheatreTuesday, 19 April 2016
Charlotte Keatley’s 1987 feminist classic is one of the most often performed plays by a woman writer. It is typical of its time in that this story of four generations of women in one family not only explores the theme of mothers and daughters, but does so with an innovative and experimental approach to theatre form. Read more... |
All's Well That Ends Well, Tobacco Factory, BristolMonday, 18 April 2016
Andrew Hilton’s new production of All’s Well That Ends Well makes the most of the complexities of a "problem play", neither comedy nor tragedy, and navigates this startling mix of emotional depth and light farce with great deftness. Read more... |
The Sugar-Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie, Arcola TheatreSunday, 17 April 2016
The playwright Anders Lustgarten has spent a considerable chunk of his life reading and writing and thinking about China, and clearly wants to set a few points straight. Read more... |
Another World: Losing Our Children to Islamic State, National TheatreSaturday, 16 April 2016
Why do young British Muslims go to join the so-called Islamic State? Since the entire media has been grappling with this question for ages now, it is a bit puzzling to see our flagship National Theatre giving the subject an airing, especially as this is a verbatim drama, which uses the actual words of interviewees, and is thus not so very different from ordinary journalism. Read more... |
Guys and Dolls, Phoenix TheatreFriday, 15 April 2016
It’s all change once more for Gordon Greenberg’s slick, protean revival, which began life at Chichester back in 2014, as three new leads join the show’s transfer from the Savoy to the Phoenix. If not a revelatory version of this 1950 masterwork, it’s certainly proved its staying power, and should continue ticking along nicely (nicely) both here and in its parallel touring production. Read more... |
In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, Charing Cross TheatreThursday, 14 April 2016
Was Tennessee Williams breaking rules, or breaking apart when he wrote this 1969 play? A bit of both, probably, and the two main characters of the rarely performed In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel face the same choices. Read more... |
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Advertising feature
★★★★★
‘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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