Theatre Reviews
When We Were Women, Orange Tree TheatreTuesday, 08 September 2015
Can you peg a whole play on a decent twist? When We Were Women’s narrative tease pays off interestingly, but takes a hell of a long time getting there. It leaves little space to explore the ramifications of an intriguing revelation, a frustration amplified by the constant chronological cross-cutting in this revived Sharman Macdonald work, first seen at the National in 1988. Read more... |
Song from Far Away, Young VicSaturday, 05 September 2015
“My brother died.” That’s the reality New York-based banker Willem struggles to inhabit when he returns to his estranged family in Amsterdam. There is no sense in Pauli’s loss – a sudden heart attack at 20, cradled by a stranger in the street – nor finality. Willem’s response is to continue the conversation through an elegiac series of letters, countering the abandonment and searching for meaning in both a life interrupted and his own isolated existence. Read more... |
People, Places and Things, National TheatreWednesday, 02 September 2015
We all know what the word “addict” means, but what does it feel like to be one? Thirtysomething Emma – a minor actress played with immense conviction and quirky charm by Denise Gough – knows exactly. At one point in Duncan Macmillan’s engrossing new play, she says, “People who aren’t addicted to anything are really missing out, you know?” For the addict lives a life of glory: they feel complete, and loved and satisfied. Yes, that’s it. Read more... |
Murmel Murmel, King's Theatre, EdinburghMonday, 31 August 2015
It felt a bit like we were seeing things. At the fag-end of Edinburgh’s 2015 August of festival mayhem, with extreme exhaustion and input overload mixing to brain-addling effect in the heads of most festival-goers and participants, a hallucinatory, day-glo farce of a show that obsessively repeats just a single word seemed pretty fitting. Read more... |
You Won't Succeed On Broadway If You Don't Have Any Jews, St James TheatreFriday, 28 August 2015
Well, here’s an oddity. You Won’t Succeed... is too fragmented for musical theatre, too bombastic for cabaret, and about as profound as a first-draft Wikipedia page. Channelling the self-referential levity of the Monty Python show from which it takes its name would certainly help, but it’s mainly played straight. And what insight into the indelible Jewish contribution to musical theatre does two and a half hours’ investment get you? Read more... |
Our Country's Good, National TheatreThursday, 27 August 2015
The political wheel has turned full-circle. When Our Country’s Good was premiered in 1988, it was a barely-veiled protest against Thatcher’s slash-and-burn approach to the arts in general and arts funding in particular. It couldn’t have returned at a more apt moment. Read more... |
Hamlet, BarbicanWednesday, 26 August 2015
The set turns out to be the thing now that Benedict Cumberbatch's star turn in Hamlet has finally arrived, trailing in its wake a level of expectation, hysteria and scrutiny that might well have made many a lesser actor head for the hills. Read more... |
Lady Anna: All At Sea, Park TheatreSaturday, 22 August 2015
If you were expecting a fusty, formal adaptation of Anthony Trollope – and one of his least known novels, to boot – Lady Anna: All At Sea will come as a breath of fresh air. Read more... |
887, Edinburgh International Conference CentreMonday, 17 August 2015
Incoming director Fergus Linehan has assembled some of the most respected names in their fields for his first Edinburgh International Festival. For classical music, that means Anne-Sophie Mutter, Valery Gergiev and Michael Tilson Thomas (among many others); for dance it means Sylvie Guillem; and for theatre it means Simon McBurney’s Complicite and Robert Lepage. Read more... |
The Iliad, British Museum /Almeida TheatreSaturday, 15 August 2015
You don’t know Homer’s Iliad until you’ve heard it read aloud, all 24 books – not quite every line, but almost – and 16 hours of it. Yesterday's marathon was surely something like the events in which the Athenians kept the oral tradition going during their great Dionysiac festivals - in most things, at least, except the original feats of memory. 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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