Theatre Reviews
Best of 2015: TheatreTuesday, 29 December 2015
Say what you will about London theatre during 2015, and by my reckoning it was a pretty fine year, there certainly was a lot of it. I can't recall a year that brought with it a comparable volume of openings, not least during September and December, this year's pre-Christmas slate of major press nights roughly double the same time period in 2014. And as proof that people were actually attending the stuff on offer, empirical evidence as ever was the best guide. Read more... |
Dr Seuss's The Lorax, Old VicMonday, 21 December 2015
You'll feel guilty for having bothered with a programme after seeing The Lorax, the Dr Seuss adaptation that puts saving the environment centre-stage at the Old Vic just as the recent climate change gathering in Paris has done on the world stage. Full of unimpeachably good intentions, the production is fun and frolicsome up to a point, and sometimes simply bewildering. Read more... |
The Insatiable, Inflatable Candylion, National Theatre WalesSunday, 20 December 2015
While Christmas is the season when traditional theatres trot out the tired clichés of panto, the ever-innovative National Theatre Wales have decided, in their wisdom, to stage a surreal, psychedelic theatre-gig at the Sophia Gardens cricket ground in Cardiff. Read more... |
Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Donmar WarehouseFriday, 18 December 2015
The last time I saw Janet McTeer, she was doing her best with the slightly underwritten role of sister to Glenn Close’s lethal Patty Hewes in Damages, the ultimate TV series about the discrepancy between seeming and being. Which is the theme, too, of Christopher Hampton’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses, adapted from Choderlos de Laclos’ peerless epistolary novel. Read more... |
The Dazzle, FOUND111Wednesday, 16 December 2015
The proverbial pond that separates the New York and London theatres has had a seismic effect on The Dazzle, Richard Greenberg's ironically titled play from 2002 that in every way seems darker, stranger, and more compelling in its British premiere than it did when I first caught it Off Broadway. Read more... |
Sleeping Beauty, Bristol Old VicTuesday, 15 December 2015
Christmas pantomime is all about letting go, and being carried away on a wave of communal jollity. The genre also delights in carnivalesque gender-bending, the anarchic undermining of authority and the playful representation of evil. Read more... |
Forget Me Not, Bush TheatreTuesday, 15 December 2015
Past wrongs cast long shadows. Following the passing of the 1901 Immigration Restriction Act, successive Australian governments favoured migrants from English-speaking countries in what was called the White Australia policy. Between 1945 and 1968, for example, more than 3,000 British children were sent to the antipodes and told they were orphans. They expected the sunshine of a new start; what they got was the darkness of abuse. Read more... |
Peter Pan Goes Wrong, Apollo TheatreMonday, 14 December 2015
The pleasures to be found in the pitfalls that are part of live performance rear their accident-prone head yet again in Peter Pan Goes Wrong, the latest exercise in controlled (or is it?) chaos from Mischief Theatre, the young and clearly very resilient troupe that is gradually extending its farcical tentacles across the West End. Read more... |
Tracks of the Winter Bear, Traverse Theatre, EdinburghSaturday, 12 December 2015
The first surprise in the Traverse Theatre’s seasonal production comes on entering the theatre – being led backstage, then onto what’s normally the performing area, and finally to two ranks of audience seating either side of a gently undulating transverse strip of stage. Read more... |
wonder.land, National TheatreFriday, 11 December 2015
Widely hyped as “an Alice for the online generation”, and “a coming-of-age adventure that explores the blurred boundaries between our online and offline lives”, this version of Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland stories is advertised with a poster that shows a Cheshire cat whose smile is more drug-addled rictus than quizzical grin. 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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