Theatre Reviews
The Cutting of the Cloth, Southwark PlayhouseWednesday, 18 March 2015
Nowadays, playwrights do their apprenticeships at university, studying drama. But, once upon a time, they had proper jobs before they started making theatre. Such is the case of the late Michael Hastings, who died in 2011 and whose most famous piece is Tom & Viv (about TS Eliot and his wife). Before becoming a playwright, he worked for three years as a tailor's apprentice. Read more... |
Stevie, Hampstead TheatreMonday, 16 March 2015
Writing about writers: exploring what you know, or the very definition of stifling egoism? Either way, it can be a terrible trap for the playwright, with craft becoming not just the subject of a work, but its defining feature. Hugh Whitemore narrowly avoids that fate in his unashamedly writerly 1977 piece about poet and novelist Stevie Smith, which is packed to the gills with erudite bon mots, yet, in Christopher Morahan’s leisurely revival, somewhat lacking in dramatic thrust. Read more... |
Play Mas, Orange Tree TheatreSaturday, 14 March 2015
Mustapha Matura's 1974 play is a celebration of liberation, both social and political, and a sly warning about the possible pitfalls of sudden freedom. Mas (or Masquerade) is the Trinidadian version of Carnival, an exotic mixture of Christian and African tradition played out just before Lent. It provides an opportunity to adopt a different persona, to drink to excess and to behave in ways unacceptable at any other time. Read more... |
Radiant Vermin, Soho TheatreThursday, 12 March 2015
As their career progresses, playwrights face a real problem: should they please their fans by writing the same play, over and over again, or should they risk trying out new things? Polymath Philip Ridley has built up a corpus of East End gothic plays, in-yer-face shockers and dystopic visions. But he has also written female monologues and imaginative two-handers about love. His latest one breaks more new ground: it is a comedy, and — unique for this playwright — it is overtly political. Read more... |
Charlie's Dark Angel, Drayton Arms TheatreSunday, 08 March 2015
The critic James Christopher describes his first stage play as a black comedy, and the opening few moments set out the noir element efficiently enough, if not with any discernable humour. Charlie (Ben Porter) has inherited an old Suffolk farmhouse and lets it out to pay the bills. Its one drawback is an indoor well, a health-and-safety hazard (and maybe haunted), which he plans to fill in with cement. Read more... |
The Armour, The Langham HotelSaturday, 07 March 2015
The Langham has marked its 150th anniversary in theatrical fashion by commissioning an original drama spanning several decades – and floors – from emerging company Defibrillator, whose Tennessee Williams trio at this venue impressed last year. Now Ben Ellis checks in with a tailored play that gains substance the further it reaches into the past. Read more... |
Antigone, BarbicanFriday, 06 March 2015
Last year the London stage was treated to an electrifying Medea and an intelligent, refreshing Electra, at The National and the Old Vic respectively. Now it’s the turn of the Barbican to unleash the formidable force of Greek tragedy upon us, switching from Euripedes to Sophocles and a heroine who, compared to those others, is a pure-hearted innocent. Read more... |
Game, Almeida TheatreThursday, 05 March 2015
This venue is one of the coolest in London — and its regular audience is both trendy and well-heeled. In the foyer, you get jostled by a better class of person. For this immersive show, written by the prolific and ever-inventive Mike Bartlett, the audience arrives and, after getting its tickets, is divided into four groups: A, B, C and D. Each group is then summoned by tannoy to enter the theatre though a different entrance. Yes, this is not a theatre show — it is a game show. Read more... |
Ruddigore, Charles Court Opera, King's Head TheatreTuesday, 03 March 2015
How can a feisty village dame duetting “lackaday”s with the mounted head of a long-lost, nay, long-dead love be so deuced affecting? Ascribe it partly to the carefully-applied sentiment of Gilbert and Sullivan, slipping in a very singular 11-o’clock number after so much Gothick spoofery, partly to two consummate and subtle singing actors, Amy J Payne and John Savournin, in a production of spare ingenuity by the latter, true Renaissance/Victorian man equally at home in opera and operetta. Read more... |
The Rise and Shine of Comrade Fiasco, Gate TheatreMonday, 02 March 2015
The quest for liberation is popular dramatic terrain, but the Gate Theatre’s "Freedom Burning" season shifts focus to the aftermath. What do you do when the fight is over, and how can you be sure the sacrifice was worthwhile? It’s a sophisticated – and, given the nature of modern warfare, highly pertinent – line of questioning, but Andrew Whaley’s richly allegorical piece is ultimately too opaque to do it justice. 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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