Theatre Reviews
Russian Avant-Garde Theatre, Victoria & Albert MuseumThursday, 23 October 2014
Installed in the main exhibition space, this could have been a blockbuster show introducing a large audience to an important moment in Russian Theatre; but tucked away in the Department of Theatre and Performance, where spaces are narrow and galleries small, there is little room to show off these superb exhibits to their best advantage. Only the initiated will, I fear, brave these claustrophobic corridors and persevere long enough to appreciate the goodies on offer. Read more...
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Neville's Island, Duke of York's TheatreWednesday, 22 October 2014
Hell is other people. It’s not the wilderness that poses the greatest threat to the stranded corporate bonding quartet in this docile Lord of the Flies-meets-The Office pastiche, but the endless stream of well-meaning incompetence. Yet while Tim Firth’s 1992 play is Schadenfreude Central – if you haven’t had your fill of disaster-by-proxy following the trail of Hurricane Gonzalo – it, too, suffers from benign ineptitude in not committing to a genre. Read more... |
The Scottsboro Boys, Garrick TheatreTuesday, 21 October 2014
You come away from The Scottsboro Boys sure of two things: that the next cakewalk you hear will induce queasiness and that the show's director/choreographer Susan Stroman is some kind of genius. This kick-ass West End premiere, now happily transferred from the Young Vic, has a simplicity, a precision, a visceral energy, a choreographic razzle-dazzle that make an art of catching you off-guard. Read more... |
Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World, Globe TheatreTuesday, 21 October 2014
On Saturday at Shakespeare’s Globe, the Alternative Miss World was staged for the 13th time. Having launched this gloriously tacky event in his Hackney studio in 1972, artist Andrew Logan promises to carry on the tradition until the day he dies; but it’s last showing – at the Roundhouse five years ago – nearly bankrupted him. Read more... |
The House That Will Not Stand, Tricycle TheatreTuesday, 21 October 2014
Bigger is better in the Tricycle’s latest piece of reclaimed black history. African-American writer Marcus Gardley’s stimulating play, which transports Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba to 1836 New Orleans and a significant shift in the evolving racial hierarchy, begins slowly and timidly, reliant on exposition and sitcom laughs. Yet once he and Indhu Rubasingham embrace its operatic qualities, this memorably evocative work takes flight. Read more... |
Gypsy, Chichester Festival TheatreSunday, 19 October 2014
There’s a moment of stunned silence in Imelda Staunton’s storming Mama Rose at the Chichester Festival Theatre, a long, long, moment where neither speaking nor singing she conclusively demonstrates what a difference a great actress makes in this most iconic of musical theatre roles. Read more... |
The Cherry Orchard, Young VicFriday, 17 October 2014
Ghosts are walking at the Young Vic. Katie Mitchell’s stark, startling production of Chekhov’s final lament is not just an evocation of a lost era, but a summoning of the spirits haunting Vicki Mortimer’s chilling sepulchral mansion. This is a Cherry Orchard cast into shadow – literal and figurative – but pulsing with furious energy. The past will not go gentle into that good night; it calls out in a keening cry. Read more... |
East Is East, Trafalgar StudiosFriday, 17 October 2014
When it first opened in October 1996, Ayub Khan Din’s East Is East was hyped as the best Asian play since, well, ever. And audiences flocked to see this 1970s migrant story both in Birmingham, where it opened, and at the Royal Court, which was a co-producer. Three years later, a film version — directed by Damien O’Donnell — was equally popular, suggesting that Brit film could be as bright as the best of Brit drama. Read more... |
Here Lies Love, National TheatreWednesday, 15 October 2014
The National Theatre's new Dorfman auditorium gets off to a kick-ass start with Here Lies Love, the Off Broadway musical transplant that does for the closing months of Nicholas Hytner's tenure as artistic director what Jerry Springer the Opera did for the early days of his regime a decade or more ago. Read more... |
Uncle Vanya, St James TheatreTuesday, 14 October 2014
Purists may take issue with Anya Reiss’s incursion into the classics. Having already tackled The Seagull and Three Sisters, she’s now turned her dogged 21st-century gaze on Uncle Vanya. But Reiss’s adaptation, though fresh and punchy, is notable, in fact, for its amiable fidelity. 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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