Theatre Reviews
Café Society Swing, Leicester Square TheatreWednesday, 18 June 2014
Alex Webb’s musical Café Society Swing, about a provocatively liberal Manhattan jazz club in the 1940s, made a much-anticipated return to the Leicester Square Theatre last night. With remarkable ingenuity and economy, Webb tells the story of the real Café Society, a radical and subversive multi-faceted entertainment venue, which on opening in December 1938 was the first non-segregated club in America. Read more... |
Klook's Last Stand, Park TheatreSunday, 15 June 2014
If you've been rolling your eyes at the rash of articles hailing London's ever-increasing number of dry bars, allow writer-director Ché Walker to convince you of their amatory relevance. In his new musical drama, smooth-talker Klook and hard nut Vinette fall for one another over a long tall glass of carrot juice, with just the right kick of ginger. Read more... |
Orange Tree Theatre Festival, Programme 1, Orange Tree TheatreSaturday, 14 June 2014
Sam Walters, Britain's longest-serving artistic director of a theatre (43 years!), looks to the past as well as the future with his Orange Tree swansong. This varied festival features nine plays and six world premieres across two programmes, all of them staged by returning graduates of the Richmond venue's trainee director scheme. Read more... |
Mr Burns, Almeida TheatreFriday, 13 June 2014
In creating Mr Burns, Anne Washburn was trying to answer a question overlooked by most purveyors of dystopian fictions: what would happen to pop culture after an apocalypse? The physical and emotional challenges of life after civilisation have been endlessly explored, but very little attention has been paid to the fate of the ever-evolving collection of stories that we carry inside our heads. Read more... |
Khandan (Family), Royal Court TheatreThursday, 12 June 2014
Some days, I feel very sorry for playwrights, especially those that become notorious through no fault of their own. If their most famous play causes enough controversy, it can take decades before people forget it. So now, 10 years since Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s early play, Behtzi (Dishonour) caused violent protests at the Birmingham Rep because of its depiction of a rape in a Sikh temple, I can’t think of any other way of starting this review of her latest without mentioning it. Read more... |
Fathers and Sons, Donmar WarehouseWednesday, 11 June 2014
Brian Friel’s affinity with Russian writers, notably Chekhov and Turgenev, is central to his work, the playwright seeing similarities between their tragi-comic characters, hanging onto “old certainties” despite knowing in their hearts that their time is up, and people of his own generation in Ireland. The correspondences go beyond theme, of course; he’s not known as the Irish Chekhov for nothing. Read more... |
Hotel, National TheatreThursday, 05 June 2014
Posh hotels are good settings for drama. They look cool, feel alien and can rapidly acquire a sense of claustrophobic intensity. Most importantly, in real life they feel like stage sets. Playwrights from Noël Coward (Private Lives) to Sarah Kane (Blasted) have set their work in luxury hotels, so Polly Stenham’s latest play, her first for the National Theatre (and performed in the small studio space), follows in some large footsteps. Read more... |
Clarence Darrow, Old VicThursday, 05 June 2014
Kevin Spacey is seen before he is heard in Clarence Darrow, the solo play that is doing a brief if ferociously bracing run at the Old Vic, but once the actor stops fiddling with his onstage desk and starts to talk, well, watch out. A master ironist who can often stand at an intriguingly cool distance from the parts he plays, Spacey hasn't sounded this impassioned in years, and when the standing ovation arrives nearly two hours later, it is entirely deserved. Read more... |
A Human Being Died That Night, Hampstead TheatreSaturday, 31 May 2014
Is there such a thing as a human right to forgiveness? Nicholas Wright's riveting play about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in post-apartheid South Africa circles around this question, never flinching from revealing the atrocities perpetuated by that vile regime, never quite fully exposing the characters' motivations. As spectators, it demands answers of us. What is the price of your forgiveness? Where is the line between humanity and evil? Read more... |
Circles, Tricycle TheatreFriday, 30 May 2014
New writing for British stages has recently delivered several punchy plays that, having made their points, don’t hang around for long afterwards. With a running time of 70 minutes, Evening Standard prize-winner Rachel De-lahay's Circles is one of these. Set in the playwright’s birthplace, Birmingham, most of the story takes place on the upper deck of a bus — the number 11 circular service — that is one of the longest urban routes in Europe. 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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