Theatre Reviews
Much Ado About Nothing, Old VicFriday, 20 September 2013
“What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?” Surely never before has Benedick’s opening quip cut so close to the literal, nor drawn such a laugh from its audience. With a combined age of 158, the romantic leads in Mark Rylance’s Much Ado About Nothing take the current trend for an older pair of lovers to the extreme. Read more... |
The Lightning Child, Shakespeare's GlobeThursday, 19 September 2013
Having boundaries actually sets us free. So Neil Armstrong's wife argues. She is dogmatically keen to stop her husband rocketing off to the moon in the first scene of The Lightning Child – a groundbreaking show in so far as it's the first musical to premiere at Shakespeare's reconstructed wooden "O", opening last night. Armstrong (Harry Hepple in a space suit) does not agree with his spouse's imposed limits, however. A lunar voyage is, he says, his chance to become sublime. Read more... |
The Herd, Bush TheatreThursday, 19 September 2013
Once a staple of British drama, the middle-class family play has recently, after about a decade of being unfashionable, made a remarkable comeback. This current example is the playwriting debut of the award-winning actor Rory Kinnear, a star of stage (Hamlet, Othello), television (Southcliffe) and screen (Skyfall). But although it is an accomplished effort, there is something disappointingly déjà vu about this reunion play. Read more... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Noël Coward TheatreWednesday, 18 September 2013
It’s a nothing of a line – “Hail mortal” – spoken by nobody important, but in Michael Grandage’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream it becomes the basis for an entire concept. A trivial bit of linguistic sleight of hand turns it into “Inhale mortal” and there you have it, a fairy troupe high on waccy baccy and the most sexually and socially anarchic of Shakespeare’s comedies transformed into the toothless fantasy of a bunch of New Age stoners. Read more... |
Barking in Essex, Wyndham's TheatreTuesday, 17 September 2013
First, a warning to those who find certain swearwords beyond the pale - this article contains a few of them, but nothing like the number in the play it reviews. Barking in Essex is not a evening out for your proverbial maiden aunt. Read more... |
Springs Eternal, Orange Tree TheatreMonday, 16 September 2013
The American repertoire has featured big-time on the London stage this year but perhaps nowhere more oddly than courtesy the ever-adventurous Orange Tree's staging of a World War Two play from Susan Glaspell, here receiving its world premiere. Read more... |
Farragut North, Southwark PlayhouseSaturday, 14 September 2013
They’re eating out of the palm of his hand. Or so he thinks. Stephen Bellamy is a spin doctor, only 25 years old but already a hotshot in American electioneering. At the off, in Beau Willimon’s fictionalised drama about modern-day Machiavels, Bellamy is presuming to manipulate the press, in Iowa's primary, with hubristic confidence. Two Democratic presidential candidates are going head-to-head. Read more... |
Hysteria, Hampstead TheatreFriday, 13 September 2013
In playwriting, there’s near-perfection, perfection and oh-my-God-how-I-wish-I’d-written-that. Terry Johnson’s Hysteria, which was first staged at the Royal Court 20 years ago, is definitely in the OMG category. Subtitled “Fragments of an Analysis of an Obsessional Neurosis”, it is now a contemporary classic, and deservedly so. Read more... |
The Ritual Slaughter of Gorge Mastromas, Royal Court TheatreThursday, 12 September 2013
Since his arrival about a decade ago, Dennis Kelly has proved himself to be a master of versatility. He has written in-yer-face shockers such as Osama the Hero and Orphans, elaborate experiments in theatre form such as Love and Money, sprawling epics including The Gods Weep, the paranoid fantasy Utopia for Channel 4 and the deliciously heartwarming Matilda the Musical. Read more... |
Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Queen Elizabeth HallSaturday, 07 September 2013
It’s hard to imagine much upstaging Martyn Jacques, the indomitable falsetto frontman of the Tiger Lillies. The gaping mouth of an enormous mythical fish that seems to have swum straight from the canvases of Hieronymus Bosch, projected right across the stage in their new show Rime of the the Ancient Mariner, comes close. Read more... |
Pages
Advertising feature
★★★★★
‘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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