Theatre Reviews
Globe to Globe: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare's GlobeSaturday, 12 May 2012
The concept sounds like something dreamed up towards the bottom of a bottle in a Harare shebeen: Two Gentlemen of Verona performed by two gentlemen in Shona. But if any of the plays can withstand the stripped-down treatment, it’s the likeable but formulaic early comedy featuring a couple of chums who compete for the same girl. In this account, two actors undertook to perform all the roles with only a few bits of cloth and considerable acting chops to see them through. Read more... |
Street of Dreams, Manchester ArenaFriday, 11 May 2012
Street of dreams? The people who lived in the real-life inspiration and location for Coronation Street, Archie Street in Salford, hand-picked by the soap’s begetter Tony Warren, would be flummoxed and flabbergasted to hear it called that. I walked down Archie Street several times when the TV soap started. The two-up, two down, back-to-back terraced houses, separated by a three-foot alleyway, had no baths, no hot water, no inside lavatories and were dubbed “a disgrace to society”. Read more... |
Top Hat, Aldwych TheatreThursday, 10 May 2012
David Cameron could hardly wish for a more apt musical to pep up the people’s spirits than Irving Berlin’s Top Hat, with its wheedling entreaties about the advantages of being caught in the rain, or putting on your best front, and all. Read more... |
Three Kingdoms, Lyric HammersmithWednesday, 09 May 2012
Simon Stephens is not only one of our most talented playwrights, he’s also the one most open to influences from German theatre. In 2007, he collaborated with director Sebastian Nübling on the world premiere in Hanover of his innovative play, Pornography, which took more than a year to be staged in the UK, in a superb version by Sean Holmes. Holmes is now head of the Lyric Hammersmith, which hosts Stephens’s latest collaboration with Nübling. Read more... |
Globe to Globe: The Tempest, Shakespeare's GlobeWednesday, 09 May 2012
This music crept by me on the waters. Bangladesh’s Dhaka Theatre’s version of The Tempest took the musical route, and why not? It was always Shakespeare’s most musical play (with extant music for “Full Fathom Five” and other songs written by Robert Johnson). Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare's GlobeTuesday, 08 May 2012
The demands of Titus Andronicus are probably at odds with the constraints of the Globe to Globe season: a travelling troupe would find it hard to get 80 gallons of fake blood through Customs. Nor are they likely to be furnished with the sort of special effects – removable hands, slittable throats – which the play needs. Read more... |
Brighton Festival 2012: Vanessa Redgrave, The Rest Is Silence, Hangover SquareMonday, 07 May 2012
If you weren’t already aware that the Guest Director of the 2012 Brighton Festival is acting royalty, the preponderance of fop fringes and artfully flung scarves at the Dome Concert Hall on Saturday night was a good clue. Vanessa Redgrave is the figurehead for this year’s reliably eclectic (if a little conceptually convoluted) programme. And judging by the opening Q&A, dotted with as many grassroots political activists as members of the Redgrave clan, she’s going to be a busy one. Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Othello, Shakespeare's GlobeMonday, 07 May 2012
The masterstroke of this take on Othello was to draw its focus away from race. It might seem odd to say that of a production in the rhyming vernacular of hip hop in which the Moor was African-American and the rest of the cast were not – but it was deftly done, and as a result avoided any number of crass parallels that could have been drawn, instead focusing on the meat of the play: love and betrayal among men. Read more... |
Carousel, Opera NorthSunday, 06 May 2012
Feeling apprehensive about opera companies tackling Broadway musicals is understandable. So if you’re still wincing at the memory of Leonard Bernstein’s excruciating 1980s recording of West Side Story, relax - director Jo Davies’s intention was to cast “opera singers who can really, really act” and avoid the potential pitfalls of a fully-fledged operatic approach. And the singing in this new production is consistently good; brilliant in places. Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Richard II, Shakespeare's GlobeSunday, 06 May 2012
Mention that a Palestinian theatre company are performing Richard II and the play’s themes are immediately thrown into sharp relief: usurpation, homeland and banishment, and the idea of a literally God-given mandate to rule amongst a resistant people. It is the hope of great art that it brings peoples and nations together, but not at the expense of highlighting issues that tear them asunder. 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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