Theatre Reviews
2011: Belgian Surrealism, Austrian Angst and a Dane in a MadhouseMonday, 26 December 2011
Last year, like every year, is a bit of a blur. I saw a lot, but all the good stuff seems to have clustered near the end. Maybe an end-of-year cultural bloat has finally settled. Anyway, to help jog the memory, I think I should start bottom-up. Read more... |
2011: All Watched Over by Matilda and MelancholiaMonday, 26 December 2011
At its best, theatre is enthralling, and this year's offerings were led by one brilliant musical and one amazing comedy. With the West End immune to the chills of the recession, its profits went up, and it warmly welcomed a couple of hits from the subsidised sector: enter Tim Minchin and Dennis Kelly’s Matilda, a gorgeous RSC musical, plus Richard Bean’s hilarious One Man Two Guvnors from the National. Read more... |
Coram Boy, Bristol Old Vic at Colston Hall, BristolSaturday, 24 December 2011
Coram Boy is a thrilling story of dead babies, teenage love, material greed and the redeeming power of music. This is Christmas entertainment that packs a powerful punch, borne aloft by the inspiring sound of Handel’s Messiah, with horrific events presented on stage, an emotional rollercoaster ride that is definitely not for the very young or the faint of heart. Read more... |
Christmas with the Rat Pack Live From Las Vegas, Wyndham’s TheatreThursday, 22 December 2011
Frank Sinatra might have come to dislike being branded as part of the Rat Pack, but the phrase stuck and still sticks. Judging by last night’s Christmas-slanted show, just as he, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr live forever, so will that phrase. Eleven years on from the first Rat Pack Live From Las Vegas show the shine hasn’t gone and the trio – even though they aren’t really there – light up the Wyndham’s Theatre. Read more... |
Swallows and Amazons, Vaudeville TheatreThursday, 22 December 2011
Four children allowed to go off in a boat on the Lake District by their mother without a responsible adult or lifejackets? If this happened today Social Services would be down on mum like a ton of bricks. But this is 1929, long before the tyranny of parental paranoia, which may go part of the way to explaining why Arthur Ransome's story of childhood adventure, unfettered by adult interference, is such an enduring hit. Read more... |
Dublin Carol, Trafalgar StudiosThursday, 15 December 2011
Conor McPherson's 2000 play is one of the Irish writer's most memorable works, and this revival comes soon after his less acclaimed latest play, The Veil, over which we shall draw, er, a discreet veil, debuted at the National. It reminds us that McPherson at his best is a writer of humanity and compassion and, as a former toper who is now a non-drinker, one who understands the lure of the bottle. Read more... |
Noises Off, Old VicWednesday, 14 December 2011
The play-within-a-play device has honourable antecedents - playwrights from Thomas Kyd and Anton Chekhov through to Bertolt Brecht and Tennessee Williams have flirted with it, while Shakespeare loved it so much that he used it in several of his plays, most famously in Hamlet. Read more... |
You Can't Take It With You, Royal Exchange, ManchesterTuesday, 13 December 2011
Oh, the joys of eccentricity. Welcome to the Vanderhof family of misfits. The head of the household, Grandpa Martin, refuses to pay any taxes, preferring to keep snakes on a hatstand. Good for frightening off the tax inspector, who unexpectedly drops by. Read more... |
Beauty and the Beast, Royal Lyceum, EdinburghTuesday, 13 December 2011
This year's seasonal production from the Lyceum is one of those shows that feels more like an uninspired stocking filler than a big, beautiful, beribboned gift. Neither magically Christmassy (it begins on Halloween, and the only substance falling from the heavens is gold dust), nor a gung-ho pantomime (though some slightly stilted call-and-response mischief creeps through the cracks in the fourth wall), in the end it seems content simply to entertain rather than enthral. Read more... |
A Christmas Carol, Arts TheatreMonday, 12 December 2011
That a tale confronting society’s most pernicious evils, giving poverty a human face and desperation a voice, should become a cornerstone of the British festive experience is perhaps unexpected: testimony either to the moral deviance of the general public, or alternatively to Charles Dickens’s peerless skill as a writer. 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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