Theatre Reviews
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... |
Herding Cats, Hampstead TheatreMonday, 12 December 2011
Loneliness is hard to put on stage. There is something about the feeling of unwanted urban solitude which is so repetitive and, let’s face it, boring, that writing a play about it risks sending the audience into the night before the story is properly over. So the first thing to say about Lucinda Coxon’s play, which was first staged in Bath a year ago and now makes a welcome appearance in London, is that it is compelling and never boring. Read more... |
Haunted Child, Royal Court TheatreFriday, 09 December 2011
Can you replace a wife with a doctrine? Under normal circumstances, the question would be absurd, but given that Joe Penhall’s new play, which opened last night, is the latest of a crop that have explored belief, spirituality and religion, the conundrum is a very real one. And it’s here presented with unforgettable force in a compelling and stimulating play which itself seems guaranteed to haunt you. Read more... |
The Ladykillers, Gielgud TheatreThursday, 08 December 2011
The great Ealing film comedies are often viewed as sacred cows, no matter that a small but significant number of them were decidedly sacrilegious. Indeed, one of the studio’s last productions, Alexander Mackendrick’s The Ladykillers (1955), was also one of its cruellest. Now it has been adapted by Graham Linehan, who asserts that his aim was not to emulate Mackendrick’s jet-black satire but to translate it into farce. And that’s just what he has done, most enjoyably. Read more... |
Pippin, Menier Chocolate FactoryThursday, 08 December 2011
Should the people who made Tron - or for that matter James Cameron - ever decide to take on a Broadway musical, they owe themselves a trip to the Menier Chocolate Factory's ludicrous production of Pippin to find out how not to do it. Read more... |
Richard II, Donmar WarehouseWednesday, 07 December 2011
A recent newspaper article championed the topicality of Richard II, laboriously rewriting it from camp conservatism to a politically current meditation on the “sad stories” we still tell of the deaths of kings. Heads may have rolled and states collapsed this year, but thank goodness Michael Grandage felt no need to underline Shakespeare’s fragile lecture on kingship with gaudy contemporary markers. Read more... |
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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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