Theatre Reviews
Lend Me a Tenor - The Musical, Gielgud TheatreWednesday, 15 June 2011
Acid prophecies of this show’s swift demise, as with that of the great Italian tenor whose supposed transformation from il stupendo to il stifferino results in the debut of a surpise new Otello at the "Cleveland Grand Opera", turn out to be greatly exaggerated. Allora, the tunes and the lyrics aren’t prime cut, but it’s slickly done, strongly cast and contains enough frothy set pieces to earn its salt. And any musical which has stylish fun with both the most... Read more...
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Shrek the Musical, Theatre Royal, Drury LaneWednesday, 15 June 2011
Broadway musicals can have a bumpy transatlantic crossing. For every New York entry that repeats its acclaim on the West End, others quickly fade, while still others never make it to the capital at all: consider The Light in the Piazza, which won six Tonys in 2005 but hasn't yet been seen in the UK south of Leicester. What, then, of Shrek, DreamWorks's entry into the Broadway musical sweepstakes that called it quits in New York after little more than a year? It's way too... Read more... |
Luise Miller, Donmar WarehouseTuesday, 14 June 2011
Time lurches when you see a historical play. But is it a case of autre temps, autres moeurs, or of plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose? Either way, the history needs to slap your face hard with recognition. Schiller’s Luise Miller is a 1784 play that clearly fires at its own vicious contemporary world, a catastrophically corrupt and unruly coalition of German states, and is its world just too far from our own to believe in the tragic young lovers at its core... Read more... |
Government Inspector, Young VicFriday, 10 June 2011
It's not often in classic comedy that you cry with laughter at the opening gags, and even rarer that the final scene of perfectly orchestrated ensemble acting actually crowns the work. More than two decades on from his groundbreaking Old Vic production of Ostrovsky's Too Clever By Half, director of genius Richard Jones is still finding the right mugs and pushing the boundaries of edgy satire. Read more... |
Hard Times, Murrays' Mills, ManchesterThursday, 09 June 2011
Dickens wasn’t wrong – hard times they were. Around 1300 men, women and children worked at the Murrays’ Mills complex in the Ancoats area of Manchester in its mid-19th-century heyday (if you can call it that). Arrive a minute later than 7am and you were locked out, without pay. Now that actors are treading those same worn and oil-stained boards with an imaginative new version of Hard Times, you won’t get in after 7pm (and you’re the one paying, of course). Read more... |
American Trade, Hampstead TheatreWednesday, 08 June 2011
Some theatre genres seem indestructible. One of these is the satirical city comedy, for which playwrights dip their pens in poison and spray their venom over the teeming mass of the shallow, the stupid and the successful. When they do this today, they inevitably recall all manner of past plays from Jacobean and Restoration times to Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal, and beyond. Read more... |
Chicken Soup With Barley, Royal Court TheatreWednesday, 08 June 2011
"Love comes now. You have to start with love," urges Sarah Kahn (Samantha Spiro) early in Chicken Soup With Barley, and it's inconceivable that Dominic Cooke's knockout production of Arnold Wesker's 1958 play could have sprung from any other starting point. There's talk later in Wesker's three acts (taken here with only one... Read more... |
Butley, Duchess TheatreMonday, 06 June 2011
Ben Butley is poisonous, spiteful, a bully, a sadist and a snob. So how does Simon Gray, who created his titular anti-hero in 1971, ensure that an audience can endure his company? He equips him with the kind of lacerating verbal dexterity that makes you catch your breath, appalled and a little awed all at once. And in Lindsay Posner’s fine revival, this nasty, sad, desperate piece of work who,... Read more... |
Tactical Questioning, Tricycle TheatreMonday, 06 June 2011
Verbatim theatre has been the flavour of political theatre for the past two decades, and no theatre has done more to promote this style of public witnessing than the Tricycle in Kilburn, north London. Its artistic director, Nicolas Kent, has created a special style of verbatim drama called tribunal theatre, where the results of long-running public inquiries or trials are edited into an evening’s viewing. His latest venture, Tactical Questioning: Scenes from the Baha Mousa Inquiry,... Read more... |
Into Thy Hands, Wilton's Music HallSunday, 05 June 2011
“Where once was certainty is now only void.” The age of John Donne was also the age of Galileo, Milton, of Hobbes, Francis Bacon and, of course, the King James Bible, whose 400th anniversary we celebrate this year. At the intersection of politics, religion and scientific philosophy, Donne’s life under James I holds up a mirror to the... 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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