wed 13/11/2024

Theatre Reviews

A Disappearing Number, Novello Theatre

alexandra Coghlan

“I want to disrupt your sense of logic and show you something really thrilling,” explains a young academic, as her animated scribbling on the whiteboard gains pace and incomprehensible complexity. It’s a promise that Complicite’s A Disappearing Number – now making its third London appearance – has little trouble fulfilling.

Read more...

Blood and Gifts, National Theatre

aleks Sierz

What is with the National and history plays? On the large stages of this theatre, the main fare is historical accounts of contemporary problems. Maybe the programmers here imagine that their audiences, like T S Eliot’s humankind, “can’t bear very much reality”. History always has a nostalgic glow.

Read more...

The Human Comedy, Young Vic

alexandra Coghlan Beautiful music is in the air: The extraordinary ensemble cast of 'The Human Comedy'

It takes a brave company to revive a notorious Broadway flop. It takes an even braver one to supplement a small cast with an amateur, community chorus of over 60 people, onstage for almost the entire duration. The Young Vic can rarely be accused of lacking ambition, and their latest production – sprawling American musical The Human Comedy by Hair’s Galt MacDermot – is as...

Read more...

Bedlam, Shakespeare's Globe

Fisun Güner Country girl May (Rose Leslie) is feasted upon by blood-sucking leeches in 18th-century Bedlam

Nell Leyshon’s new play takes place in a mental asylum closely based on London’s notorious Bethlem Hospital. Set in the 18th century, it is a bizarre fusion of farce, drama and drinking songs. Bethlem, of course, gave its name to the term “bedlam”, and bedlam certainly ensues in this rather chaotic and unfocused work.

Read more...

theartsdesk MOT: The 39 Steps, Criterion Theatre

alexandra Coghlan

That an action hero should have many lives at his disposal is a given in these days of bullet-proof Bonds and Bournes. Perhaps greatest in his reincarnatory skills however is Richard Hannay. Originally the cerebral hero of John Buchan’s novel The 39 Steps, Hannay was reinvented in an altogether more comedic vein for Hitchcock’s 1935 film, returned for two more celluloid outings (with a new interest in bomb-disposal), and landed a self-titled TV spin-off.

Read more...

If So, Then Yes, Jermyn Street Theatre

aleks Sierz

N F Simpson is a legendary absurdist playwright of 1950s and 1960s vintage. But while his 1957 debut, A Resounding Tinkle, got a revival some three years ago at the Donmar, he was widely believed to have given up writing more than 30 years ago. After all, he has a back catalogue of comic classics, and he celebrated his 91st birthday in January this year! But, true to form, the veteran humorist has surprised us once more.

Read more...

Deathtrap, Noël Coward Theatre

Veronica Lee 'Deathtrap': Simon Russell Beale and Jonathan Groff as duelling playwrights

It’s a rather difficult task to describe anything that occurs in Ira Levin’s marvellous old warhorse of a comedy thriller as it contains so many twists, turns, bluffs, double bluffs, triple - even quadruple - bluffs that any description of the plot holds for only a few minutes of stage time. Added to which, nobody and nothing is exactly what they first appear to be.

Read more...

Scorched, Old Vic Tunnels

aleks Sierz

Is it an example of our cultural insularity that no one I know has ever heard of Wajdi Mouawad? Born in Lebanon, he’s the most performed contemporary French-language playwright and his 2003 masterpiece, Scorched, has been staged all over the world. You’d think that the National Theatre would be begging to produce it, but no, that honour has fallen to Kevin Spacey’s Old Vic. Not for the first time, a state-funded venue has been trumped by a commercial one. In a bold production by...

Read more...

theartsdesk MOT: Dirty Dancing, Aldwych Theatre

Ismene Brown 'Dirty Dancing': a class-crossing romance where the Fifties meet the Sixties with alarm

I suspect that more than half the audience that goes to see Dirty Dancing on stage has seen the 1987 movie, and that quite a few of them have seen the stage version more than once. There’s a strange feeling of being at a party where everyone knows everyone, and the party’s held nightly at the same house. It surely is not the misleading title that accounts for the wildly enthusiastic flow of fans - there’s nothing dirty about this squeaky-clean story, and there’s not that much...

Read more...

The Thunderbolt, Orange Tree Theatre

Matt Wolf

So much of this London theatre year has been spent watching American work that it's doubly bracing to find some genuine English dramatic rediscoveries interspersed amongst The Prisoner of Second Avenue and La Bête one month, Clybourne Park and (still to open) Deathtrap another.

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.


latest in today

Help to give theartsdesk a future!

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

First Person: Alec Frank-Gemmill on reasons for another reco...

One former teacher of mine said of their recording of the...

Natalie Palamides: Weer, Soho Theatre review - a romcom of t...

Natalie Palamides doesn't do things by halves. Actually, the Los Angeles-based clown does just that in her inventive new show Weer ...

Amyl and the Sniffers, O2 Academy, Birmingham review - rowdy...

Amy Taylor and the rest of the Sniffers ambled onto the stage of Birmingham’s O2 Academy to a huge roar of approval from a packed and diverse...

Blu-ray: The Oblong Box

The Oblong Box is a phantom 1969 follow-up to Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General, sharing star Vincent Price and much cast and...

Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, BBC One review - handso...

“Previously on Wolf Hall…” It’s been nine years since Claire Foy memorably trembled her way to the block as Anne Boleyn,...

Andrej Power, LSO, Mäkelä, Barbican review - singing, shriek...

Out of innumerable Rite of Springs in half a century of concert-going, I’ll stick my neck out and say this was the most ferocious in...

Burnt Up Love, Finborough Theatre review - scorching new pla...

Mac is in prison for a long stretch. He is calm, contemplative almost...

Album: Tomorrow X Together - The Star Chapter: Sanctuary

South Korean quintet TXT's latest mini-album delivers six meticulously crafted tracks that showcase the group's evolving artistry through...

Bird review - travails of an unseen English tween

There’s a jolt or a surprise in almost every shot in Andrea Arnold’s Bird – her most impacted and energised depiction of underclass life...