Hampstead Theatre
The Invention of Love, Hampstead Theatre review - beautiful wit, awkward stagingTuesday, 17 December 2024
Can men really love each other – without sex? Or, to put it another way, how many different forms of male love can you name? These questions loiter with intent around the edges of Tom Stoppard’s dense history play, which jumps from 1936 to the High... Read more... |
King James, Hampstead Theatre review - UK premiere drains a three-pointerSaturday, 23 November 2024
Cleveland is probably the American city most like the one in which I grew up. Early into the icy embrace of post-industrialisation, not really on the way to anywhere, but not a destination either and obsessed with popular music and sports, it's very... Read more... |
Reykjavik, Hampstead Theatre review - drama frozen by waves of detailMonday, 28 October 2024
“Don’t take a piss in the house of a woman you have made a widow.” The mixture of earthy comedy and tragic pain in this piece of parental advice is typical of the tone of Richard Bean’s Reykjavik, his new work play which explores the lives of the... Read more... |
Bellringers, Hampstead Theatre review - mordant comedy about the end of the worldWednesday, 09 October 2024
As hurricanes rip into the American Gulf states with increasing ferocity, Eastern Europe disappears underwater and even the gentle British rain becomes a deluge, the arrival of Daisy Hall’s debut play Bellringers at Hampstead Theatre’s Downstairs... Read more... |
The Lightest Element, Hampstead Theatre review - engrossing, but fragmentaryThursday, 19 September 2024
British theatre has a proud heritage of science plays. From 1990s classics such as Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia (1993) and Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen (1998) to more recent examples such as Lucy Kirkwood’s Mosquitoes (2017) and Marek Horn’s Octopolis (2023... Read more... |
Visit from an Unknown Woman, Hampstead Theatre review - slim, overly earthbound slice of writer's angstSaturday, 13 July 2024
Who was Stefan Zweig? It's likely that it's mostly older folk who studied German literature at A-level who have encountered this superb Viennese writer in his native language, though his short story from 1922, Letter to an Unknown Woman, eventually... Read more... |
Grud, Hampstead Theatre review - sparky investigation of a geeky friendshipWednesday, 10 July 2024
Sarah Power, the writer of Grud, now in the Hampstead’s smaller space, is a self-confessed geek who excelled at science at school. She also had an alcoholic parent, and both autobiographical strands have turned up trumps in this, the... Read more... |
The Harmony Test, Hampstead Theatre review - pregnancy and parenthoodWednesday, 29 May 2024
“Welcome to motherhood, bitch!” By the time a character delivers this reality check, there have been plenty of laughs, and some much more awkward moments, in Richard Molloy’s The Harmony Test, which premieres in the Hampstead Theatre’s Downstairs... Read more... |
Between Riverside and Crazy, Hampstead Theatre review - race, religion and rough justiceThursday, 23 May 2024
It’s often said that contemporary American playwrights are too polite, too afraid of giving offence. But this accusation can’t be levelled at Stephen Adly Guirgis, whose dramas – from Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train in 2002 to The Motherfucker in... Read more... |
An Actor Convalescing in Devon, Hampstead Theatre review - old school actor tells old school storiesWednesday, 17 April 2024
One can often be made to feel old in the theatre. A hot take in a snappy 90 minutes (with video!) on the latest Gen Z obsession (is it even Gen Z, or were they last year, Daddio?) can leave one baffled or wondering whose gripe is it anyway.... Read more... |
First Person: actor Paul Jesson on survival, strength, and the healing potential of artMonday, 08 April 2024
In September 2022 I had an email from my American friend Richard Nelson: "Would you like me to write you a play?" Such an offer probably comes the way of very few actors and I was bowled over by it. My astonished and grateful response was tempered... Read more... |
The Divine Mrs S, Hampstead Theatre review - Rachael Stirling shines in hit-and-miss comedyMonday, 01 April 2024
There are genres of theatre that demand buy-in from the audience – musicals, opera and the daddy of them all, pantomime. The usual entry price to the house, the suspension of disbelief, requires supplementing with an active desire to meet the... Read more... |
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