adaptation
The Other Place, National Theatre review - searing family tragedyWednesday, 09 October 2024
Contemporary reworkings of Greek tragedy run a very particular risk, that out of context the heightened actions of the original plays – the woefully poor judgement, the copious bloodletting, the rush to disproportionate vengeance and suicide – can... Read more... |
French Toast, Riverside Studios review - Racine-inspired satire finds its laughs once up-and-runningWednesday, 09 October 2024
It’s always fun jabbing at the permanently open wound that is Anglo-French relations, now with added snap post-Brexit, its fading, but still frothing, humourless defenders clogging up Twitter and radio phone-ins even today. So it’s probably timely... Read more... |
The Hardacres, Channel 5 review - a fishy tale of upward mobilityTuesday, 08 October 2024
Set in Yorkshire in the 1890s, and based on the novels by CL Skelton, The Hardacres is the story of the titular family who, it seems, were pioneers of takeaway fish, although not accompanied by chips. It’s their stall selling fried herring fresh... Read more... |
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Royal Ballet review - big, bold and ultimately brashWednesday, 02 October 2024
In many ways Lewis Carroll’s 1865 compendium of literary nonsense is ideal material for ballet. We all like a story we can hum, even if we’re hazy on the details. And this story, with its topsy-turvy logic and anthropomorphic creatures, is stuffed... Read more... |
Slow Horses, Season 4, Apple TV+ review - Gary Oldman returns as the 'gross and inappropriate' Jackson LambWednesday, 04 September 2024
News reaches us that Gary Oldman has mysteriously been vetoed from playing George Smiley in a new film version of Smiley’s People, despite his Oscar-nominated performance as John le Carre’s wiley spymaster in 2011’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Oldman... Read more... |
The Fabulist, Charing Cross Theatre review - fine singing cannot rescue an incoherent productionWednesday, 21 August 2024
On opening night, there’s always a little tension in the air. Tech rehearsals and previews can only go so far – this is the moment when an audience, some wielding pens like scalpels, sit in judgement. Having attended thousands on the critics’ side... Read more... |
The Years, Almeida Theatre review - matchless acting quintet makes for a must-seeThursday, 08 August 2024
The title sounds as if we ought to be in for an evening of Virginia Woolf, and, indeed, one of the astonishing women on view (Deborah Findlay) was in fact a co-star of the recent West End version of Orlando. In fact, this late-summer offering is a... 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... |
Being Mr Wickham, Jermyn Street Theatre review - the plausible, charming roué gives his version of events 30 years onTuesday, 11 June 2024
It is a truth universally acknowledged that an actor tends to take a sympathetic view of the character he inhabits, however morally questionable. Adrian Lukis, who played the handsome, roguish militiaman, George Wickham, in Andrew Davies's (still... Read more... |
The Beast review - AI takes over the job centreFriday, 31 May 2024
Adaptations of Henry James have often failed to click over the years. The author’s private, introspective works – sightseeing trips around people’s souls – seem hard to transpose into a crowded gathering where someone keeps yelling “Action!”.So it’s... Read more... |
Bluets, Royal Court review - more grey than ultramarineTuesday, 28 May 2024
When does creativity become mannered? When it’s based on repetition, and repetition without development. About halfway through star director Katie Mitchell’s staging of Margaret Perry’s adaptation of Maggie Nelson’s Bluets – despite the casting of... Read more... |
The Winter's Tale, Royal Ballet review - what a story, and what a way to tell it!Saturday, 11 May 2024
If there is a more striking, more moving, more downright enjoyable way to experience Shakespeare’s second-from-last play, I have yet to see it. The Winter’s Tale, originally a “romance” in five acts, is widely regarded as a problem play, not only... Read more... |
