fri 19/04/2024

Bridge Theatre

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bridge Theatre review – gender-juggling romp

Nicholas Hytner’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Bridge Theatre is a feat of exuberant brilliance, a gender-juggling romp that takes Shakespeare’s subversive text and polishes it so that it glints and shines like a glitterball at a disco. No holds...

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A German Life, Bridge Theatre review - Maggie Smith triumphs again

Maggie Smith is not only a national treasure, but every casting director's go-to old bat. Now 84 years young, she is our favourite grande dame, or fantasy grandma. With an acting career of nearly 70 years, an instantly recognisable face and voice,...

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Alys, Always, Bridge Theatre review - mildly perverse but rather dispiriting

Okay, so this is the play that will be remembered for the character names that have unusual spellings. As in Alys not Alice, Kyte not Kite, etc. Anyway, Lucinda Coxon's adaptation of journalist Harriet Lane's 2012 bestseller for the Bridge Theatre...

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A Very Very Very Dark Matter, Bridge Theatre review - black comedy falls flat

It's all in the title, isn't it? Martin McDonagh's surreal new play comes with a warning that not only screams its intentions, but echoes them through repetition. Okay, okay, I get it. This is going to be a dark story, a very very very dark story....

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Allelujah!, Bridge Theatre review - hilarious but dark, darker, darkest

The NHS is us. For decades our national identity has been bandaged together with the idea, and reality, of a health service that is free at the point of delivery. Such an object of myth and pride cries out for comic treatment, and now the spritely...

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My Name is Lucy Barton, Bridge Theatre review - Laura Linney is luminous in a flawless production

In Harold Pinter’s memory play Old Times, one of the women declares, “There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened.” Elizabeth Strout’s heroine in My Name Is Lucy Barton is in the reverse position. When it comes to...

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Nightfall, Bridge Theatre, review - moving but over-exposed

Playwright Barney Norris is as prolific as he is talented. Barely out of his twenties, he has written a series of excellent plays – the award-winning Visitors, follow-ups Eventide and While We’re Here – as well as a couple of novels and lots of...

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Julius Caesar, Bridge Theatre review – blood, sweat and bullets

All hail! Shakespeare’s Roman drama may be enjoying something of a resurgence at present, but it rarely proves as vital and arresting in performance as this. Last summer in the US, a staging at the Public Theater caused a furore and frightened away...

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Young Marx, Bridge Theatre review - fast-moving but over-complicated

Given the rather uneven record of the National Theatre at the moment, there’s already a certain nostalgia for the days, which came to an end two years ago, when it was run by the two Nicks: Nick Hytner and Nick Starr. Together, they transformed this...

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