class system
Raving, Hampstead TheatreFriday, 25 October 2013
The comedy of manners is not dead. It’s alive and kicking, often literally, at this north London venue in actor Simon Paisley Day’s new play. Although the title suggests a group of teenagers dancing in a warehouse, the actual subject of the play is... Read more... |
Roots, Donmar WarehouseWednesday, 09 October 2013
British theatre is obsessed with the new, with novelty. And one of the obvious casualties of this is old plays that are not by Ibsen or Chekhov. Plays that feature in every history of British theatre, such as Arnold Wesker’s 1959 classic, Roots,... Read more... |
Preview: Arnold Wesker's RootsThursday, 19 September 2013
Arnold Wesker has a theory that plays require a certain DNA to endure. When thoughts turn to the 1950s and the revolution in British theatre which allowed ordinary working-class life up onto the stage, the name which always comes up is John Osborne... Read more... |
Opinion: Is acting now just for the privileged?Thursday, 25 April 2013
Knock knock. Who's there? Eamonn. Eamonn who? Eamonn Etonian. There's an Eamonn at No 10, an Eamonn is Mayor of London, an Eamonn is even Archbishop of Canterbury. Oh, and Eamonns are third and - for three more months - fourth in line to the throne... Read more... |
Tir Sir Gâr, Carmarthenshire County MuseumThursday, 25 April 2013
The play is the thing, to quote one famous bereaved theatrical son, and in this new collaboration between Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru, artist Marc Rees and playwright Roger Williams, it is most definitely the thing. A Welsh-language multi-media... Read more... |
Before the Party, Almeida TheatreFriday, 29 March 2013
Faced with an unfamiliar play, it’s usually hard to spot exactly where the writer stopped and the director started. Not here. This is one of those occasions where a director’s voice is considerably and almost constantly louder than the playwright’s... Read more... |
No Quarter, Royal Court TheatreThursday, 17 January 2013
Most of us would love to live in a happy family, but it’s the unhappy ones that make the most compelling drama. And few playwrights do familial tensions as instinctively as Polly Stenham, whose highly successful 2007 debut That Face and 2009 follow-... Read more... |
People, National TheatreThursday, 08 November 2012
The word “people” of the title of Alan Bennett’s new play is to be spat out, like a lemon pip. People, who invade your space, boss your values, make you be what they want. So does the beleaguered Lady Dorothy Stacpoole feel about the stark options... Read more... |
Servants: The True Story of Life Below Stairs, BBC TwoSaturday, 29 September 2012
At boarding school in the mid-1970s Matron – a grey-haired, sharp-beaked stick of a woman who put the fear of God into us – would often remark: “Remember, boys, always be polite to the lower orders.” She was referring to the army of cleaning and... Read more... |
Room at the Top, BBC FourThursday, 27 September 2012
Do we really needed to hear more from Joe Lampton, the anti-hero of John Braine’s Room at the Top? His battle for social advancement and sexual self-expression has long since stopped holding up a mirror to society, you'd think. In fact we nearly... Read more... |
Downton Abbey, Series 3, ITV1Monday, 17 September 2012
Mid-September: the nights are drawing in and, to quote that well-known costume dramatist John Milton, the period detail is as “thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa”. Downton – praise be! – is back. However, before the third... Read more... |
Wonderland: Young, Bright and on the Right, BBC TwoFriday, 10 August 2012
In the debating chambers and committee rooms of the Conservative Associations of Oxford and Cambridge lurk the Children of Cameron. The current cabinet is to a large extent an Oxbridge Old Boys club and succeeding generations are already being... Read more... |
