wed 02/04/2025

drama

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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Ray & Liz review - beautifully shot portrait of poverty

Ray’s world has shrunk to a single room in a council flat. His life consists of drinking home-brew, smoking, gazing out of the window, listening to Radio 4 and sinking into an alcohol-induced stupour. There’s no need ever to leave his bedroom...

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The Son, Kiln Theatre review - darkly tragic

Well, you have to give it to French playwright Florian Zeller — he's certainly cracked the problem of coming up with a name for each of his plays. Basically, choose a common noun and put the definite article in front of it. His latest, The Son, is...

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Jellyfish review - life on the edge in Margate

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside – well perhaps not, if Jellyfish is anything to go by. Set in Margate, this independent feature paints a picture of a town and people that have been left behind. Cut from the same cloth as Ken Loach’s I, Daniel...

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If Beale Street Could Talk review - love defies racism in James Baldwin adaptation

Films that show a young couple’s love deepening are rare because without personal conflict there’s no narrative progression. They're especially rare in the current mainstream American cinema since romantic dramas are commercially risky, though LGBTQ...

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Blue, Chapter Arts Centre review - heartbreak in the family home

What's worse than grieving? That all-consuming loss. For those that have experienced it, nothing really comes close. It starts to bug Thomas (Jordan Bernarde, main picture second right) during his visit to the Williams household. Recently bereaved...

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Can You Ever Forgive Me? review - no page unturned in a comedy about literary forgery

What is it with all these new films based on biographies? Vice, Green Book, The Mule, Stan & Ollie, Colette… and that’s before we even get to the royal romps queening up our screens. At least Can You Ever Forgive Me? brings a lifestory...

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Burning review - an explosive psychological thriller

Burning, which is the first film directed by the Korean master Lee Chang-dong since 2010’s Poetry, begins as the desultory story of a hook-up between a pair of poor, unmotivated millennials – the girl already a lost soul, the boy a wannabe writer...

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The Mule review - good ol' boy rides again

Baggage can weigh a movie down. The Mule comes with quite a bit of baggage, and not just the kilos of coke stashed in the car’s trunk. Clint Eastwood’s fifty plus years as a screen icon turned director, his dodgy love life and libertarian politics...

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Destroyer review - Kidman shines in middling crime drama

Destroyer. It’s an apt name. Like the film, it's grandiose and blunt. Nicole Kidman is almost unrecognisable (a requirement when aiming for nominations) as Detective Erin Bell, a damaged survivor of an undercover heist gone wrong. When her target...

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When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, Dorfman Theatre review - Cate Blanchett's underwhelming debut at the National

When it was announced that Cate Blanchett was making her National Theatre debut with Martin's Crimp's new play, When We have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, its website exploded with people wishing to buy tickets. To those many thousands...

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Mary Queen of Scots review - Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie excel

Very much a woman of today, the Catholic Stuart heroine (Saoirse Ronan) of Mary Queen of Scots frequently hacks her way out of a thicket of power-hungry males, enjoys it when her English suitor Lord Darnley (Jack Lowden) goes down on her, and is...

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