family relationships
Cassie and the Lights, Southwark Playhouse review - powerful, affecting, beautifully acted tale of three sisters in careThursday, 11 April 2024
"In care". It’s a phrase that, if it penetrates our minds at all, usually leads to distressing tabloid stories of children losing their lives at the hands of abusive parents (“Why oh why wasn’t this child in care?”) or of loving parents separated... Read more... |
Underdog: the Other, Other Brontë, National Theatre review - enjoyably comic if caricatured sibling rivalryFriday, 05 April 2024
The Brontë sisters and their ne'er-do-well brother will always make good copy. The brilliance of the women constrained by life in a Yorkshire parsonage contrasts dramatically with the wild moors around their home, while their early deaths lend... Read more... |
The Trouble with Jessica review - the London housing market wreaks havoc on a group of friendsFriday, 05 April 2024
Before moving house, Sarah (Shirley Henderson) and Tom (Alan Tudyk) are throwing a final dinner for their best and oldest friends. Sarah wants it to be special. It turns out to be very special. Disastrous, in fact.Director Matt Winn’s black comedy... Read more... |
Long Day's Journey Into Night, Wyndham's Theatre review - O'Neill masterwork is once again driven by its MaryWednesday, 03 April 2024
Memory is a confounding thing. By way of proof, just ask the Mary Tyrone who is being given unforgettable life by Patricia Clarkson in London's latest version of Long Day's Journey into Night, which has arrived on the West End (and at the same... Read more... |
Mothers' Instinct review - 'Mad Women'Sunday, 31 March 2024
This is a Nineties psycho thriller in Mad Men clothes, undermining its Sixties suburban gloss and Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain’s desperate housewives with genre clichés, yet sustained by the courage of debuting director Benoît Delhomme’s un-... Read more... |
Uncle Vanya, Orange Tree Theatre review - Chekhov served up choiceMonday, 11 March 2024
"We all live here in peace and friendship," notes Telegin (David Ahmad), otherwise known as Waffles, early in Uncle Vanya, to which one is tempted to respond, "yeah, right."As casually bruising a play as I know, Chekhov's wounding yet also brutally... Read more... |
Cruel Intentions, The Other Palace review - uneasy vibes, hit tunes and sparkling stagingFriday, 01 March 2024
Transgression was so deliciously enticing. Back in the Eighties when I saw Les Liaisons Dangereuses in the West End on three occasions, life was simpler – or so us straight white men flattered ourselves to believe. Consent was unproblematic for... Read more... |
Nachtland, Young Vic review - German black comedy brings uneasy humour and discomfiting relevanceThursday, 29 February 2024
If Mark Twain thought that a German joke was no laughing matter, what would he make of a German comedy? That quote came to mind more than once during Patrick Marber’s production of Marius von Mayenburg’s 2022 play, Nachtland. I know it’s... Read more... |
The Merchant of Venice 1936, Criterion Theatre review - radical revamp with a passionate agendaMonday, 26 February 2024
It’s an unhappy time to be staging Shakespeare’s problematic play, given its antisemitic content, so hats off to adaptor-director Brigid Larmour and actor Tracy-Ann Oberman for persevering with this updated version, now in the West End. Their... Read more... |
The Big Life, Stratford East review - musical brings the joy and honours the pastSaturday, 24 February 2024
Is there a healthier sound than that of laughter ringing round a theatre? There are plenty of opportunities to test that theory in Tinuke Craig’s riotous revival of The Big Life, two decades on from its first run at this very venue. Much has... Read more... |
Memory review - love, dementia and truthFriday, 23 February 2024
Procul Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” is given a new lease on life in Mexican director Michel Franco’s moving, complex film, full of fine performances.Saul (a wonderful Peter Sarsgaard), who has early-onset dementia, plays the song constantly. It’... Read more... |
Samuel Takes a Break... in Male Dungeon No. 5 after a long but generally successful day of tours, The Yard Theatre review - funny and thought-provokingFriday, 23 February 2024
You do not need to be Einstein to feel it. If the only dimension missing is time, 75% of a place’s identity can invade your very being, hollow you out, replace your soul with a void. It happened to me at Auschwitz and it’s happening to Samuel at... Read more... |
