family relationships
Tom Birchenough
I’m still pondering the title of Chris Urch’s new play. On the surface it’s clear enough: The Rolling Stone is a weekly newspaper in Uganda that has been notorious for pursuing that country’s anti-gay agenda. In particular, at the beginning of the decade, it started a campaign of publishing the photographs and addresses of those it believed to be homosexual.That precipitated a witch-hunt, forcing those accused to flee their families and homes. They suffered violence: so great was the sense of public anger inspired by made-up equations of homosexuality with paedophilia that a number of people Read more ...
Matt Wolf
A copy of Lewis Carroll can be glimpsed amongst the otherwise grim, begrimed array of possessions made visible at the start of the extraordinary Room, and small wonder: Lenny Abrahamson's rightly lauded film is about two people who have fallen down a metaphorical rabbit hole – a mother and son whose shared bond sees them through conditions that neither individual would likely have survived on their own.And with Golden Globe winner Brie Larson as the fiercely devoted Ma and the scarcely less astonishing youngster Jacob Tremblay as her adored and adoring son, Jack, Room tells a fight-and-flight Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Following in the footsteps of Star Wars: The Force Awakens another popular film series which began in the 70s is passed over to a young, admiring pretender. And just as JJ Abrams succeeded there, Ryan Coogler – who announced his talent unapologetically with the searing Fruitvale Station – does so in emphatic fashion here. This add-on to the Rocky franchise boasts a comparably deft mix of crowd-pleasing familiarity and freshness, particularly in the shape of its canny new casting – a combination that’s set to excite a new generation of fans.When we last saw Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, both wonderfully talented comedic actresses in their own right (Fey best known for 30 Rock, Poehler for Parks and Recreation), first worked together on Saturday Night Live and more recently they have become known as a cheeky double act presenting awards ceremonies. Now ex-SNL writer Paula Pell has written Sisters for them; it's essentially a party movie, complete with some base humour and swearing, but Pell's slyly witty script has an underlying sadness about lives unlived, and how some people's inner child just won't grow up.Fey and Poehler play Kate and Maura, two Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The proverbial pond that separates the New York and London theatres has had a seismic effect on The Dazzle, Richard Greenberg's ironically titled play from 2002 that in every way seems darker, stranger, and more compelling in its British premiere than it did when I first caught it Off Broadway. What previously played as a somewhat wearing Wildean pastiche here assumes creepier colours as a play about two brothers gifted with language who use words in part to forestall the bleakness that lies in wait when things go silent. Simon Evans's production benefits enormously from two of the most Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Young Bulgarian writer-directors Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov have made a tight, bleak, suspenseful drama in The Lesson (Urok), driven by a commanding, unforgiving performance from actress Margita Gosheva who leads the film. Clearly made on a tight budget (though that doesn’t intrude on production values), their first feature tells an often remorseless story of what happens when the money runs out, which replays themes familiar from the Balkans while also attaining an almost existential dimension.For a story set in the countryside, and in the summer, their cinematographer Krum Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
If the title wasn’t already occupied, television-wise, the BBC might have titled Capital “The Street”. It’s got the high soar-aways over urban geography that recall the soaps, but here they spread wider, taking in a metropolis. It’s “capital” as in London, and we may wonder just who’s been padding around the premises before John Lanchester’s 2012 novel, from which Peter Bowker’s three-part drama is adapted. As a big-blend city story, comparisons to Dickens have been plentiful. But throw in the other meaning of the title – foundations of capitalism, the movement of money and all that, in a Read more ...
David Kettle
First-time writer/director Sanna Lenken’s touching anorexia drama is such a heartfelt, fragile thing that it feels churlish to criticise it. Herself a former eating-disorder sufferer, Lenken brings a real warmth and sincerity to her portrait of an ordinary Swedish family rapidly unravelling when their elder daughter seems unable to overcome the horrible physical effects of her aching self-doubt.Precocious tweenager Stella (a magnificent Rebecka Josephson) idolises her older sister Katya (played by former child star Amy Deasismont), dreaming of emulating her figure-skating successes, and Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Welcome to the hellmouth. In Jamie Lloyd’s startling 50th anniversary revival, the seething, primal hinterland of Pinter’s domestic conflict is made flesh: the metal cage surrounding an innocuous living room glows a devilish red, sulphur-like smoke belches from the ether, and snatches of Sixties music distort into horror film cacophony. Purists may carp, but it gives a long-revered play a welcome shot of adrenaline.Lloyd, in concert with Soutra Gilmour (design), George Dennis (sound) and Richard Howell (lighting), has created a memorably cinematic haunted house. At times the bold, Read more ...
Matt Wolf
What begins as a would-be exercise in camp devolves into perfervid tosh and ultimately tedium in The Dressmaker, a belligerently over-the-top revenge drama that might just about have squeaked by as an opera - an art form better-suited to such deliberately over-the-top theatrics.As it is, even the iciest of stares from Kate Winslet in haute couture mode can't sustain interest in Antipodean director Jocelyn Moorhouse's return to film directing after a long absence. "I'm back, you bastards," Winslet's anger-fuelled Myrtle aka Tilly Dunnage says at the start as she re-enters Dungatar, the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There’s a baby boom in sitcom. This week two of last year’s best comedies return for second helpings, each with a child in tow. In Detectorists (BBC Two on Thursday) Andy is out in the field panning for gold with a small sweet addition. But first Catastrophe is back – and the title holds good. For Sharon and Rob (played by series creators Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney) parenthood is just as much of a disaster zone as the unplanned pregnancy which threw them together in the first series. And the jokes still come at you like rapid machine-gun fire.In fact, it’s possibly even funnier now. In the Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Once upon a time, quite recently, you couldn’t move for plays about youth. Now, there’s been an avalanche of dramas about ageing, usually in the context of dementia and family life. Maybe all of our main playwrights have suddenly grown up, or maybe the endless quest for novelty has deposited us on the shores of the current trend-setting idea. Nicola Wilson’s Royal Court debut is yet another play about Alzheimer’s, ageing and memory, but is it any different from Florian Zeller’s The Father, April de Angelis’s After Electra or Emma Adams’s Animals?The answer is yes. And then some. The situation Read more ...