family relationships
Veronica Lee
Only part-way through a mammoth stadium tour that began last April and continues until next autumn (and which he insists will end on 15 October at the MEN Arena in Manchester, where he once worked as an usher), Peter Kay is still having to add dates as they sell out almost the instant they're announced. He’s a phenomenon that even Michael McIntyre and Jimmy Carr - no slouches in stadium-show sales themselves - must be envious of.I must confess myself a huge fan, and last night it was a real pleasure to see Kay live for the first time in several years at the O2 (formerly the Millennium Dome). Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The TMA regional theatre awards are about to be announced, which makes it perfect timing to visit a nominee - one of the UK’s most influential venues, the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. The SJT was the country’s first theatre in the round and has been associated with new writing since it was established, as the Library Theatre, in 1955.Joseph was the son of actress Hermione Gingold and publisher Michael Joseph, but the SJT’s most famous association has been with Alan Ayckbourn, its third artistic director, who served from 1972-2009 and premiered more than 200 plays in Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Iphigenia is an abandoned child, almost murdered by her father, lost in bewilderment, captured and indoctrinated in an artificial existence. It hardly matters that her father was the legendary Greek hero Agamemnon, her mother the notorious Clytemnestra. Spare in story as they are, classical myths contain overwhelmingly strong capsules of emotion. It’s because Pina Bausch was so acute at extracting for dance-theatre the most piercing emotions that I find myself hostile to the frigidity of her dance-opera Iphigenie auf Tauris.Showing at Sadler’s Wells this week, Iphigenie - created a quarter- Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Americans are chastised, often wrongly, for possessing a scant sense of irony, so I mean it as no criticism whatsoever of The Kids Are All Right to point out that the title of Lisa Cholodenko's wonderful film is altogether un-ironic. In less caring or careful hands, or a not so fully empathic context, this might be a portrait of irretrievably damaged youth with the parents deemed responsible, of the sort that proliferates on the London stage. Instead, the movie embraces conflict and confusion, lustful impulses and our capacity to wound, all the while suggesting that life in its imperfections Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
“It seems to me there’s nae end tae trouble. Nae end tae havin’ the heart torn out of you.” That’s the gut-wrenching cry of despair voiced by Maggie Morrison, the worn-down woman who is herself the heart of Ena Lamont Stewart’s vivid, sprawling 1947 drama. The piece was voted one of the 100 greatest plays of the 20th century in the National Theatre’s millennium poll; yet, aside from a landmark revival by Scottish company 7:84 back in 1982, it’s rarely been seen. Now young director Josie Rourke, who currently helms the Bush Theatre in west London, seizes upon the work for her South Bank debut Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Greg Davies is a comedian who laughs along to his own material. A conspiratorial look glints in his eye, a hint of fruity mischief plays on his lips. The adage that you should never be amused by your own punchlines is, of course, a tall tower of rubbish – different jokes for different blokes – but Davies’s enjoyment of his own routine begs a couple of questions. Is it as funny as he thinks it is? Or is it funny because he thinks it is? And then there is the greatest existential quandary of all, which has knitted the brows of philosophers since time immemorial. Exactly how hilarious is Read more ...
Veronica Lee
t's a nice historical twist that the Royal Court in London, a theatre once known for its kitchen-sink dramas, is having such a great run with plays about the middle classes; following the joys of Posh, Wanderlust and Clybourne Park comes Nina Raine’s Tribes, a belter of a play about a bohemian family who talk a hell of a lot but do very little actual communicating.Tribes opens with academic Christopher (Stanley Townsend, giving a huge performance) on his high horse as usual about literature and classical music. He and his wife, Beth (Kika Markham), a writer, and twentysomething children Ruth Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Russell Kane, a thoroughly deserving nominee, was the surprise winner of the Edinburgh Comedy Award (ECA) - the bookies’ money was on young American Bo Burnham - with a show that explores his troubled relationship with his late father, a man with some very right-wing opinions on life and politics. Kane describes Smokescreens and Castles as “an elegy” to his dad, but it could equally be described as a riveting and frequently hilarious socio-political documentary on a working-class boy made good, the first member of his family to go to university and now making a living in the liberal arts.At Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The American networks have so far been able to resist the stick-insectish charms of David Tennant, but the BBC would probably start up a new channel just for him if he asked them. In this new four-parter, his comeback appearance after handing over the keys of the TARDIS to Matt Smith, Tennant plays Dave Tyler, a successful Glasgow photographer married to teaching assistant Rita (Laura Fraser). They have a ramblingly large house full of kids and a dog, and live one of those exuberantly chaotic lives that only exist in TV drama, where domestic duties and hectic leisure activities magically co- Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Why ironic? Because this is one fella whose bad temper risks isolating him altogether from human company - except that misery, we're told, loves companionship, in which case William's entire family is going down with the ship. Whether audiences will go along with that descent depends upon individual tolerance for the sort of person we all know exists but whom we tend to prefer in some sort of redemptive or at least linguistically vibrant dramatic presentation, not the doleful termagant on view here.Bruce Alexander brings undeniable commitment to the part of a financially successful, self-made Read more ...
aleks.sierz
When, earlier this year, Edward Hall took the reins at the Hampstead Theatre, some eyebrows were raised. It’s meant to be a new-writing theatre and Hall has had much more experience directing Shakespeare than in tackling new plays. On the other hand, this venue needed a clean sweep and Hall is certainly able to wield a new broom vigorously. His first show, Shelagh Stephenson’s thrilling play about the disappearance of a gap-year student, opened last night — and it’s an excellent debut.The first act is a textbook piece of exposition: Adam, a 20-year-old student, has gone traveling but has Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Adultery has had a good press recently. Websites such as meet-to-cheat.com, illicitencounters.com and lovinglinks.co.uk have been in the news, and statistics suggest that more of us are being unfaithful than ever before. But although adultery is a staple of farce and mainstream drama, there are few plays that deal with the subject with quite the unsettling ambiguity and disturbing depth that characterise Martin Crimp’s modernistic play, first performed in 2000 and now beautifully revived by the up-and-coming Amelia Nicholson.Crimp’s love triangle is composed of a fortysomething couple, Read more ...