Hampstead Theatre
aleks.sierz
The last time I saw Oscar Wilde’s biblical tale it was performed by dancer Lindsay Kemp at the Roundhouse in London, back in the 1970s, in a production that was high on dope, incense, strange vocal drawling - and which transported you very quickly to hippie heaven. Choked by clouds of fragrant perfume, weird in its singsong language and thrilling in its strangeness, this seemed like an ideal way of realising the crazy vision of this odd piece. But theatre is not about being faithful to fond memories, it’s about the constant restaging of classic plays, so this new version of Wilde’s 1892 play Read more ...
william.ward
Why is it that Method-ist actors are pretty much expected to spend months manically researching the inner minutiae of their character, but a much-lauded playwright can get away without providing any serious insights into his main subject matter?To anyone with even the slightest inkling of how modern businesses work – that is, just about anyone older than Kevin the token teenager – it is insulting, not to mention boring, to have to sit through three-and-a-half hours of such poorly developed material as Dennis Kelly’s new play about a global business mogul going bonkers in the boardroom, and Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Scottish playwright David Greig’s new play, for the Royal Shakespeare Company in their London season at Hampstead, picks up where Shakespeare’s Macbeth left off (almost). We are in 11th-century Dunsinane, the seat of power in Scotland. Macbeth (referred to here as simply “the tyrant”) is dead, his queen (Gruach) is very much alive, and Malcolm and Macduff are poised for power as the invading English army under Lord Siward attempts to install Malcolm as puppet king over a newly united Scotland. But really we could be in Whitehall discussing Iraq or Afghanistan as, historical drama aside, Greig Read more ...
hilary.whitney
A new play by David Greig opens at the Hampstead Theatre for the Royal Shakespeare Company next week. A theatre director as well as playwright, Greig (b. 1969) is one of the most prolific and artistically ambitious playwrights of his generation and a key figure in the current burgeoning of Scottish theatre. In addition to an extraordinarily diverse range of plays such as Europe (Traverse Theatre, 1994), The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union (Tron Theatre, 1999) and Damascus (Edinburgh International Festival, 2009), his work includes Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Hampstead Theatre today revealed the identity of their new artistic director. Edward Hall will take over at the end of this month when Anthony Clark steps down after seven years in the post. “Hampstead Theatre and I share a passion for finding new audiences for theatre and I am thrilled to be taking over as artistic director,” Hall said today. “I am excited by the company’s long and successful association with new writing and with the opportunities the building offers in creating a dynamic dialogue between the audience and the actors.”Hall is already the founding artistic director of his own Read more ...
aleks.sierz
What’s the appeal of the traditional ghost story? Is it the knowledge that while the victims of the tale quake in their boots, you are perfectly safe and grinning like the Cheshire Cat? Or is it because the supernatural gives us a chance to journey into the weird and fearsome corners of our psyche, all the time kidding ourselves that we are just normal human beings? In Michael Punter’s new ghost story, Darker Shores, which opened last night at the Hampstead Theatre, all the rooms of the haunted house story get an airing.It is Christmas 1875, and the setting is Sea House, a suitably isolated Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Behold the gleaming dark. At one point in this spirited and imaginative revival of Philip Ridley's 1992 play, The Fastest Clock in the Universe, one of the characters says, "We're all as bad as each other. All hungry little cannibals at our own cannibal party. So fuck the milk of human kindness and welcome to the abattoir!" Yes, well. As welcomes go, this is about as pleasant as a razor blade hidden in a cupcake - and perfectly apt for this sharp slice of East End gothic.Set in a disused fur factory deep in darkest London, Ridley's play begins by portraying the tangled domestic arrangements Read more ...