Hampstead Theatre
theartsdesk Q&A: Playwright Nina RaineSaturday, 06 December 2014
When writers research, it’s not all about digging for facts. Feelings also count. When Nina Raine spent three months visiting hospitals for a play about the medical profession, she found a strange feeling spontaneously erupting inside herself. “The... Read more... |
A Human Being Died That Night, Hampstead TheatreSaturday, 31 May 2014
Is there such a thing as a human right to forgiveness? Nicholas Wright's riveting play about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in post-apartheid South Africa circles around this question, never flinching from revealing the atrocities... Read more... |
Sunny Afternoon, Hampstead TheatreFriday, 02 May 2014
The Kinks’ music deserves more than another jukebox musical. Joe Penhall has instead collaborated with Ray Davies on a show about the pain and compromise musicians go through to fill those jukeboxes. Most of The Kinks’ biggest hits are here... Read more... |
Good People, Hampstead TheatreWednesday, 05 March 2014
This venue continues its promotion of American drama with another prize-winning play from across the pond. Hot on the heels of Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn, with its casting of Emila Fox, comes this play by David Lindsay-Abaire, who won... Read more... |
Rapture, Blister, Burn, Hampstead TheatreFriday, 24 January 2014
Feminism suddenly seems to be all the rage in London theatre. Yesterday, I reviewed Nick Payne’s Blurred Lines, and tonight I saw this show by American provocateur Gina Gionfriddo, whose Becky Shaw was at the Almeida three years ago. This current... Read more... |
Hysteria, Hampstead TheatreFriday, 13 September 2013
In playwriting, there’s near-perfection, perfection and oh-my-God-how-I-wish-I’d-written-that. Terry Johnson’s Hysteria, which was first staged at the Royal Court 20 years ago, is definitely in the OMG category. Subtitled “Fragments of an Analysis... Read more... |
Bald on blondes: what makes Terry Johnson tick?Wednesday, 04 September 2013
Who is Terry Johnson? For a period of two decades between, say, 1982 and 2003, he was predominantly a playwright. He was sufficiently successful at it that for a period in 1995, three of his plays were on in the West End at once. But the plays have... Read more... |
Race, Hampstead TheatreSaturday, 01 June 2013
We know that David Mamet doesn’t beat about the bush. He tackles sensitive issues and the least attractive aspects of human nature head on, while his characters use language as weapons against each other with such ferocity and guile that the... Read more... |
The Judas Kiss, Duke of York's TheatreTuesday, 22 January 2013
David Hare's 1998 play wasn't terribly well received when it was first produced by the Almeida; several critics regarded it as a thin work, weakly directed by Richard Eyre, and opined that Liam Neeson was miscast in the role of Oscar Wilde. Now... Read more... |
Old Money, Hampstead TheatreThursday, 06 December 2012
We never glimpse the source of the old money in Sarah Wooley’s new play, for it’s his funeral that opens proceedings. We will get no sense of the man, or the extent of his wealth, or the way he spent it. The eventual irrelevance of such a specific... Read more... |
Blue Sky, Hampstead DownstairsSunday, 28 October 2012
Set at the start of the US and UK invasion of Iraq in 2003, Clare Bayley's Blue Sky follows an old-school journalist pursuing justice at the cost of neighbours and friends. Jane, played with careerist resolve by Sarah Malin, is convinced... Read more... |
55 Days, Hampstead TheatreThursday, 25 October 2012
In the past few years, without any fanfare, the veteran playwright and Spooks script-writer Howard Brenton has not only made a comeback, but also become the chief chronicler of the nation’s past. One year he is telling the story of Harold Macmillan... Read more... |
