Hampstead Theatre
Matt Wolf
A supposed Stoppardian footnote gets a first-class reclamation in Howard Davies's sizzling revival of Hapgood, the espionage-themed drama from 1988 that resonates intellectually and emotionally to a degree it didn't begin to achieve at a West End premiere that I recall almost three decades on.As if taking a leaf from the same play's subsequent (and much-improved) 1994 New York Lincoln Center premiere, a once-abstruse work finds the necessary pulse to keep audiences engaged in a text that comes positioned both chronologically and temperamentally between The Real Thing and Arcadia (Hapgood Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Remember back when David Hare was left-wing? I’m not sure that he does. Between the affectionate, bittersweet nostalgia of South Downs and now The Moderate Soprano – a stroll through the verdant history of England’s most exclusive opera company – we’re suddenly a long way from the school of Slag or the urban anger of Racing Demon. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when – as here, in the programme interview – Hare claims that “heritage theatre is not my thing” it’s getting harder and harder to believe him.The anger has drained out of this theatre Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The actor and historian Ian Kelly is fascinated by the way that performers use the theatre to understand not only themselves, but also the world. In this new play, he looks at the life and career of Samuel Foote, one of the larger-than-life figures in the age of Garrick who has, alas, been forgotten by time. Kelly, who has also written a book about Foote, has certainly been blessed by a warm-hearted production, which stars national treasure Simon Russell Beale – as well as the author himself.Foote’s life was pretty amazing. Born in 1720 in Cornwall, he made a name for himself as a mimic in Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Can we really distinguish between experience-based judgement and personal bias? Caroline, the social worker at the centre of American writer Rebecca Gilman’s latest "issue" play, trusts a gut instinct informed by her 25-year career, but those decisions – which shape the lives of her young charges and their families – are gradually revealed to be subjective in the extreme. The passion that fuels her commitment to an arduous, under-appreciated job is also the reason she might not be suitable to perform it.It’s a refreshing subversion of the traditional "caring people versus intractable system" Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Writing about writers: exploring what you know, or the very definition of stifling egoism? Either way, it can be a terrible trap for the playwright, with craft becoming not just the subject of a work, but its defining feature. Hugh Whitemore narrowly avoids that fate in his unashamedly writerly 1977 piece about poet and novelist Stevie Smith, which is packed to the gills with erudite bon mots, yet, in Christopher Morahan’s leisurely revival, somewhat lacking in dramatic thrust.Whitemore’s play sticks with the most tried-and-tested version of biographical theatre – namely, the semi-narrated Read more ...
Marianka Swain
If the London property boom continues post-election, the fight for living space may well develop into all-out war. But what begins as skirmish in Peter Souter’s 2013 play, promoted from the Hampstead’s downstairs space, soon turns to romance as two twenty-somethings with competing claims to a flat discover the benefits of estate agent incompetency. It’s a fairy tale for our times.Alas, as the title suggests, domestic harmony is on a very short let. The first half of Souter’s comedy/drama skews towards the former, acting as effective pilot for an Odd Couple reboot: abrasive City worker Read more ...
Jasper Rees
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 funny thing is I was getting up early for me, 6.30, to get on a bus to be at the place by a quarter to eight and I just started within a week to feel like a put-upon doctor saving people’s lives. Don’t these people realise I’m going to hospital? You do start to get this God complex.”For a play which, rarely for theatre, aims to show the way doctors Read more ...
Caroline Crampton
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 perpetuated by that vile regime, never quite fully exposing the characters' motivations. As spectators, it demands answers of us. What is the price of your forgiveness? Where is the line between humanity and evil?A production by the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town and directed by Jonathan Munby, this play was first seen at the Hampstead Theatre in May Read more ...
Nick Hasted
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 somewhere. But, in the Hampstead Theatre’s first musical, they’re used in a way reminiscent of the site of two previous Davies productions, Theatre Royal Stratford East. The songs joyously reach out to the audience, even as they are shown to be rooted in a wider, difficult and daft world of class, family, professional struggle and private agony.The basic Read more ...
aleks.sierz
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 the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for his critically acclaimed Rabbit Hole, which also earned several Tony Award nominations and a film adaptation with Nicole Kidman. For Good People, Hampstead has tempted national treasure and Olivier Award-winning actress Imelda Staunton to play the lead.This is that rare thing — an American play about classHer character Read more ...
aleks.sierz
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 show is a light comedy, with some good bright lines, an entertainment that takes several pauses in which ideas are expounded and discussed. It’s a bit like being back in college: a mix of laughs and study.The set-up has an admirable clarity: two former college room-mates meet up again after some two decades apart. Catherine is now a hot academic who Read more ...
aleks.sierz
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 of an Obsessional Neurosis”, it is now a contemporary classic, and deservedly so. Both a demented farce and a serious study of psychoanalytical theory, both surrealistic and feminist, both arty and troubling, it is also a fantastically brilliant entertainment.The date is 1938, and we are in the study of Sigmund Freud, who has fled Nazi Vienna and is Read more ...