National Theatre
aleks.sierz
One of the promises of artistic director Nicholas Hytner when he took the helm of this flagship 10 years ago was to stage new and innovative musicals. His problem, of course, is that these don’t grow on trees. So after the triumph of Jerry Springer: The Opera in 2003, we had to wait eight years for London Road, the venue’s next British hit. In the meantime, the United States has occasionally plugged the gap — and now provides this current musical, in the shape of a critique of American capitalism by New York’s the TEAM.First seen here in 2011, at Edinburgh, Mission Drift is about the pioneer Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
“My three men,” declares the deeply compromised heroine of this 1928 experimental drama by Eugene O’Neill. “I am whole.” Nina Leeds – hungry for love, ruthless with her own heart and those of others – burns like the sun at the play’s centre. She is given a portrayal by Anne-Marie Duff, in this fine production by Simon Godwin, so scorching that she all but self-immolates, while her men circle her like planets, helpless to alter their course. It is an impressive achievement – even if the work itself remains unwieldy and unsatisfying.Designs by Soutra Gilmour, intricate yet breathtaking in their Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The Oliviers consider more than twice the number of productions for their annual awards compared to Broadway's Tonys. But you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise following Sunday night's 37th annual shindig, which divvied up the kudos among notably few recipients, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time leading the pack with seven awards - on a par with Matilda this time last year. At the same time, many other worthy hopefuls went home empty-handed, if they were lucky enough to get nominated to begin with. One intends no disrespect to Simon Stephens's adaptation of Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
It’s apt that a drama set among soldiers should be presented with military precision; but corruption, cruelty and perversion can lurk amid the human innards of the machine of war, and in Nicholas Hytner’s well-oiled, impeccably paced production of Shakespeare’s tragedy, the chainlink and concrete of an army base house scenes of cruel humiliation.Hytner's inaugural 2003 season as artistic director of the National included his staging of Henry V, coinciding with the Iraq War and starring Adrian Lester. Now Lester takes on the titular Moor, opposite Rory Kinnear, whom Hytner directed as Hamlet Read more ...
David Benedict
They’re back, and this time it’s Gorky. Dream team director Howard Davies, translator Andrew Upton, designer Bunny Christie and lighting designer Neil Austin have repeatedly attached tragicomic jump-leads to the unfamiliar (Bulgakov’s The White Guard) and the well-worn (The Cherry Orchard) to explode the myth encapsulated by Ira Gershwin’s lyric: “I’ve found more clouds of grey/Than any Russian play could guarantee.” But despite the welcome return of their vision and some juicy performances, it’s increasingly obvious why they didn’t stage Children of the Sun before now.With a lobby opening on Read more ...
David Benedict
Without wishing to get all Kirstie and Phil about this, theatre, more often than you’d imagine, is about location, location, location. One of the reasons why the National Theatre’s knockout The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was so potent was because director Marianne Elliott welded the audience to all four sides of the action. Transferred to a West End stage, the tension between stage and audience is undeniably different. Is the show still a triumph? Oh yes.A murder mystery with added maths – and a huge emotional kick in the telling – this is a stage version of Mark Read more ...
Heather Neill
A little man takes on Authority and fails. A little man dons a colourful uniform, complete with boots and spiked helmet, and he becomes Authority. Carl Zuckmayer wrote Der Hauptmann von Köpenick in 1931, two years before Hitler came to power.Wilhelm Voigt, the real-life subject of the drama, had his moment of fame as the ersatz Captain of Grenadier Reserves in 1906. An anti-militarist aware of the growing Nazi threat and declared “half Jewish” because one of his grandfathers was Jewish, Zuckmayer was clearly writing about his own time as much as the early 1900s. He described his satire – in Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Over the past decade or so, Simon Stephens has emerged as one of Britain’s premier playwrights. As well as being a prolific penman, with three volumes of collected plays already in print, he has been tutor on the Royal Court’s Young Writers course and a regular at the National Theatre. He has also enjoyed collaborating with the best directors, one of whom is Marianne Elliott — their version of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time transfers to the West End next month. Now they revisit his 2002 play, which they staged together originally at the Royal Exchange in Manchester.Set in Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
“You don’t put yourself into what you write, you find yourself there.” It’s a maxim that has guided a writing career that, insect-like, has made itself at home among the lived detritus of autobiography and memoir. In Alan Bennett’s 2001 Hymn and his latest short-play Cocktail Sticks the author sets out in search of himself once more, finding on his quest not only his own history but that of a generation and an age at an ever-increasing remove from our own. It could be cosy, it could easily be glib, but for the most part it’s just funny, and terribly, terribly poignant.To anyone familiar with Read more ...
Heather Neill
’Tis the season to be jolly. ’Tis also the season to dust off the stories of the Grimms and Perrault and present them as drama, sometimes transmogrified into panto. There are sometimes attempts to go back to source and eschew the tawdry delights of transvestite dames, sparkly leotards and lame rhyming couplets. The source, of course, is often really quite frightening.At the National Theatre, Katie Mitchell directs a sort of half-way house by Lucy Kirkwood “developed at the NT studio”. In this Hansel and Gretel There is no cartoonish dame with a suffocating bosom, but – the cast being small - Read more ...
kate.bassett
When I first mentioned to a colleague that I was embarking on a biography of the doctor/director Jonathan Miller, he instantly yelped, “My God, your work’s cut out! The man must have met half the famous names in the twentieth century!"My subsequent conversations with Miller provided a cornucopia of highly entertaining anecdotes. These included his brushes with Princess Margaret (who was very taken with his comic turns in the 1950s); Bobby Kennedy (who told him to shut up, shortly before being shot); Bridget Riley (who nearly sued); and Kevin Spacey (who got his big break by stalking Miller Read more ...
Veronica Lee
You don't see much of Arthur Wing Pinero's considerable output these days. Although he was largely contemporaneous with Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw and Gilbert and Sullivan, whose works have stayed the course, his plays have not, with just a few exceptions. But in that weird way these things sometimes happen, it seems Pinero is undergoing something of a resurgence (in London at least), as a production of The Second Mrs Tanqueray has just finished at the Rose Theatre in Kingston and the Donmar Warehouse is to stage Trelawny of the Wells early next year.The Magistrate will be even less Read more ...