National Theatre
aleks.sierz
Science thrives on stage. In play after play, various scientific ideas seem to flourish in the warm, well-lit environment of the theatre, fed by a crew of artists and despite the threats of critics or other predators. Now, Lucy Prebble — fresh from her outstanding success with Enron — turns her attention to the subject of love and neurology in her latest play, which opened last night. Directed by Enron maestro Rupert Goold, the play stars Billie Piper so it’s already sold out, but is it any good?The short answer is yes. For a longer answer, read on. The Effect is set in a facility managed by Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The word “people” of the title of Alan Bennett’s new play is to be spat out, like a lemon pip. People, who invade your space, boss your values, make you be what they want. So does the beleaguered Lady Dorothy Stacpoole feel about the stark options facing her as her fantastically grand mansion leaks and crumbles over her smelly, freezing feet, while under it groans ancient mine workings like a whale with toothache. The options are to auction off the contents and house to who-knows-who, to sell via a slimy salesman to “The Concern” (a bunch of invisible super-rich who buy top works of art and Read more ...
theartsdesk
The National Theatre’s highlights for the winter up until Easter 2013 include Antony Sher in The Captain of Köpenick, Marianne Elliott's revival of Simon Stephens’ Port, the transfer for This House to the Olivier and of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time to the West End, while One Man, Two Guvnors continues its UK tour and three plays are shown as part of NT Live.NEW PRODUCTIONSThe Magistrate, Olivier Theatre. Timothy Sheader’s production of Pinero’s law-breaking farce set in Victorian London stars John Lithgow and Nancy Carroll and is designed by Katrina Lindsay. NT Live Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
I think Frankenstein should always be pronounced Fronkenshteen, the way Gene Wilder says it in Young Frankenstein. But that would have been far too frivolous for this intermittently interesting but often irritating film about the legacy of Mary Shelley's feverish teenage novel.The fact that the film's objectives seemed ambiguous didn't help, and its graveyard slot didn't bode well. It looked as if it must have started off as a behind-the-scenes account of how Danny Boyle created his wildly acclaimed stage production of Frankenstein at the National Theatre last year, since extracts from this Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Spain's Golden Age turns unaccountably to dross in Damned by Despair, the Tirso de Molina play that is a good half-hour shorter than the running time given in the programme but won't (in this production, anyway) ever be brief enough for some. Fascinating for theatre buffs to see what the remarkable Bertie Carvel would choose for a follow-up to Matilda, the play itself comes across in Frank McGuinness's new version as tendentious, silly, and barely coherent, though it does suggest a new career for Carvel as a celluloid hard man should he ever tire of treading the boards of the major British Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Walkouts are always intriguing. When audience members leave before the final curtain, it’s usually a sign that the play is too powerful, or too scandalous, or maybe just not very good. After reports that during previews many people aren’t returning after the interval in this revival of Howard Barker’s 1985 play, Scenes from an Execution, you have to wonder — is it the play or the production? Or is the National’s audience too conservative to appreciate this remarkable play?Certainly, the drama is not just a soapy little entertainment. It’s a hugely ambitious and intricately written story set Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
When Complicite conceived their beautiful A Disappearing Number they gave maths energy, drama, and above all watchability, but they never quite brought the heart. In Simon Stephens’s new adaptation, A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time has it in abundance (as well of course as a dead bee, a live rat, three beer cans and 20-odd metres of model train-track). When you can persuade an audience to stay behind after the curtain-call for a mini maths tutorial you’re doing something right; when you can reduce them to tears with it you’re doing something miraculous.Christopher (Luke Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Simon Stephens (b 1971) is the most prolific British playwright of his generation. Born and brought up in Stockport, he began writing as a student in York University and had produced seven plays before his Bluebird was produced at the Royal Court in 1998. In due course along came angry, searching, passionate statements about society and belonging with punchy titles like Motortown (2006), Pornography (2007) and Punk Rock (2009) (pictured below right). The productivity has not let up, least of all in a summer which sees three new plays from his pen: Morning at the Traverse in Edinburgh, a fresh Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
“Of all the anti-social vested interests the worst is the vested interest in ill-health.” The Preface on Doctors that precedes George Bernard Shaw’s The Doctor’s Dilemma finds the writer at his characteristic best: caustic certainly, witty frequently, but in the service of a serious and lengthy invective on the state of British healthcare. Unfortunately the play that follows doesn’t fully share its brilliance, attempting an awkward dramatic marriage of social satire, melodrama and soapbox sermonising.Which isn’t to say that it doesn’t make for an entertaining evening, just one whose billowing Read more ...
judith.flanders
As the much-loved Arthur Marshall so profoundly noted, Ibsen is “not a fun one”. One could, with as much truth, say the same about Shakespeare’s rarely staged Timon of Athens: its misanthropy, missing motivations and mercurial shifts in temper do not spell a fun night out to most. It is greatly to the credit of director Nicholas Hytner and his team, therefore, that the evening, if it doesn’t exactly fly by, is consistently engaging, thought-provoking and downright intelligent.Hytner and his designer, Tim Hatley, have created a world that mirrors our own. Timon is officially “of Athens”, but Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Sound the trumpets triumphantly - Matthew Bourne’s most original masterpiece has come out of hiding into full view, a giddy, sexy, diabolical confection that hovers on the edge of hellish, and deserves to become a global smash. Play Without Words is everything that any sex comedy could aspire to, everything that a film noir could aim for, and much more dangerous than either theatre or film can be, because it’s what bodies do, not what mouths say, that is leading you into your own sinful nature.Bourne made the work in a National Theatre workshop 10 years ago, and that experimental milieu drew Read more ...
aleks.sierz
When does an urgent new trend become a theatre cliché? Over the past couple of years, the idea of generational conflict between the have-it-all baby boomers and the have-nothing-but-debts youngsters has appeared in plays such as James Graham’s The Whisky Taster and Mike Bartlett’s Love, Love, Love. Now the South Bank flagship, in a production starring national treasure Julie Walters, enters the fray with actor Stephen Beresford’s first play, which opened last night.This time, we are on the Devon coast. High-society dropout Judy (Walters looking like a cross between Mystic Meg and a white Read more ...