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Theatre Unlocked 2: A starry premiere and musical revival alongside Greek tragedy where it beganThursday, 23 July 2020![]() Theatres will begin gently unlocking their doors as we head into August. In the meantime, a beleaguered community continues to find fresh and startling ways to sustain interest and excitement, whether that be the premiere of a new play starring... Read more... |
Tiger Country, Hampstead Theatre online review - a taut drama of NHS pressure and painWednesday, 22 April 2020![]() If ever there was a “play for today”, it’s surely this. Nina Raine’s 2011 A&E drama follows hospital staff – doctors senior and junior, surgeons, registrars, consultants, nurses – as they confront, individually and collectively, the stress of a... Read more... |
On Blueberry Hill, Trafalgar Studios review - superb acting, specious plotThursday, 12 March 2020![]() Some wondrous acting is sacrificed on the altar of an increasingly wonky plot in On Blueberry Hill, the first play in 10 years from Sebastian Barry, the Irish playwright and novelist whose onetime Royal Court entry The Steward of Christendom... Read more... |
Sinners, Playground Theatre review - intimacy but also fearSaturday, 29 February 2020![]() Layla is trapped in a pit of sand up to her shoulders, with a shroud over her head and piles of rocks surrounding her. On steps Nur, who has been tasked with arranging the rocks. The two were engaged in an adulterous affair, and he must begin the... Read more... |
Leopoldstadt, Wyndham's Theatre review - Stoppard at once personal and accessibleFriday, 14 February 2020![]() It’s not uncommon for playwrights to begin their careers by writing what they know, to co-opt a frequently quoted precept about authorial inspiration. So it’s among the many fascinations of Leopoldstadt that Tom Stoppard, at the age of 82, should... Read more... |
Collapsible, Bush Theatre review - a high-wire solo engagementTuesday, 11 February 2020![]() There’s such remarkable symbiosis between material and performance in Irish dramatist Margaret Perry’s Collapsible that you wonder how the hour-long monologue will fare in any future incarnation. I don’t know how much Perry had the performer... Read more... |
The Haystack, Hampstead Theatre review - a chilling surveillance state thrillerFriday, 07 February 2020![]() With counter-terrorism an urgent concern – and specifically how best to find, track and use the data of suspected threats, without sacrificing our privacy and civil liberties – it’s excellent timing for a meaty drama about the surveillance state.... Read more... |
Faustus: That Damned Woman, Lyric Hammersmith review - gender swap yields muddled resultsWednesday, 29 January 2020![]() Changing the gender of the title character “highlights the way in which women still operate in a world designed by and for men,” argues Chris Bush, whose reimagining of Marlowe’s play premieres at the Lyric ahead of a UK tour. It’s certainly a... Read more... |
The Sunset Limited, Boulevard Theatre review - all talk, no theatreFriday, 24 January 2020![]() Cormac McCarthy’s two-hander, premiered at Chicago's mighty Steppenwolf Theatre in 2006, has by this point been everything short of an ice ballet: a self-described “novel in dramatic form”, as one might expect from the American author of such titles... Read more... |
You Stupid Darkness!, Southwark Playhouse review - an intriguing muddleTuesday, 21 January 2020![]() Armageddon would appear to be at the gates in Sam Steiner’s intriguing if ramshackle play, a co-production between Paines Plough and Theatre Royal, Plymouth, that has reached London while still seeming a draft or so away from achieving its full... Read more... |
Scrounger, Finborough Theatre review - uncomfortable play tackles disability discriminationTuesday, 14 January 2020![]() Scrounger is no comfortable evening in the theatre, for reasons both intentional and inadvertent. Athena Stevens’ new play recounts her 2016 battle with British Airways and London City Airport, who subjected her to the humiliation of being... Read more... |
The Tyler Sisters, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs review – raucous celebration of sisterhoodWednesday, 08 January 2020![]() The Tyler sisters start as they mean to go on: bickering. Middle sister Gail (Bryony Hannah) has come home from uni to find that youngest Katrina (Angela Griffin) has stolen her room. “What about Maddy’s? Why didn’t you take that?” Gail snaps. “She... Read more... |
