Old Vic
Endgame/Rough for Theatre II, Old Vic review - Beckett played for laughsWednesday, 05 February 2020
“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.” Director Richard Jones has certainly taken Beckett’s words to heart in this vividly comic, star-cast Old Vic double bill, pairing Endgame with a lesser-known short play – which acts as a sort of stylistic and... Read more... |
A Christmas Carol, Old Vic Theatre review - the festive favourite mixes gloom with merrimentThursday, 05 December 2019
"Dickensian" commonly means both sentimental Victorian, apple-cheeked family perfection (especially at Christmas) and abject poverty. The story of Scrooge encompasses both as the old curmudgeon learns to mend his miserly ways and open his heart to... Read more... |
Lungs, Old Vic review - deluxe casting and slick deliveryTuesday, 22 October 2019
Playing our monarch and her husband in The Crown has made actors Claire Foy and Matt Smith into TV drama royalty, so reuniting the pair onstage guarantees a hot ticket. What’s less clear is why Lungs, Duncan Macmillan’s rather thin 2011 play, merits... Read more... |
A Very Expensive Poison, Old Vic review – bold evocation of a post-truth worldFriday, 06 September 2019
If Russia is, as Winston Churchill once so memorably said, “a riddle, wrapped inside a mystery, wrapped inside an enigma”, then this play is an outrage, wrapped inside a farce, framed by a bittersweet love story. Through the prism of the polonium... Read more... |
Present Laughter, Old Vic review - Andrew Scott continues his rise and riseWednesday, 26 June 2019
"Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?" can be heard pulsating through the Old Vic auditorium as the curtain rises on its wondrous revival of Present Laughter: a decisive feather in the cap of artistic director Matthew Warchus's regime. But all Garry... Read more... |
All My Sons, Old Vic review - starry but disappointingly unevenWednesday, 24 April 2019
Superstar Sally Field has come to town. With two academy awards and countless other accolades, the actor who played Forrest Gump's mother and dozens of other roles, from Frog to Mrs Lincoln, in Hollywood blockbusters and on television now returns to... Read more... |
The American Clock, Old Vic review - Arthur Miller's musical history lesson dragsThursday, 14 February 2019
This year’s unofficial Arthur Miller season – following The Price and ahead of All My Sons at the Old Vic and Death of a Salesman at the Young Vic – now turns to his 1980 work, The American Clock, inspired in part by Miller’s own memories of the... Read more... |
A Christmas Carol, Old Vic review - Dickens adaptation returns, depth and mince pies intactFriday, 07 December 2018
The Old Vic's revival of its successful Christmas Carol first seen this time last year had me at the mince pies: they were served before curtain up by a Bob Cratchit figure while we admired the shoal of Victorian lanterns lighting the way over a... Read more... |
Wise Children, Old Vic review - Emma Rice in fun if not quite top-flight formSaturday, 20 October 2018
"What could possibly go wrong?" The question ends the first act of Wise Children, the debut venture from the new company birthed by a director, Emma Rice, who must have asked herself precisely that query at many points in recent years.... Read more... |
A Monster Calls, Old Vic - wild, beautiful theatre that beguiles and bruisesThursday, 19 July 2018
A raw pagan vitality animates this extraordinary story about a teenage boy wrestling with tumultuous emotions in the face of his mother’s terminal illness. Director Sally Cookson has taken the potent blend of myth and realism in Patrick Ness’s book... Read more... |
Mood Music, Old Vic review - riveting critique of the music bizThursday, 03 May 2018
Playwright Joe Penhall and the music biz? Well, they have history. When he was writing the book for Sunny Afternoon, his 2014 hit musical about the Kinks, he had a few run-ins with Ray Davies, the band’s lead singer. A couple of years ago The Stage... Read more... |
Fanny and Alexander, Old Vic review - agile but shallow Bergman adaptationFriday, 02 March 2018
Could an epic cinematic masterpiece be turned successfully into a three-act play? Confession first: Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander is my No. 1 film. On one level a slow-burn, pre-World-War-One family saga, on another a timeless human comedy... Read more... |
