Southwark Playhouse
The Rubenstein Kiss, Southwark Playhouse review - slick spy drama doesn't quite come togetherWednesday, 20 March 2019It's an ideal time to revive James Phillips's debut The Rubenstein Kiss. Since it won the John Whiting Award for new writing in 2005 its story, of ideological differences tearing a family apart, has only become more relevant. Joe Harmston directs a... Read more... |
Bodies, Southwark Playhouse review - shaky revival misses the markThursday, 21 February 2019Bodies is the latest in Two's Company's series of what they deem "forgotten masterworks", this one making a less-than-triumphant return to the London stage after almost 40 years away. Written by James Saunders in 1977, it opened at the Orange Tree... Read more... |
All in a Row, Southwark Playhouse, review - soapy and shrill pity partyWednesday, 20 February 2019Time once again to roll out that line about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. The creators of All in a Row, a new play at Southwark Playhouse about the last evening at home for an autistic non-verbal 11-year-old before his... Read more... |
Aspects of Love, Southwark Playhouse review - discourse keeps passion at bayFriday, 11 January 2019“Love Changes Everything”, as immortalised by Michael Ball, is the most enduring feature of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Don Black and Charles Hart’s 1989 musical – a moderate West End success, and a Broadway flop. Jonathan O’Boyle’s production, seen last... Read more... |
The Sweet Science of Bruising, Southwark Playhouse review - boxing cleverSaturday, 06 October 2018There are not that many plays about sport, but, whether you gamble on results or not, you can bet that most of them are about boxing. And often set in the past. Joy Wilkinson's superb new drama, The Sweet Science of Bruising, comes to the Southwark... Read more... |
The Rink, Southwark Playhouse - lesser-known musical lands afreshWednesday, 06 June 2018Two dynamite lead performances and the chance to savour an underappreciated score give genuine charge to The Rink, a decades-old Broadway flop that feels reborn for Southwark Playhouse. A short-lived star vehicle for Chita Rivera (who... Read more... |
The Country Wife, Southwark Playhouse review – knowing Restoration updateThursday, 05 April 2018Even in its successful early days Wycherley’s 1675 comedy was notorious, but it was considered too lewd to be staged at all between the mid-Eighteenth Century and 1924. Although the play has found an affectionate place in the canon in more recent... Read more... |
Angry, Southwark Playhouse review – wondrously roaring RidleylandSaturday, 17 February 2018Monologues are very much the flavour of the start of this theatrical year. At the Royal Court, we have Carey Mulligan in Dennis Kelly’s brilliant Girls & Boys, coming hot on the tottering heels of Anoushka Warden’s My Mum’s a Twat, while at the... Read more... |
Collective Rage, Southwark Playhouse review - a rollicking riotWednesday, 07 February 2018“Pussy is pussy” and “bitches are bitches” but Jen Silverman’s Collective Rage at Southwark Playhouse smashes tautologies with roguish comedy in a tight five-hander smartly directed by Charlie Parham.The play is set in New York and follows the ad... Read more... |
Dear Brutus, Southwark Playhouse review - a judicious mix of comedy and sadnessTuesday, 05 December 2017Confused people, some of whom may have made the wrong choices in life and love, find themselves in an enchanted wood at Midsummer. Dear Brutus has long been seen to echo Shakespeare’s comedy of metamorphosis, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A huge... Read more... |
Mother Courage, Southwark Playhouse review - this production is not one for our timesThursday, 09 November 2017One of the questions that can be asked of Brecht is whether for a modern audience his Verfremdungseffekt — or alienation effect — still works as intended, provoking genuine reflections on justice by distancing audiences from emotional... Read more... |
Dessert, Southwark Playhouse review - undercooked and overwroughtWednesday, 19 July 2017"What is this, Saving Private Ryan?" a character randomly queries well into the actor Oliver Cotton's new play, Dessert. Well, more like a modern-day An Inspector Calls on steroids, with the volume turned up so high in Trevor Nunn's production... Read more... |