tragedy
DVD/Blu-ray: In a Year of 13 MoonsTuesday, 15 April 2025
A longshot of transgender Elvira (Volker Spengler) circled by gay men, assignation turning to assault as dawn mist rises from Frankfurt’s Main river, suggests Pasolini’s brutal 1975 assassination. Rainer Werner Fassbinder instead had in mind the... Read more... |
Midnight Cowboy, Southwark Playhouse - new musical cannot escape the movie's long shadowSunday, 13 April 2025
It seems a bizarre idea. Take a pivotal film in American culture that reset the perception of The Great American Dream at this, obviously, pivotal moment in American culture in which The Great American Dream, for millions, is being literally swiped... Read more... |
Edward II, RSC, Swan Theatre, Stratford review - monarchs, murder and mayhem from MarloweMonday, 10 March 2025
“Don’t put your co-artistic director on the stage, Mrs Harvey,” as Noel Coward once (almost) sang. Tamara Harvey took no heed and Edward II sees her RSC compadre, Daniel Evans (pictured below, kneeling centre), back on stage after 14 years and... Read more... |
Elektra, Duke of York's Theatre review - Brie Larson's London stage debut is angry but inertFriday, 07 February 2025
We live in tragic times given over to cataclysmic events that require outsized emotions in return. That may be one reason to account for the uptick, therefore, in Greek drama, which includes not one but two Oedipi, various adaptations of Antigone,... Read more... |
How To Survive Your Mother, King's Head Theatre review - mummy issues drive autobiographical dramedyThursday, 31 October 2024
It is unsurprising to learn in the post-show Q&A that each audience receives Jonathan Maitland’s new play based on his 2006 memoir differently. My house laughed a lot (me especially) but some see the tragic overwhelming the comic, and the laughs... Read more... |
The Duchess [of Malfi], Trafalgar Theatre review - actors imprisoned by confused time travellingFriday, 18 October 2024
John Webster’s sour, bloody tale of brotherly greed and vice has been updated by the playwright Zinnie Harris, who also directs her own text at the Trafalgar. The title has a handy [of Malfi] added. But do we really know where we are? Or which... Read more... |
Miss Julie, Park Theatre review - Strindberg's kitchen drama still packs a punchThursday, 13 June 2024
You have to tiptoe around the edge of the set just to take your seat in the Park’s studio space for Lidless Theatre’s Miss Julie. There’s a plain wooden table, a few utensils on it, wooden chairs and a small cabinet – not much, but, we’re smack... Read more... |
King Lear, Almeida Theatre review - Danny Sapani dazzles in this spartan tragedyThursday, 22 February 2024
Less than three years after her magnificent Macbeth, Yaël Farber returns to the Almeida with another Shakespeare tragedy. Her take on King Lear (main picture) offers a full-bodied, slow-burn version of this devastating drama, where Danny Sapani... Read more... |
Othello, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - 21st century interpretation delivers food for thoughtThursday, 08 February 2024
Detective Chief Inspector Othello leads a quasi-paramilitary team of Metropolitan Police officers investigating gang activity in Docklands. With a chequered past now behind him, he has reformed and has the respect of both the team he leads and his... Read more... |
The Good John Proctor, Jermyn Street Theatre review - Salem-set drama loses some of its power in LondonSaturday, 13 January 2024
It is no surprise that the phrase “Witch Hunt” is Donald Trump’s favoured term to describe his legal travails. Leaving aside its connotations of a malevolent state going after an innocent victim whilst in the throes of a self-serving moral panic, it... Read more... |
King Lear, Wyndham's Theatre review - Kenneth Branagh helms a pared-down tragedyWednesday, 01 November 2023
Few would have imagined that Kenneth Branagh’s return to the West End would see him garbed in fur-lined, prehistoric clothes. But this is how he takes on the gargantuan role of King Lear, in a compact, fast-paced production of Shakespeare’s great... Read more... |
Trueman and the Arsonists, Roundhouse Studio review - new warnings in old lessonsTuesday, 31 October 2023
A dystopian present. Sirens ring out across the city. Firefighters rush to the wrong locations. A man insists on entry to a big house. He’s not selling anything, so he can’t be an arsonist can he? His friend turns up and she’s pretty upfront about... Read more... |
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