West End
Matt Wolf
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, and the arrival on the commercial West End of the obvious companion piece to Oedipus, namely Elektra – the K in the title perhaps nodding to a landscape in which people exist to kill. The star attraction is Oscar winner Brie Larson, who certainly deserves credit for taking on this part in the harsh glare of the commercial theatre, not least in Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Ben Elton loves a scrap. The Motormouth of yesteryear, who made his name attacking Margaret Thatcher and her policies (and being attacked by the right in turn) now wades into so many frothing hot topics – gender politics, assisted dying and the age divide among them – that one has to assume he loves pushing people's buttons. For all the shouty delivery though, what he has to say is closely argued and passionate as he posits that, among all the fears about the growth of AI, the dangers of climate change and Donald Trump going back into the White House, what we should fear most is.... Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Into a world of grooming gangs, human trafficking and senior prelates resigning over child abuse cases comes Oliver!, Lionel Bart’s masterly musical. Is its grim tale of workhouses, pickpockets and domestic violence an awkward fit with today’s values? On paper, probably yes. Here, loyal Nancy is still a victim of her brutal lover, little Oliver is not spared becoming a felon in the eyes of the law, Fagin is a gangmaster with criminal intent. But this latest West End production is soft-centred alongside the Dickens and delivers just what fans of this wonderful score will want: impeccable Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Broadway shows sometimes hit the West End like, well, like a comet, burning brightly but briefly (Spring Awakening, for example), while others settle into orbit illuminating Shaftesbury Avenue with a neon blaze every night for years.So it might be a wise decision to install Dave Malloy’s much-awarded, 2016 musical, Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, in the bijou Donmar Warehouse – fortunately, it’s a gem of a show.“It’s not exactly War and Peace!” was a meme before there were memes, said of anything that was a little too facile to satisfy, the slabby novel a shorthand reference Read more ...
Matt Wolf
It's second time only quasi-lucky for The Devil Wears Prada, the stage musical adaptation of the much-loved Meryl Streep film from 2006 that nosedived in Chicago a few summers ago and has resurfaced on the West End to see another day.Refitted with a largely fresh creative team, the show ticks all the boxes that devotees of the movie will want and expect, while never really establishing a reason for being of its own, as Kinky Boots, from the same director (Jerry Mitchell), managed so triumphantly some while back.Mitchell's latest has a vaguely Primark feel where it ought to feel haute couture Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Even by Stanley Kubrick’s standards, Dr Strangelove went through an extraordinary evolutionary process. After starting it off as a serious film about nuclear war based on the 1958 novel Two Hours to Doom, he decided to turn it into a comedy with the help of porn-obsessed satirist Terry Southern.The distinctive result – as remarkable for its futuristic War Room design as its weapons-grade humour – brazenly evoked the madness of a world on the brink. It’s not hard to see why – when human self-destructivity is breaking records on the Doomsday Clock – Sean Foley and Armando Iannucci thought this Read more ...
Heather Neill
"Captain" Jack Boyle is a fantasist, a mythmaker, a storyteller. He relishes an audience – usually his sidekick, Joxer. There is a theatricality in his part as written by O'Casey, but in Matthew Warchus's hands this is made an explicit element of the whole production, culminating in the unexpected finale. When the first scene opens, swags of red stage curtains rise and remain looped in place throughout, framing the action.The play, the second in Seán O'Casey's Dublin trilogy, is set in the city in 1922. Citizens ground down by poverty suffer further as society is ripped apart by civil war Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Modernism is us. Today. For the past two decades plays by Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter – which once upon a time bewildered their audiences and gave critics apoplexy – have become big West End hits. The avant-garde is now commercial. The incomprehensible is our reality.How so? By casting celebrity stars in the main roles, and emphasizing the humour. So the current revival of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot – which premiered in Paris in 1953 and then got a London production a couple of years later – features Ben Whishaw, a national treasure since he voiced Paddington in the film series, Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Pete Waterman, responsible (some might prefer the word guilty) for more than 100 Top 40 hits, said that a pop song is the hardest thing to write. Boy meets girl; boy loses girl; boy gets girl back – all wrapped up in three minutes. Benedict Lombe’s Shifters takes longer – 33 Kylies longer – but it pulls off the same devilishly difficult trick and, as with the best earworms of the 1980s, it’s likely to stay in your head for years. Dre(am) is at his Nana’s wake when, late and unannounced, Des(tiny) is suddenly in the room, the impact of her arrival akin to his being hit in Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Before the Plays That Went Wrong and the multi-role six-hander Operation Mincemeat, there was Patrick Barlow’s adaptation of The 39 Steps: four actors on a collision course with feasibility.Barlow is a comedy hero for creating the National Theatre of Brent in 1980, where as preening thesp Desmond Olivier Dingle he performed two-handers with a rotating door of partners that included Jim Broadbent. They considered no topic too epic, from the Zulu Wars to the Greatest Story Ever Told. Barlow’s 2005 version of John Buchan’s 1915 spy thriller, filtered via Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film, Read more ...
Gary Naylor
On opening night, there’s always a little tension in the air. Tech rehearsals and previews can only go so far – this is the moment when an audience, some wielding pens like scalpels, sit in judgement. Having attended thousands on the critics’ side of the fourth wall, I can tell you that there’s plenty of crackling expectation and a touch of fear in the stalls, too. None more so than when the show is billed as a new musical.By the interval (much before that if it’s a hit), you’re locating the production on a multi-dimensional spectrum, assessing its component parts (acting, plot, design), its Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Five years ago, Rachel Parris tells us, she never thought she would one day be married, a mother and a home owner. Now she's all three – and a stepmother as well – and this year is about to turn 40. It's quite a journey, which she talks about in her new show, Poise.But it's not all personal as there's a fair amount of political humour here too. After all, she did get her big break on the BBC's satire show The Mash Report, which transmogrified into Late Night Mash on Dave and was cancelled by both channels. She says it was because of the shows' left-leaning slant, so she's keen to balance Read more ...