Theatre
David Kettle
Who’d have thought a play about a homophobic hate crime could be so much fun? Well, maybe that’s overstating things a little. But there are certainly lighter moments in La reprise, provocative Swiss-born director Milo Rau’s production with his International Institute of Political Murder at the International Festival, which investigates the torture and killing of 32-year-old Ihsane Jarfi in Liège in 2012.In fact, it’s Rau and his ensemble’s careful judging and pacing of mood that make La reprise so effective, and so memorable too. From its disarmingly jokey opening – complete with barbed Read more ...
David Kettle
You can’t question Javaad Alipoor’s ambition. Ancient Mesopotamian empires, geological layers of chicken bones, the half-life of polysterene cups, Thomas Gainsborough, Susan Sontag, Iranian political history, gold iPhones, mallwave – all that and plenty more gets crammed into the mere hour of his breathless Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran at the Traverse. And that’s even without mentioning the wordy narration, video projections, Instagram feeds, live video and multipanelled set he employs to get his ideas across.It all leaves you more than a bit bewildered. And indeed, if Read more ...
David Kettle
Enough ★★★★ Immaculately turned out in winning smiles, navy and nylon, cabin crew Jane and Toni dispense comforting reassurance and flirty glances to passengers at 30,000 feet. Down on the ground, though, they’re juggling kids, kitchen colour-schemes and semi-rapist boyfriends. And what’s that age-old rumble coming from deep in the ground?Stef Smith’s quietly epic new two-hander at the Traverse might begin as a chucklesome comedy about staying calm, controlled and sexy a mile high in the air. But it ends as a guttural howl of fury and despair – at ancient grievances re- Read more ...
bella.todd
A great hunk of rotting meat hangs centre stage, suspended over a rusty wheelbarrow. A figure in a bloody butcher’s apron picks through the stalls, searching for cans of ‘xxxtra cheap lager’. From the direction of the band, sinister Wurlitzer sounds begin to stir the air. If the words "family musical" fill you with certain wholesome expectations, you are likely to have them gleefully subverted by the National’s new summer show. A musical staging of a cult children’s book, Mr Gum and the Dancing Bear features Gary Wilmot in a flying fat suit singing about snacks, a demented sea captain with a Read more ...
Heather Neill
It may help if you love the book. It was a runaway bestseller, so fans must be legion, but a suspenseful story which depends on memories being obscured by prodigious boozing, and featuring a trio of women best described as "flaky", all defining themselves too much by their relationships with unreliable men, is not to everyone's taste. For newcomers to book or film (Emily Blunt won an Oscar nomination for the New York-set movie), it may be best to approach this as a harsher, suburban, sex-filled variation on The Mousetrap. For all the modern trappings, the real interest - especially so in the Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
London’s Troubadour White City theatre has got off to a, literally, flying start. Sally Cookson‘s National Theatre-Bristol Old Vic adaptation of JM Barrie’s classic makes an exuberant comeback at this new venue, whose technical possibilities allow for some genuine thrills, not least when its hero soars high over the auditorium. Such standout moments of spectacle are backed up by a bravado performance that overflows with energy, keeping a youthful ensemble of some two dozen nimble from start to finish. With a completely new cast, led by the phenomenal John Pfumojena, who fizzes on his feet Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Emmanuel (Anthony Ofoegbu) runs Three Kings Barbers in London. His assistant, Samuel (Mohammed Mansaray), is the son of his erstwhile business partner, who is currently in jail. Emmanuel is boss, surrogate father and — occasionally — verbal punching bag: Sam is a whizz with the shears and just as cutting with his tongue. It's not just London in which Inua Ellam's riotous play Barber Shop Chronicles — newly transferred to the Roundhouse from the National Theatre — takes place. Scenes in barber shops in Lagos, Accra, Kampala, Harare and Johannesburg intercut the action in London, where Read more ...
Marianka Swain
It’s too darn hot, BoJo is in Downing Street, and we’re all going to Brexit hell – so we might as well sing the blues. Or at least take a night off from the apocalypse to enjoy a virtuoso company singing them for us in this rousing revival of Sheldon Epps’ 1980 musical revue, which showcases jazz greats like Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen. It’s also unfinished business for Susie McKenna, who directed a short run at Hackney Empire back in 2014.Sharon D Clarke once again plays The Lady, whose concise narration sets the scene. We’re in a rundown hotel Read more ...
Matt Wolf
If good intentions were all, The View UpStairs would be Gypsy. As it is, the European premiere of this 2017 Off Broadway musical set in a New Orleans gay bar firebombed by arson in 1973 serves both as an important reminder of a grievous event in LGBTQ history and as an object lesson in the difficulty of writing a persuasive show. At two interval-less hours, the musical at the Soho Theatre takes a long time to get to its inevitably calamitous ending and depends no end on possibly the most name-heavy ensemble (especially for musicals buffs) ever gathered at this address: the cast's commitment Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Robert James Waller’s bestselling, though critically panned, 1992 romance novel was reincarnated in the Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep-starring film, and then again in Jason Robert Brown and Marsha Norman’s Tony-winning 2013 musical – both adaptations wisely sloughing off some of the original’s schmaltz and sappiness. Now Trevor Nunn, whose Menier-originated Fiddler on the Roof is currently playing in the West End, helms the moderately successful UK premiere.Italian war bride Francesca (Jenna Russell) has been transplanted to Middle America, where she’s raised two children with farmer Read more ...
aleks.sierz
One of the glories of contemporary London theatre is its revivals of classic American drama. Year after year, audiences are able to revisit and enjoy the great landmarks of postwar American playwriting from greats such as Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Sam Shepard and David Mamet (recently joined by the likes of Lynn Nottage). Now the latest addition to the West End's glory days is Williams's 1961 masterpiece, The Night of the Iguana, in a great production whose starry cast includes Clive Owen, Lia Williams and Breaking Bad's Anna Gunn.The story is set in 1940, on the veranda of the Costa Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
When he gave Martin Dysart, the troubled psychiatrist protagonist of Equus, a line in which he speaks about “moments of experience” being “magnetised”, Peter Shaffer might almost have been talking about theatre itself. It’s a phrase that comes close to catching what we feel when we're transfixed by the hard-to-predict coming-together of play, performance and production that marks the highpoints of drama. And “magnetic” is as good a word as any to describe the impact of Ned Bennett’s remarkable revival of Shaffer’s 1973 play for Theatre Royal Stratford East and English Touring Theatre, which Read more ...