Theatre
Veronica Lee
Penelope Skinner's monologue was a critical and audience hit at last year's Edinburgh Fringe, when its talking point found its moment. Here is Roger, a divorced father who lives in Walnut Creek and has lost his senior management job at AT&T, drifting along in middle age, when he discovers Angry Alan, his online saviour. Angry Alan says that all men's problems, including Roger's, are caused by the gyno-centric world we live in, and men should start fighting back, citing "meninism" as the route. And while they're at it, why not donate to the Men's Rights Movement that Angry Alan has Read more ...
Matt Wolf
There's a lovely, quietly subversive musical lurking somewhere in Waitress, and for extended passages in the second act that show is allowed to shine through. The flip side means putting up with an often coarse first act that seems to have taken its cue from its sister show in female emancipation, the Dolly Parton-scored 9 to 5, playing down the street. The advantage for Waitress is Grammy ceremony semi-regular Sara Bareilles's eclectic and catchy score, and a clutch of winning performances capable of taking even the hoariest material (you've seen almost all these characters before) and Read more ...
David Nice
Hallucinatory theatre has struck quite a few times in the Barbican's international seasons. On an epic scale we’ve had the Shakespeare compendiums Kings of War and Roman Tragedies from Toneelgroep Amsterdam, newly merged with the city's Stadsschouwburg to form this present company. Most concentrated in intensity of vision, in my experience, have been director/playwright Simon Stone's Belvoir Theatre Sydney adaptation of Ibsen's The Wild Duck, and now his Dutch Medea for our times. They almost make a diptych, with the same hermetic acting space - this time white and open, not black and glassed Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Okay, so this is the play that will be remembered for the character names that have unusual spellings. As in Alys not Alice, Kyte not Kite, etc. Anyway, Lucinda Coxon's adaptation of journalist Harriet Lane's 2012 bestseller for the Bridge Theatre starts off with Frances (Downton Abbey's Joanne Froggatt) coming across a fatal car crash in which Alys, a woman she doesn't know, is killed. As all those who have read the book will recall, Frances finds that her life changes when she is contacted by Alys's family, especially her husband Laurence Kyte (Hustle's Robert Glenister), who turns to her Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Dear Clean Break, Thank you very much for your latest, called Inside Bitch, a show which is billed as "a playfully subversive take on the representation of women in prison". It's a great celebration of your 40th anniversary. I saw this at the Royal Court tonight and I will remember it because the cast were clearly having great fun, and so was the audience. And I could see why. Some bits were really funny — and I couldn't help myself: I laughed too — which is all a bit weird because the subject of prison, and the incarceration of women, is really no laughing matter. In fact, *spoiler alert*, Read more ...
Tim Cornwell
We're Staying Right Here, Henry Devas's debut play premiering on the smaller of the Park Theatre's two stages, carries a trigger warning on the theatre website: "May be affective for people coping with mental health issues". There's also, we're told, "very strong language, simulated violence, flashing lights, and vaping". Worst of all is when a baby gets handed over to the care of a drunk suicidal depressive as a ticket to calming him down. Don't ever try this at home. The set reveals an apartment with the door and windows barricaded from the inside, bolted and nailed shut, where empty Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Well, you have to give it to French playwright Florian Zeller — he's certainly cracked the problem of coming up with a name for each of his plays. Basically, choose a common noun and put the definite article in front of it. His latest, The Son, is the last in a trilogy which includes The Father and The Mother. His other recent work is titled The Truth and The Lie — see what I mean? Peasy. Then there's The Height of the Storm, a slight variation. Anyway, the previous parts of the Moliere-Award-winning writer's trilogy have won an Olivier (The Father) and critical acclaim (The Mother) so what Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Whenever I hear the word "cosmopolitan" I think of Europe in the 1920s: German Expressionism, Russian Constructivism, Czech eccentricity, Swiss DaDa, Italian Futurism and French Surrealism. With music from Weimar cabaret and visuals by Soviet agit-prop. Let's take an imaginary train journey from Paris to Berlin to Zurich to Prague to Milan. This is the world evoked by The Animals and Children Took to the Streets. This filmic theatre show, the second created by 1927 theatre company, was first staged in 2010 at the Sydney Opera House and the Battersea Arts Centre, and since then it has not only Read more ...
Marianka Swain
This is a golden age of London Sondheim revivals, with Marianne Elliott’s thrilling Company still playing in the West End, and Dominic Cooke’s Follies getting a hugely welcome second run at the National – both testament to a director’s transformative vision. A few key cast changes add extra incentive to this Follies encore, although the sheer level of detail in Cooke’s production should be more than enough to tempt a second (or third, or fourth) visit.Far more atmospheric than plot-driven, Sondheim and James Goldman’s oft-revised 1971 work has flummoxed many. But Cooke’s version, which Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
"It's gonna be the best golf course in the world," a man in an Aertex shirt and a bright red baseball cap is assuring us. "The best. I guarantee it." You can tell he's the kind of person who thinks talking quickly and loudly is the same thing as being right.If this sounds vaguely familiar, that's because Hannah Patterson's new play Eden, staged at the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs by Matthew Xia, is based on a true story, that of Donald Trump's luxury golf course in Aberdeenshire and the backlash it faced from local residents. Patterson transports the action to the fictional village of Eden, Read more ...
aleks.sierz
There is no doubt that Peter Shaffer's Equus is a modern classic. But does that justify reviving this 1973 hit play in our current social circumstances? And what can it say to us today? The good news is that up-and-coming director Ned Bennett is at the helm of this version, and that he brings not only his individual vision to the piece, but also plenty of guts and balls and feeling: this is much more than a simple retread of John Dexter's legendary original, with its platform-hooved man-horses and starry casts here and in New York (Alec McCowen, Anthony Hopkins and Tom Hulce). Nor is there Read more ...
Matt Wolf
An entirely electric leading performance from the fast-rising Ukweli Roach is the reason for being for revisiting Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train, back in London for the first major production since the late Philip Seymour Hoffman brought his acclaimed Off Broadway premiere of it to the Donmar in 2002. Since then, author Stephen Adly Guirgis has to be honest written better plays, not least the thrilling The Motherf**er with the Hat which doesn't try so hard to flag its bravura at every turn. Kate Hewitt's revival for the Young Vic rides the inbuilt energy of the play, but the net result is Read more ...