Theatre
Matt Wolf
The New York theatre is so consistently awash in "star is born" moments when one or another British actor crosses the Atlantic to copious praise that it's lovely for a change to be able to reverse the kudos. And as Phil Connors, the jaded weatherman for whom February 2 threatens to become a personal Waterloo, Broadway veteran Andy Karl in his London stage debut sends the stage musical adaptation of Groundhog Day soaring.Sure, there's plenty else to admire about a new musical that had its own sights set on Broadway well before it even opened, and that re-teams composer Tim Minchin and director Read more ...
David Nice
Southwark's golden triangle – the Menier, the Playhouse and the Union – has given us so many "lost" musicals which only a decade or so ago would have been lucky to get in-concert airings. Chief gap-fillers in the Rodgers & Hammerstein oeuvre have been the Union Theatre's charming shot at Pipe Dream, which had quirky subject matter – Steinbeck's Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday – and a few good songs, and now the Southwark Playhouse's "European professional premiere" of Allegro, which has a half-interesting, home-grown plot and not a single vintage R&H number. No amount of heart Read more ...
David Kettle
Alix in Wundergarten ★★★★Think Alan Ayckbourn on acid: a commonplace (well, almost) set-up, exaggerated further and further beyond what we’d ever anticipate. In François Pandolfo’s wild, freewheeling and hugely entertaining satire on the acting world, delivered by Cardiff-based difficult|stage theatre company, it’s a gaggle of hammy actors who occupy a studio to make an audio recording of Alice in Wonderland – before the whole thing degenerates into chaos and spins off in entirely unexpected directions. Pandolfo himself is wonderfully nervy and needy as the assistant director, attempting to Read more ...
aleks.sierz
If you like the feeling of leaving a show, surrounded by the gently glowing faces of happy fellow audience members, then this is one for you. It’s a musical evening full of joyful singing – mixing classics by Mendelssohn and Bartok with a best-of chunk of the back catalogue from the Electric Light Orchestra’s Jeff Lynne – that transports you to a different world. Adapted by Billy Elliot author Lee Hall from the 1998 novel Sopranos by Alan Warner, it delights with its onstage music and raucous lust for life, and offers an exceptionally exhilarating explosion of swaggering joy and rampaging Read more ...
Heather Neill
"In such a night as this..." begins Lorenzo's beautiful speech in Act V of The Merchant of Venice. Watching Shakespeare's play in the Campo del Ghetto Nuovo on a balmy evening under a darkening navy blue sky, with cicadas providing a busy background recitative, it might have been tempting to be lulled by the romance of the surroundings. Belmont itself could scarcely be more delightful than Venice on a moonlit summer night. But Lorenzo and his new bride Jessica talk not of their devotion to one another, but of unfaithful lovers and lack of trust. And the experience of watching this challenging Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Billie Piper vaults to the top rank of British theatre actresses with Yerma, Australian writer-director Simon Stone's rabidly free rewrite of Lorca's 1934 play that posits its young star as the sort of take-no-prisoners talent whose gifts come not from drama school but from something gloriously unfettered and astonishingly free.Billed as "after Lorca", Stone quickly leaves behind his Spanish source to construct a modern-day story about a psyche in freefall that takes a marriage with it, the occasional directorial modishness soon giving itself over to an unsparing portrait of individual Read more ...
Matt Wolf
"Yes, from life," Nikolai Ivanov (Geoffrey Streatfeild) says in passing of a painting midway through the early Chekhov play that bears his name. But the phrase could serve as the abiding achievement of the largely thrilling triptych of plays that has transferred from Chichester to the National under the banner title Young Chekhov.Here, as Ivanov's fleeting remark implies, is life in all its often despairing amplitude, and if the net result of Chekhov's worldview across eight hours is paradoxically exhilarating, that's because few writers see life so completely in the round. You emerge from Read more ...
John Martin
The raising of a temporary structure theatre in the middle of the “Jungle” refugee camp in Calais (pictured below) has brought the issue of arts in situations of crisis into sharp focus. This big brave act by two young Brits, opening a creative space to some of the most miserable and traumatised people in Europe, in some of the most squalid conditions and in sight of the English coast, has hit a nerve which we cannot ignore.People sat up, journalists sat up, activists sat up and realised that this is embarrassingly close to home but that, where governments, international bodies and Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
Think of Holly Golightly, and it’s more than likely that the face you’re picturing is Audrey Hepburn’s. And, while this adaptation by Richard Greenberg of Breakfast at Tiffany's is much closer to Truman Capote’s novella, it doesn’t have an ounce of the appeal of Blake Edwards’ famous film. Directed by antiseptic efficiency in a Leicester Curve production by Nikolai Foster, it’s numbingly dull – a dreary, inert tale of brittle, dislikeable people, inhabiting a tastefully designed bubble that is rarely pricked by events from the outside world.The war gets an occasional mention, but no one Read more ...
aleks.sierz
How many genders are there? The simplistic answer is two, but if you really think that then it’s time to go to the back of the class. In recent years, the rapid growth in perception of the fluidity of gender identity has meant that although there has been an increase in transgender stories in the news, culture has lagged a bit behind. Now every art form wants its own Danish Girl. Playwright Jon Brittain was inspired to write the hugely enjoyable Rotterdam after a couple of his friends transitioned in the late 2000s. Aware of the comparative scarcity of transgender stories in the wider culture Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Anniversaries are lotteries. Sometimes they allow us to see the past with fresh eyes; at other times, they simply accentuate the growing distance between then and now. Because this year marks the centenary of the Easter Rising of 1916, the National has decided to revive Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars, whose last two acts are set during the ill-fated uprising against British colonial rule. Of course, since this decision was made, the UK has voted for Brexit, which once again raises the question of a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and the whole Read more ...
bella.todd
Watching Cameron Mackintosh’s joyful revision of this Sixties musical, it’s possible to believe for a moment that all the world needs now is love sweet love and a shit-ton of banjos. With a new book by Downton Abbey behemoth Julian Fellowes, new numbers by the pair behind hit musical Mary Poppins, and design that delights at every turn of the multi-revolve, Half A Sixpence seems destined to follow a flush of previous Chichester Festival musicals into the West End. It also puts vintage stars around the previously unknown name of Charlie Stemp.Charlie Stemp. Isn’t that just the best name? It’s Read more ...