Theatre
Matt Wolf
Where were the great new plays during 2022? That question underscored weeks of playgoing that turned into months, with very little new British writing announcing itself with real force.Three of the best are enumerated further down, but the disappointments were many: David Hare's talky Straight Line Crazy, a fascinating topic (the American urban planner Robert Moses) that existed primarily to showcase Ralph Fiennes in barnstorming form. Or Mike Bartlett's often-ludicrous The 47th, another play redeemed by a startling central performance – in this case, Bertie Carvel as, of all people, Donald Read more ...
Veronica Lee
What joy it is to have pantomime and Christmas shows back with full audiences up and down the country – everything from local shows to star-driven productions, many of them postponed from 2020 but with an awful lot happening in between to provide the topical references.Two star-driven shows lead the panto pack in London: it's great to see Ian McKellen back as the Dame in Mother Goose at the Duke of York's, while Julian Clary is The Spirit of the Beans in Jack and the Beanstalk (*****) at the London Palladium until 15 January.Clary, as you might expect, wrings every double entendre possible Read more ...
Veronica Lee
When Ian McKellen, one of our greatest Shakespearean actors, gave us his acclaimed Widow Twankey at the Old Vic in 2004, some wondered why he had waited till he was in his sixties to perform in a leading role in pantomime (second comic policeman at Ipswich in 1962 doesn't count). Well, he has made us wait again for his second tilt at a Dame, but it was worth it.He dons false bosoms and frocks as Mother Goose, opposite genial comic John Bishop, here playing the straight man as her husband, Vic. Mother Goose has opened her animal sanctuary in a closed-down Debenhams, and owes those evil energy Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
Do you remember how the 1001 Nights ends? You know how it starts: Scheherazade has been married to a king who kills his brides the day after he marries them. She tells him a story so good that he simply has to know what happens next, and she survives the next day. This goes on for 1001 nights, until… what?The inherently cyclical nature of the source material of the new play Hakawatis: Women of the Arabian Nights is a problem that writer Hannah Khalil never quite solves. But Pooja Ghai’s production at the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, a collaboration with theatre company Tamasha, is Read more ...
Heather Neill
The scene is set onstage in the first minutes. And it remains a stage throughout this harmonious production. The action takes place in a severe court and a more liberal forest, but really the setting is always a place of imagination, a theatre. Jaques' most anthologised speech, "All the world's a stage ... " is its keynote: all the actors are players, in both senses of the word.Before a line is spoken, pianist (and composer) Michael Bruce takes his place at a piano which becomes a grassy hillock on which actors jump or rest and a hiding place as well as a source of music to fit the mood of Read more ...
Gary Naylor
We’ve had 75 years to get used to Scrooge McDuck, so we can hardly complain if the Americans indulge in a little cultural appropriation and send Charles Dickens’ misanthrope to Depression-era Tennessee for another whirl on the catharsis-redemption ride. And, even if we Brits may feel a bit sniffy about Scrooge’s reinvention, he’s been kidnapped by Dolly Parton, the patron saint of country songs, for a holiday run on the South Bank - so listen y’all, there’ll be no rootin’ tootin’ about that round these parts.Expanded from a 40-minute "park presentation" at Dollywood into a full-fledged Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Pain is, at one and the same time, something to avoid, and also something you can use. Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese-American mystical author of the 1923 best-seller The Prophet, concludes that, despite suffering, “all is well”, but how true is that? In his award-winning play, which premiered in Boston in 2011, American playwright Stephen Karam examines the issues in a thoroughly original, brilliantly constructed and thematically compelling way.Now getting its belated European premiere at the Hampstead Theatre, Sons of the Prophet is an enthralling experience, both intellectually and Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Is British new writing in deep trouble? With the Arts Council defunding venues such as the Hampstead Theatre, the Donmar and the Gate, and past masters such as Terry Johnson underperforming, the signs are not good. But what about the National Theatre, the country’s flagship — can it step up to fill the gap? Well, judging by recent flops such as Moira Buffini’s Manor, I wouldn’t bank on it. The problem with this venue, and the Royal Court for that matter, is that they stage plays that are good ideas, but need much more work, more editing, more development. April De Angelis’s latest, despite a Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
What do you mean you haven’t heard of the newsboys’ strike of 1899? It’s a classic David and Goliath story: a group of New York kids selling newspapers for Joseph Pulitzer (him of the prize), who take a stand when their boss tries to charge them 20% extra to buy their “papes”.The 1992 Disney film, Newsies, became a cult classic, and was turned into a Tony-winning Broadway show in 2011 that ran over 1000 performances. The newsies have now burst onto the stage of the shiny Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre, backflipping, wise-cracking, and making the most of some mediocre songs.Director/ Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Clint Dyer is the first black director of Othello at the National Theatre, a venue that once staged the piece with its actor founder Laurence Olivier playing the lead role in blackface. We are reminded of this now-reviled practice before curtain up in a flickering montage of programme covers projected onto the set going back to 1634, and stopping at 2022. An actor arrives with a broom and cart to sweep the stage area clean. So are we going to be seeing a new take on the tragedy? Yes and no. This Is a laudably ambitious production, but one that has jettisoned some of the play's key Read more ...
Mert Dilek
As bio-musicals continue to have their heyday, it makes sense for the Young Vic to throw its hat in the ring and champion a work about the hugely influential Nelson Mandela. But this new musical about the South African anti-apartheid activist and statesman is such a baffling hodgepodge that it actually risks being a disservice to Mandela’s legacy.Mandela covers the period in the eponymous figure’s life from his militant activities and subsequent imprisonment in the early 1960s to his release from prison in 1990. Perhaps because the piece is chiefly focused on Mandela’s imprisonment on Robben Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The American author of The Sarah Book, on which the monologue Sarah is based, is called Scott McClanahan, as is his main character, so it’s no stretch to assume the novel is at least semi-autobiographical. And indeed Scott the author was married to a woman called Sarah, as is his fictional counterpart. He seemingly did not make her happy, though he seems to have loved her with an all-consuming passion.Out of this 2017 book, Oliver Reese of the Berliner Ensemble has created a bravura vehicle for the British actor Jonathan Slinger (pictured below right and main picture), an outstanding Richard Read more ...