Theatre
Caroline Crampton
Usually, to describe a play as "of its time" is a criticism. It is suggestive of drama that hasn't aged well, that doesn't work quite as well for today's audience as it did for the original crowd. First performed in 1847, Dion Boucicault's The School for Scheming seems at first glance to fall into this category, with its mannered language, twisting plot and moral overtones.But, as this revival demonstrates, pre-emptive assumptions of staleness can be confounded by a production that is all witty observations, sly mimicry and sarcastic asides. As the title would suggest, the action Read more ...
Matt Wolf
What is it with the London theatre and this particular Arthur Miller play? In 1987, Michael Gambon reached a career-best peak playing the Italian-American longshoreman, Eddie Carbone, in a defining National Theatre revival of A View From the Bridge directed by Alan Ayckbourn, and Ken Stott was arguably even more scorching in the same role on the West End five years ago. Now along comes the Flemish director Ivo van Hove to rattle the cages of received theatrical practice with a stripped-back approach to Miller's high-octane text that places the focus directly on leading man Mark Strong and an Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Plotted on the Nunn Curve of Fatal Attraction to Flare Path, Sir Trevor’s latest West End outing – Noël Coward’s post-war comedy Relative Values – lands solidly in the upper-middle reaches. Why not the unqualified upper? The stock answer here would be that Coward’s play is fatally flawed, blighting even a director at his best. Any alternative risks straying into the stickiest of ideological mires, braving the final social and theatrical taboo: class.“Comedies of manners swiftly become obsolete when there are no longer any manners,” proclaims Wodehouse-esque butler Crestwell in Act II. Coward Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Dmitry Krymov (b 1954) is one of Russia’s most groundbreaking and celebrated contemporary theatre directors and set designers. Performances by his “Theatre Laboratory” are renowned for combining multimedia with art installation techniques to surprise and thrill audiences across Europe and as far afield as New York.The son of writer Natalia Krymova and theatre director Anatoly Efros, Krymov worked in set design during the Eighties but turned to art the following decade, forging a successful career as a painter and exhibiting all over the world. He returned to theatre in 2002 and two Read more ...
Naima Khan
Written and directed by the ever-varied Amir Nizar Zuabi, Oh My Sweet Land tells the story of a German-Syrian woman living in Paris and struggling with her connection to the raging civil war abroad. Zuabi, the Palestinian theatre-maker who gave us 2012's divisive treatment of the story of Abraham in The Beloved and the RSC's Middle East-inspired take on The Comedy of Errors, now looks at similar themes of love, loss and reunion, albeit with a very different tone. Performed by Corinne Jaber who, like her character, is German-Syrian but based in France, Oh My Sweet Land couples Read more ...
Anya Reiss
About a week after my modern adaptation of The Seagull closed in 2012 at Southwark Playhouse the director Russell Bolam texted me, "Same again?" So it’s now in 2014 that at (the new) Southwark Playhouse we’ve got our modern take on Chekhov’s Three Sisters, which has just opened.I made it modern because I can’t see any other reason for me to do it. There are loads of eloquent, clever versions of the original knocking around and I don’t feel any need to throw another one in unless I’m doing something different. The reason to make it modern though is more than that, and I have more than a Read more ...
Jeremy Eccles
"Everyone is beautiful when they dance,” oozes the ballroom MC in the midst of a competition that reveals just how un-beautiful terpsichorean people can be when seriously challenged by other dancers, or by anyone radical enough to try to dance to a different tune. Yes, Strictly Ballroom the 1992 film has become Strictly Ballroom the Musical – premiered in Sydney last weekend with Kylie Minogue in attendance – as it was always destined to be.It is less well known that the work actually began as a 20-minute student exercise at Australian's National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) way back Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Gavin Creel licked his trophy in delight, Zrinka Cvitešić spoke of making Croatian history, and Sharon D Clarke let out an exultant "wow" from the podium that was surely heard well beyond the walls of the Royal Opera House. And so it was Sunday night at the 38th annual Laurence Olivier Awards, which coupled the occasional surprise (the win for Once leading lady Cvitešić very much among them) with the unusually meritocratic sense that for once - and not before time - the right people were receiving the right awards.That was nowhere more true than of the actress prize for Lesley Manville, one Read more ...
Elin Williams
Cardiff Bay’s Bute Street is home to many imposing buildings, a large number of which are derelict. They have the potential to become something more than they currently are. They can be revived, and that’s what Louise Osborn has done by mounting her site-specific production to one of them. Roar Ensemble and Sherman Cymru have brought Maudie’s Rooms back to an old customs and immigration house in Cardiff after sell-out performances last year.An intimate audience of just 20 is summoned to a bus stop opposite the house, where it is met by Professor Arlo Butterworth, who appears to be lost and Read more ...
Jenny Sealey
As an 11-year-old, I used to love writing my address as My Bedroom, 50 Ridsdale Rd, Sherwood Rise, Nottingham, England, Great Britain, The World, The Universe. We belong to ourselves, but our sense of belonging is also about people and places and our sense of who we are in the world. It became our starting point for the collaboration with Circo Crescer e Viver. Graeae's Reasons to be Cheerful was part of Unlimited Festival in Rio and I was also there to share the experience of co-directing the London 2012 Paralympic Games Opening Ceremony. I had the opportunity to meet Junior Perim and Read more ...
Katie Colombus
If you are seeking to keep small children entertained this Easter, there's no need to sit around gorging on chocolate with so many egg-citing cultural experiences on offer throughout the UK. This week's edition of Listed suggests a range of choices, some in London, some touring, in theatres and beyond. Choose from sing-a-long characters and historical adventures, kooky eco-warriors and Shakespearean puppetry shows.The Unicorn TheatreThe primary London venue for children's theatre is home to two shows this Easter. At the End of Everything Else combines music, puppetry and animation in the Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
The Royal Family: politically irrelevant anachronism? Fodder for tourism? Or enduring symbol of what it means to be British? Mike Bartlett’s shrewd new drama, in a taut, economical and strongly acted production by Rupert Goold, tussles with issues of the limits and shifting values of monarchical power, and with questions of national identity. It has a playfulness that occasionally borders on the glib – yet it also has teeth. It’s unquestionably clever, but it sometimes feels like a game of chess in which Goold and Bartlett move the pieces around the board with such skilful deliberation that a Read more ...