Theatre
Matt Wolf
Phone rings, door chimes, in comes Company, this time sporting surround sound and high definition and at a cinema near you. Tonight marks a rare opportunity to see a New York gala - the sort of event that proliferates in Manhattan even as the actual volume of Broadway openings decreases - with an assemblage of names that you could never get to commit for an extended run. All that and Broadway diva Patti LuPone at her most pungently acerbic? Stephen Sondheim's 1970 musical has rarely looked or sounded so good as in this showing in UK cinemas of a banner musical theatre event from over the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Was it the players, or the play, that has made a phenomenon out of One Man, Two Guvnors, the prize-winning comedy now on its third London theatre and preparing to hop the pond to Broadway next month? Well, bacon and eggs(!), it turns out there’s life aplenty in Richard Bean’s Goldoni rewrite yet, even without the star wattage of James Corden and the insanely arched eyebrows of Oliver Chris.Recast (for the most part) in its move from the Adelphi to the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, a fresh company allows for a fresh perspective on Bean’s Brighton-set narrative, which displaces commedia dell’ arte Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Polymath Philip Ridley is British theatre’s prince of imaginative writing. At the moment, he’s clearly on a roll, and this year his diary has been filing up fast. First, there was a majestic revival of his 1991 debut, The Pitchfork Disney, with a cast led by Chris New and the Channel 4 Misfits star Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, then there’s an upcoming London fringe revival of his 2005 shock-fest Mercury Fur and a national tour of Tender Napalm, his 2011 Southwark Playhouse hit, in May and June. And, glory of glories, last night saw the opening of a brand new play, Shivered.The story is set in the Read more ...
judith.flanders
“Do you feel morally superior to the Taliban? Well, do you?” And we’re off, with another of director/choreographer Lloyd Newson’s interrogations of a taboo subject. DV8 Physical Theatre is 25 years old this season, yet if anything, it, and Newson, have become more challenging, not less as the years go by. Gone are the lyrically silent pieces of the 1980s, and instead movement is almost always now allied with talking; indeed, talking has become Newson’s main mode of communication, as his urgent need to vanquish our beliefs and replace them with his becomes ever stronger.This is not to say I Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Playwright Martin Crimp is one of British theatre’s best-kept secrets. Although his neon-lit name appears in the theatre capitals of Europe, with his work a big hit at festivals all over the continent, here he is better known to students - who love his 1997 masterpiece Attempts on Her Life - than to ordinary theatregoers. The crowds that saw the 2009 West End revival of his present-day version of Molière’s The Misanthrope will remember how Keira Knightley and Damian Lewis spoke the witty text, but would they now recall who wrote it? Likewise, I wouldn’t mind betting that few of those buying Read more ...
David Benedict
Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party: comedy classic or Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with added sneering? Ever since its first appearance on stage in 1977 and its subsequent record-breaking broadcast as a BBC Play for Today with an eye-widening 16 million viewers (not to mention those watching the subsequent DVD), there has been disagreement. Depending on your viewpoint, Lindsay Posner’s competent new production lives either up or down to your expectations. What it won’t do is make converts in either direction.This ferocious comedy which made Mike Leigh’s name is short on plot but big on situation Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Harley Granville Barker is hardly a household name, but he was a huge influence on British theatre today. During the Edwardian era, he promoted new writing at the Royal Court; he wrote plays such as The Voysey Inheritance, Waste and The Madras House, which have been successfully revived; he invented the modern idea of the director; he advocated permanent companies of actors; and he campaigned for a national theatre. Not a bad legacy. Now he is the subject of a new play, which opened last night, by American penman Richard Nelson.Born in 1877, Granville Barker enjoyed great success as a Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Since their launch just two years ago, National Theatre Wales has staged plays on a firing range, in a miner’s institute, and – most memorably – claimed the whole town of Port Talbot as their stage for Owen Sheer’s The Passion last Easter. Setting themselves the challenge of producing 12 productions in their first 12 months, this building-less company have somehow turned a modest (not to say meagre) £1 million a year subsidy into a living, risk-taking tradition of national theatre. Their latest play, Peter Gill’s Chekhov adaptation A Provincial Life, not only marks a rare visit for the Read more ...