Theatre
Owen Richards
What's worse than grieving? That all-consuming loss. For those that have experienced it, nothing really comes close. It starts to bug Thomas (Jordan Bernarde, main picture second right) during his visit to the Williams household. Recently bereaved himself, he senses the fragility in the air but no-one seems to give a straight answer. Everyone would rather focus on him, talking at speed but never really engaging beyond the surface. In Blue, at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff, this lack of communication is played for both big laughs and hard hits.Thomas has been brought to the house by Elin ( Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
It was back to the very beginning for this final instalment of “Pinter at the Pinter”, with its pairing of A Slight Ache and The Dumb Waiter. Both were written at the end of the 1950s, which explained a certain rock’n’roll vibe in the auditorium, but brought home how much Pinter’s work stretches beyond period, resounding with new intonations to match new times.This highly revealing commemorative season of the playwright’s one-act plays has shown what (relative) rediscoveries there are to be made. A Slight Ache, originally written in 1959 as a radio play, remains much less known than The Dumb Read more ...
Tim Cornwell
The Fifties? They were terrible: bone-cold houses where people huddled round the fireplace for heat, empty Sundays that lasted a month, drawn-out rationing, bread you could build houses with. It was all making do and mending and "grey meat, grey people, everything grey," or so declares Susan Brown's Sylvia in a mother's get-real rant in Home, I'm Darling, the Laura Wade play now on the West End after a sellout run at the National Theatre/Dorfman last year and Theatre Clwyd before that. Women were frightened of a new invention called yoghurt, not to mention of husbands, who had all the rights Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
There is no doubt that this Cherry Orchard, whirled into town by Roman Abramovich from Moscow, is going to be divisive. If you, like the two elegant old gentlemen sat next to me on press night, have come to see the Pushkin Drama Theatre’s production in order to steep yourself in Chekhov’s philosophical ambiguities and perhaps brush up on your Russian, you will be disappointed. If, on the other hand, you want to be blown away by a stunningly beautiful absurdist interpretation that captures, like no other Chekhov production you’ve seen, the way the world can teeter between exhausted Read more ...
Tim Cornwell
In the history of early photography in the Middle East, it was the Armenian Christian traders and their descendents who became the pioneers of the new technology. Their numbers include the Armenian-Turkish photojournalist Ara Güler, "the Eye of Istanbul" who died last year and was famous for his signature images of the city. Others found their way to Lebanon, with families fleeing persecution and mass killing amidst the death throes of the Ottoman Empire. Prominent Lebanese-Armenian photographers include Manoug Alemian, born in Hama, Syria, whose land and townscapes record a beautiful mid Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Titles matter: they send out messages. So, in the current #MeToo climate, isn't it a bit provocative that there's a rash of plays with titles which might be seen to offend: The Hoes, Superhoe and, coming soon, Inside Bitch? Not to mention the suggestive Hole. All strong titles, tough and spiky. But maybe not offensive at all. These plays are, after all, all written by women, and nowadays it's not what you say, but who says it that really matters. Anyway, the Royal Court's artistic director Vicky Featherstone has impeccable feminist credentials so this staging of Nicôle Lecky's one-woman debut Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The Off Broadway production of Cost of Living two years ago brought Martyna Majok the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the height of acclaim of which most new writers – Majok, with four plays behind her, has yet to turn 35 – can only dream. High expectations then for Edward Hall’s production, the work’s trans-Atlantic premiere, which demands, and deserves engagement in a variety of ways, some very good indeed.As the title suggests, it shines a light on sections of American society that are increasingly challenged by economic circumstances, here the post-industrial subsistence suburbs of New Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Is there a connection between revolution and theatre? The answer has to be yes – a visceral one. The supremacy of symbols, the collective strength of a crowd, a sense that some kind of pressure valve is being released to challenge the dominant social narrative. The Ancient Greeks understood this – it was from such impulses that theatre had its birth. So how does that work amid the populist turbulence of the twenty-first century?Counting Sheep explodes on London’s theatre fringe scene with rave reviews from Edinburgh about its recreation of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution. For a Brexit-broken Read more ...
graham.rickson
Robert Alan Evans’ adaptation of Kes is a dark, expressionist reworking of Barry Hines’ novella. It pays lip service to Ken Loach’s iconic film version, and most of the memorable bits are present and correct here: the wince-inducing rant from head teacher Mr Gryce is a highlight, as is the PE teacher’s sadistic insistence that poor Billy has to take a shower. Evans distils the book into just 70 minutes without diluting its anger, the original’s dense narrative reshaped into a series of tiny scenes. Hines’ Barnsley-set story focuses on 15-year-old Billy Caspar, a misfit destined to Read more ...
Veronica Lee
When it was announced that Cate Blanchett was making her National Theatre debut with Martin's Crimp's new play, When We have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, its website exploded with people wishing to buy tickets. To those many thousands disappointed, I say: “Well done, you!”The play's subtitle is “Twelve Variations on Samuel Richardson's Pamela”, so it certainly starts from an interesting place. The epistolary novel from 1740, subtitled “Or, Virtue Rewarded”, concerns a young maid, Pamela, whose master, Mr B, makes frequent and unwanted sexual advances to her. After many refusals, he Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Following Caroline, or Change and Fun Home, the UK is blessed with another work from American composer Jeanine Tesori; this is the British premiere of her 1997 musical Violet, which had a Sutton Foster-starring Broadway production in 2014. If not as refined as that exquisite duo, it’s still a compelling piece, thanks to a ravishing score and a dynamite central performance.It’s 1964, and Violet (Kaisa Hammarlund, pictured below right) is travelling on a Greyhound bus from her small town in North Carolina to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in hopes of having her facial scar – caused by a loose axe head – Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Nadia Fall is a good thing. Her appointment as the artistic director of this venue, with her first season having begun in September last year, has been widely seen as part of a new wave of cultural leaders who are expected to shake up the country's theatre. Already, her building has enjoyed a hipster-inspired cool facelift. And this visiting show, produced by Frantic Assembly and Theatre Royal Plymouth, takes up one of her favourite themes: youth. The play takes a broad view of war, men and home. But does it have anything new to say about the rather familiar theme of agonised masculinity?The Read more ...