Theatre
Matt Wolf
If it's possible to have somewhat too much of a good thing, that would seem to be the case with the British premiere at the Menier Chocolate Factory of Spamilton. The latest in the indefatigable catalogue of New York songwriter-satirist Gerard Alessandrini's skewering of the Broadway scene, Spamilton is unusual in focusing its title on a single entry, Hamilton, in all its manifestations, here including Tony-winner Daveed Diggs's hair. Oh, and his racial-ethnic background. Whether that degree of detail will mean much to a local audience, however Hamilton-savvy, makes one wonder Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Brian Friel, who died in 2015 at the age of 86, was a shy man who shunned interviews, keeping his powder dry for the work and shrouding his personal life in mystique. Not that he never opened his mouth at all. When Dancing at Lughnasa (1990) was winning Tony Awards in New York, he got into trouble for saying that a good stage manager is preferable to a director who disobeys the script. One or two American directors may have smirked when in 1993 Wonderful Tennessee closed on Broadway after nine performances. A year later Molly Sweeney won more awards in New York - a pleasing affirmation for Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The apocalypse arrives as a series of collegiate sketches in the aptly-named Pity, the Rory Mullarkey play that may well prompt sympathy for audiences who unwittingly find themselves in attendance. Less provocative by far than this same writer's comparably-themed 2014 Royal Court debut, Wolf from the Door, this latest play hits some kind of stride in its final stretch. But the "anything goes" scattershot approach on view proves less illuminating than wearing, and much of what's on view plays like the sort of thing you'd concoct over one late-night drink too many only to reconsider your Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The NHS is us. For decades our national identity has been bandaged together with the idea, and reality, of a health service that is free at the point of delivery. Such an object of myth and pride cries out for comic treatment, and now the spritely octogenarian Alan Bennett – a self-confessed "thwarted preacher" and master of elegiac English humour – has produced a comedy set in a geriatric ward of an NHS hospital, and auspiciously it is directed by Nicholas Hytner, artistic director of the Bridge, who in his previous role as supremo of the National Theatre directed some of the Yorkshire Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
A raw pagan vitality animates this extraordinary story about a teenage boy wrestling with tumultuous emotions in the face of his mother’s terminal illness. Director Sally Cookson has taken the potent blend of myth and realism in Patrick Ness’s book and transformed it into a wild, beautiful piece of theatre that visually beguiles at the same time as it bruises the heart.Grief – even when suppressed – is an isolating phenomenon, and the production emphasises this from the start by stranding the boy, Conor (Matthew Tennyson, pictured above right), at the centre of a stark, clinical white stage. Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Les Dennis was once a marquee name on Saturday night television as host of Family Fortunes, but since giving up the light entertainment lark he now plies his trade as an actor, and a very good one at that. If you've not seen it, give yourself a treat and watch his bang-on-the-nose performance as “Les Dennis”, a delusional, whinging has-been, in Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's Extras.Only slightly less meta is his role in Danny Robins' dark comedy, in which Dennis plays Bobby Chalk who was once, with his comedy partner Eddie Cheese, a household name with 20 million viewers. But now the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
There's surprising and then there's The Lehman Trilogy, the National Theatre premiere in which a long-established director surprises his audience and, in the process, surpasses himself. The talent in question is Sam Mendes, who a quarter-century or more into his career has never delivered up the kind of sustained, smart, ceaselessly inventive minimalism on view here. Add to that a powerhouse cast who demonstrate their own shape-shifting finesse across 3-1/2 giddy and sometimes very moving hours and you have an adrenaline rush of a production that looks unlikely to be limited to the Lyttelton Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Britain is rightly proud of its record on multiculturalism, but whenever cross-cultural couples are shown on film, television or the stage they are always represented as a problem. Not just as a normal way of life, but as something that is going wrong. I suppose that this is a valuable corrective to patting ourselves on the back about how tolerant a society we are, but do such correctives make a good play? The latest exploration of this cross-cultural theme is Stephanie Martin’s new play, which is half comedy and half drama about Islam, and which opened tonight at the ever-enterprising Park Read more ...
Heather Neill
It's been raining in Regent's Park. On a balmy summer evening during a prolonged dry spell – perfect for outdoor theatrics – it seems ironic to tempt fate by creating artificial downpours and thunderstorms. But this music-filled, modern-dress production of Shakespeare's 1599 gender-bending comedy opens with a version of the usurping Duke Frederick's court which is not only brutal but also careless about the environment. Even Rosalind and Celia casually toss bits of rubbish into the lake (already bobbing with plastic bottles) that fronts the bleak metal-framed stage. The miserable weather Read more ...
theartsdesk
Let's be honest, this is the least interesting Proms season on paper for years, at least in terms of adventurous repertoire choices, following on the heels of the best in 2017. Yet in statistical terms it's more comprehensive and multi-media-friendly than ever, starting tonight with a free "Curtain Raiser" performance before the official First Night tomorrow - see David Kettle's choice below – and ending some 75 main Proms and 11 smaller-scale beauties later on 8 September. All are broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and many televised.The conscious spotlighting of women composers, who have in fact Read more ...
Charlotte Jones
I think it’s always a dangerous sport to try and consciously unravel where your ideas come from. Lest you break the spell and inadvertently silence yourself…There’s always the superficial reasons, of course: the geography and the history of a play. My new play The Meeting, which opens at the Minerva Theatre in Chichester this month, came from my experience of attending a Friends’ Meeting House in Lewes. I didn’t go to a Quaker Meeting in order to research and write a play. I went because I was seeking something for myself, for my life. Silence, possibly. Meaning, certainly. My children were Read more ...
Katherine Waters
"I am dead," declares Okot before recounting the horrors he survived to reach Calais. Each time, he says, "I died." How many times can you die before you are truly dead? What is it that finally kills you? These are the questions at the heart of Good Chance’s dramatisation of the lives of the inhabitants of Calais’s Jungle which has transferred to the Playhouse Theatre following its critically acclaimed sell-out run at the Young Vic over the winter.It’s a feat of a transfer which has transformed West End plush and gilt into chipboard and oilcloth. Proscenium and stage have been swallowed Read more ...