Theatre
Rachel Halliburton
Gender-bending, confused identities, and hedonistic anarchy go together as naturally in summer Shakespeare as strawberries and cucumbers in Pimms, and in Tatty Hennessy’s exuberant alfresco version of As You Like It, touring to squares across the capital, the mix proves an appropriately heady combination. It’s the Summer of Love in the Forest of Arden, and Joni Mitchell or Jimi Hendrix are as likely to appear as any of the traditional characters, so get your flares and your yellow-tinted sunnies on and prepare to party.The production opens with the entire cast delivering a rousing Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
“A sad tale’s best for winter,” Leontes’ young son Mamillius tells us. By that logic the current summer heatwave should be bringing us a Winter’s Tale overflowing with joy – the songs of Bohemia drowning out the shouted accusations and desperate howls of Sicilia. But that’s not what director Blanche McIntyre has in mind.From Will Keen’s Leontes, twitching and ticking with violence, to the bare stage and makeshift revels of Bohemia, this is a decidedly chilly take on Shakespeare’s mercurial late play. Even the bear is an austerity predator – nothing more than a painted banner, barely enough Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
The Faction’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a production in which women are more likely to kick ass than sleep with one – a muscular, mischievous take on the Bard’s most light-hearted play about forbidden love. As might be expected, this boldly dynamic theatre company takes all that is most sinister and subversive about the work, and spins a stereotype-smashing evening of pagan delights.Allusions to the moon weave themselves like a silver thread through A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s text, as both a harbinger of change and of the lunatic merriment that prevails. How apt, then, that Eleanor Field’ Read more ...
aleks.sierz
We are now pretty familiar with the idea that human reproduction (making babies) has been turned into big business, and there have already been several good recent plays about desperate couples and surrogacy – Vivienne Franzmann’s Bodies and Satinder Chohan’s Made in India – so is there any more to be said about giving nature a helping hand? This Hampstead Theatre certainly thinks so. In the 40th anniversary year since Louise Brown became the first test-tube baby it is marking the occasion by staging Jemma Kennedy’s large new comedy about giving biology a boost. And it gets its own Read more ...
Marianka Swain
It seems only too fitting that David Lan’s luminous reign at the Young Vic should draw to a close with this bold, creatively thrilling international import. Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s Tony-winning musical, which premiered Off-Broadway in 2013, is an exquisite adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s graphic-novel memoir – a heartfelt detective story that traipses through memory in order to decode our loved ones, and ourselves.We meet Alison at three different ages: as a child in small-town Pennsylvania, where her father runs the funeral – or “fun” – home; as a college student coming out as a Read more ...
aleks.sierz
It’s the stuff of nightmares. There’s a massive explosion, the sound of smashing glass, falling debris and police sirens. Gunshots. Panic in the streets. It could be the November 2015 Paris terror attacks, in which the Bataclan venue was the scene of a massacre, except this time it’s happening in London. Yes, the stuff of nightmares. And it is also the powerful start of Cordelia Lynn’s new play, One for Sorrow, which has just opened at the Royal Court's upstairs studio space. And it all begins in anxiety-rich pitch-black darkness.As the noise recedes, we become conscious of the thoughts of Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Iconoclasm, orgasms, and rampant rhetoric are all on irrepressible display in The Wooster Group’s recreation of the 1971 Manhattan debate that pitted Norman Mailer against some of the leading feminists of the day. The evening proved almost as notable for who didn’t attend (feminists Kate Millet and Gloria Steinem refused to debate him) as who did (Germaine Greer, Lesbian Nation author Jill Johnston), but its electric anarchy resonates powerfully in today’s confused world.The Wooster Group – under the simultaneously deadpan and excoriating eye of its director Elizabeth LeCompte – has been Read more ...
Katherine Waters
In the early 20th century, Soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov spliced together images of people looking at things with a bowl of soup, a woman on a divan and an open casket. Each object represented a different emotional state – hunger, desire and grief – but each subject “looking” at the object was the exact same image, repeated. The cast-down eyes implied to be considering nourishment were the exact same eyes that appeared to stare in utter loss at death. And thus the idea of the movie star: a figure onto whom all projections are equally valid.The opening scene of Arthur Miller’s last play, Read more ...
David Nice
First palpable hit of the evening: a full orchestra in the pit under hyper-alert Opera North stalwart James Holmes, saxophones deliciously rampant. Second hit: they've got the miking of the voices right (very rare in West End shows). Third: the first ensemble number, "Another opening, another show", sends spirits soaring. What follows is very good, sometimes excellent, occasionally fresh and startling.Any sense of slight anticlimax may well the fault of a musical which, while stocked higher with hit songs than most (Cole Porter at his wickedly rhyming, melodically snaking best), has always Read more ...
theartsdesk
Are you a young blogger, vlogger or writer in the field of the arts, books and culture? If so, we've a competition for you to enter.The Hospital Club’s annual h Club100 awards celebrate the most influential and innovative people working in the UK’s creative industries, with nominations from the worlds of film and fashion, art, advertising, theatre, music, television and more. For the second year running they are teaming up with theartsdesk – the home of online arts journalism in the UK – to launch a hunt for young talent.This year the Special Award is for theartsdesk / h Club Young Influencer Read more ...
David Nice
Who would have thought, when Phyllida Lloyd's Donmar Julius Caesar opened to justified fanfare, that two more Shakespeare masterpieces would be sustained no less powerfully within the women's-prison context over the following years? Faced with the "which of the three did you like best?" question – and I saw them all on a single day at the King's Cross makeshift theatre – the answer would have to be "each one at the time I saw it". So it's good to relive the first as screened on BBC Four – Henry IV and The Tempest are already available on the BBC iPlayer – which is as compelling, keenly paced Read more ...
Owen Richards
Despite the Welsh repute for singing, the Festival of Voice in Cardiff has always been more than just music. Indeed, on the Friday evening, Welsh/Cornish pop enigma Gwenno was appearing alongside the gloriously titled one woman show Lovecraft (Not the Sex Shop in Cardiff) and English, an interactive theatre experience on language in Britain.An apt subject for its audience, judging by the conversations flowing as we waited in the forgivable summer dusk. There’s a curiosity on the show’s content, with vague promises on building a contemporary Babel. English is a co-production between National Read more ...