Theatre
Tom Birchenough
Is there a key to “infinite variety”? The challenge of Cleopatra is to convey the sheer fullness of the role, the sense that it defines, and is defined by only itself: there’s no saying that the glorious tragedy of the closing plays itself out, of course, but its impact surely soars only when the ludic engagements of the first half have drawn us in equally. Monarchs, in the words of Shakespeare’s contemporary John Webster, may “brook no contradiction”, but this Egyptian Queen practically demands it – including self-contradiction, most of all. In Antony and Cleopatra we have a heroine who is Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The play that famously got away when one of its stars (quite literally) jumped ship is back. In 1995, Stephen Fry abandoned the West End premiere of Simon Gray's espionage drama Cell Mates, leaving co-star Rik Mayall in the lurch and prompting Gray to write a particularly dyspeptic account of the bizarre goings-on called Fat Chance. Resurfacing for a well-cast Hampstead Theatre revival neither of whose leading men look likely to bolt for the exit, Cell Mates can now be seen for the pecularity that it is: a decidedly English variant on The Odd Couple that seems, weirdly, to leave the actual Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Pantomime may be a very old art form, but the Lyric Hammersmith has been injecting some freshness into it each year since 2009, and this year's production, written by Joel Horwood and directed by Jude Christian and Sean Holmes, is no exception.Good panto writing should please all ages, and Jack and the Beanstalk certainly manages that. It's a stirringly upbeat show but one with a serious undertow about the importance of being kind and not greedy (Jack's climb up the beanstalk is not to find gold, but to prevent the villagers being made homeless), and there are subtle political nods to Brexit Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Theatreland is currently awash with pantomimes and rehashes of A Christmas Carol, so all credit to this ambitious new production, an adaptation of the 1935 children’s book, The Box of Delights. Long before Narnia, poet laureate John Masefield was concocting tales of children dispatched to mysterious country houses for safekeeping but encountering deep magic, time travelling and talking animals. Serialised by the BBC in the mid-1980s, this new stage version is the work of children’s writer Piers Torday and takes full advantage of the wonderfully ramshackle Victorian relic that is Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
La Soirée is on the up-and-up. Beginning life as an after-hours show at the fringes of the Fringe in 2004, it won an Olivier in 2015 and has landed its first West End residency, a two-month run at the Aldwych Theatre over Christmas. Its acts – comedians, dancers, acrobats and aerialists – have performed all over the world, but the show lives up to its name: an entertaining evening, with nothing to really dazzle.Kudos to the producers for having the audacity to look at a 100-year-old theatre and think, "Let’s get a woman attached to that ceiling by her bun." The feat of engineering Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Israel Zangwill’s 1908 play The Melting Pot characterises Europe as an old and worn-out continent racked by violence and injustice and in thrall to its own bloody past. America, on the other hand, represents a visionary project that will “melt up all race-difference and vendettas” to “purge and recreate” a new world. This timely revival of Zangwill's committed writing doesn’t merely prompt us to ask whether the quintessential American dream has permanently curdled – it’s also a great play, wonderfully produced.Mendel Quixano, played by Peter Marinker, is a Jewish musician and New Read more ...
Veronica Lee
You have to hand it to Menier Chocolate Factory, a venue that doesn't let size matter as it stages an all-singing, all-dancing new production of Barnum, a musical about Phineas Taylor (PT) Barnum – the 19th-century showman famed for staging “The Greatest Show on Earth”. Director Gordon Greenberg stages a big, blowsy spectacle in this small theatre, in the round, and its cast of 18 pack a real punch.Barnum (music by Cy Coleman, book by Mark Bramble, lyrics by Michael Stewart), was a hit on Broadway in 1980 and ran for more than 850 performances, before coming to the London Palladium in 1981, Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The political story of our time is the upsurge in support for Jeremy Corbyn, leftwing leader of the Labour Party, mainly by young activists who are both idealistic and energetic. But what would happen if one of them decided to go freelance, and pushed their protest beyond the bounds of reason? James Fritz’s resonant and beautifully structured play explores this kind of question. It won the Judges Award of the 2015 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, run by the Royal Exchange Theatre, and now arrives at the Bush Theatre in West London.Kat is a young wife and mother, and Fritz tells her story in Read more ...
Heather Neill
Confused people, some of whom may have made the wrong choices in life and love, find themselves in an enchanted wood at Midsummer. Dear Brutus has long been seen to echo Shakespeare’s comedy of metamorphosis, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A huge success in 1917, it is rarely performed now, and Barrie’s fantasy for grown-ups is probably more of a challenge to the modern director than its Elizabethan precursor. The language is frequently arch, there is a tendency to whimsy, and many of the characters are so spoilt and self-regarding that, on paper, it is difficult to care about their redemption or Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Even by the standards of theatrical archaeology that the Finborough has made its own, The Passing of the Third Floor Back is a curiosity. Jerome K Jerome’s 1908 play was a long-running hit in the West End – with Johnston Forbes-Robertson, one of the leading English classical actors of his day, in the lead – before transferring to Broadway for a year. The author termed it an “idle fancy”, though there’s nothing at all here of the indolent comedy of the work for which he remains far and away best know, Three Men in a Boat.Instead Jerome charts a determined course from comedy of a rather bitter Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The civil war in Syria spawns image after image of hell on earth. Staging the stories of that conflict presents a challenge to playwrights: how do you write about horror in a way that is both accurate and entertaining? Goats, by Syrian playwright and documentary film-maker Liwaa Yazji, translated by Katharine Halls, is part of the Royal Court’s international project with writers from Syria and Lebanon, and takes up this challenge. Her angle is to look at propaganda, and to show how truth is the first casualty of war. She also examines what happens when propaganda is questioned.Set in a Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Fresh from the success of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Jack Thorne now gives us his exuberant adaptation of another much-loved text. Charles Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol is the well-worn morality fable seared into our collective memory by countless screen versions and stage musicals. Matthew Warchus' new production places much emphasis on Scrooge’s philosophy that the poor have brought their misfortune upon themselves – Victorian sanctimony chiming with 21st century austerity. It’s a dark message embedded in a Christmas treat.Chunks of Dickens’ text unspool on stage as the cast Read more ...