Theatre
aleks.sierz
Fifty years ago this month, playwright Joe Orton was murdered by his lover Kenneth Halliwell. His debut play, Entertaining Mr Sloane, had both outraged and delighted West End audiences in 1964, and his follow-up a year later was Loot, which was a flop at first and then a hit when restaged in 1966. This is the show currently being revived at the Park Theatre in a production which restores some of the lines cut by the Lord Chamberlain.Only a handful of lines, mainly about a brothel, are involved, but it’s nice to think that director Michael Fentiman discovered the original script in Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Hark, is that the call of the earth I hear? In a frenetic urban world, the myth of rural simplicity exerts a strong pull. Surely a simpler life is possible; a more natural rhythm and a slower pace? Oh yes, I can smell burnt peat, and almost scent the deep ploughed soil and farmyard animals, as I walk into the Donmar Warehouse for this dark revival of David Harrower’s 1995 masterpiece, Knives in Hens, directed this time by Yaël Farber. But this story from a mythical old agrarian world is not a nostalgic evocation of the past. It is much more gnarled than that.Set in a stretch of unspecified Read more ...
theartsdesk
Wondering what on earth to choose between as you tramp the streets of the festival? These are our highlights so far.STANDUPAthenu Kugblenu, Underbelly Med Quad ★★★ Strong debut hour of political and identity comedyCally Beaton, The Caves ★★★★ Single motherhood, autism, sex with women, the corporate world: original and cleverDad’s Army Radio Hour, Pleasance Dome ★★★ Scripts of born-again sitcom classic delivered with real light and shadeDarren Harriott, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★ Extrovert with strong material on politics and personal historyElliot Steel, Gilded Ballroom ★★ Slacker lad's tales Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Luke is a Silicon Valley billionaire, a high-tech wizard. And he’s just had a message from God. And what does God say? Well, He says, “Go where there’s violence.” So what does Luke do? He does what he’s been told, and devotes his considerable intellect and his even more considerable resources to solving the problem of violence in our society. Okay, it sounds wildly implausible, and if Luke wasn’t being played by Ben Whishaw in this new play by the ace American penman Christopher Shinn, at the Almeida Theatre, I might not have believed it either. But he is, and so I do.Against takes this Read more ...
David Kettle
Meet Me at Dawn ★★★★★ Edinburgh-based playwright Zinnie Harris is the subject of a particular focus at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival, with three productions in collaborations with leading Scottish theatre companies. Her blazing adaptation of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros has been pulling crowds at the Lyceum Theatre, and her searing Aeschylus reboot This Restless House, created with Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre and the National Theatre of Scotland, opens next week.It’s another Greek myth – that of Orpheus and Eurydice – that simmers in the background of Meet Me at Dawn at the Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Every play is a Brexit play. This much we have learnt in the year since the referendum. But in Nancy Meckler’s hands the Globe’s new King Lear becomes the Brexit play – an unpicking of intergenerational responsibility and difference, of philosophies of power and governance, tackling above all that sticky question of what the old really owe the young.But the dramatic dice are loaded. The audience enters to a Globe covered in tarpaulins and chipboard, “KEEP OUT” scrawled across the boarded-up gallery. A cast of squatters surges onto the stage, all anoraks, unwashed hair and beanies, tearing Read more ...
aleks.sierz
A new plague is sweeping British theatre: audience participation. Instead of just sitting back and enjoying the show, your visit to a venue is now likely to involve voting on the guilt or innocence of terror suspects (as in Terror or Blurred Justice) or, in Rob Drummond’s new solo show for the National Theatre, voting on a whole range of issues as this Scottish playwright and performer teases out a handful of ideas about democracy. The first step is technological: as we take our seats, we are issued with a small voting machine (you press one for yes and two for no) and given our instructions. Read more ...
David Kettle
Pike St ★★★★ London-based theatre company Paines Plough’s pop-up touring venue Roundabout has been a regular Edinburgh Fringe fixture for the past four years, nestled in nicely among the redeveloped veterinary buildings of Summerhall. And it’s been home to some of the Fringe’s most exciting new writing, too, both from Paines Plough itself and visiting companies. Pike St is a near-miraculous solo show featuring a tour-de-force performance by New Yorker Nilaja Sun, who also wrote its very funny and very moving text. Miraculous (or near miraculous at least) not only because of Sun’s uncanny, Read more ...
Christopher Shinn
Plays do not usually come into being in isolation. When I search my gmail archive I see that my first communication with Robert Icke about a commission came in April 2012. Rupert Goold and Rob were still at Headlong then. I was busy so asked that we keep the conversation going but not commit to anything.In October 2013 Rob wrote that he and Rupert were now at the Almeida and would still love for me to write something, he was coming to New York and could we meet up to discuss. What Rob didn’t know then was that 11 months before, in November, I had been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive Read more ...
David Kettle
A society that segregates men and women, prescribes what women can learn, read, wear, even which words they can say. A society willing to sacrifice its own people to maintain its repressive theocratic orthodoxy. Sound familiar?There are plenty of contemporary resonances in The Divide, the mysterious new Alan Ayckbourn creation unveiled to the world at the Edinburgh International Festival, a co-production with London’s Old Vic and travelling to the capital at the start of 2018. And as they say, it’s Ayckbourn, but not as we know him. This is a massive, six-hour, two-play event that plays out Read more ...
David Nice
Only one thing could equal the "wow!" factor of seeing and hearing a youngish Hugh Jackman launch into “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’“ at the start of the National Theatre’s 1998 staging of Oklahoma!: John Wilson and his orchestra trilling and swooning their perfectly-balanced way through the Overture at the Proms. Three and a quarter hours later, you might have felt you'd heard some of those tunes at least twice too often, and you might also have questioned, despite excellent work from nearly all concerned, whether it was such a beautiful mornin’ after all. When you get all the original Read more ...
David Kettle
Eve ★★★★Transgender issues are high on the agenda at this year’s Fringe, with the energetic Testosterone at the Pleasance and the breezy You’ve Changed from Northern Stage at Summerhall among the stand-outs. In addition, the National Theatre of Scotland brings two trans-themed shows to the Traverse Theatre. Eve is a deeply personal, autobiographical work from playwright Jo (formerly John) Clifford, co-written with Fringe regular Chris Goode, that reflects on the challenges and joys of her life from a fearful young boy – before being transgender was even considered as a concept – to the Read more ...