Theatre
aleks.sierz
As the only inhabitant of Planet Earth who wasn’t knocked completely senseless by La La Land, it does occur to me that I might not be the most sympathetic reviewer of a rom-com. Still, I’m willing to give it a try. So here goes: written and originally performed by Richard Marsh and Katie Bonna, Dirty Great Love Story is a 95-minute romp that tells a story about how boy-meets-girl, boy-shags-girl, girl-leaves-boy, boy-keeps-bumping-into-girl and – after two years – girl-realises-she-loves-boy. It sounds charmless, but actually its chief virtue is its bright LOL and drink-fuelled charm.The Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Unimaginable tragedy is given poignant, piquant form in Us/Them. The hour-long performance piece from Belgian theatre company BRONKS has arrived at the National after a much-acclaimed Edinburgh Festival premiere last year. In its intricate weave of frontline semi-reportage and slyly subversive comedy, Dutch-born writer-director Carly Wijs allows a sense of play to inform at every turn this highly physical account of the Beslan school siege in September, 2004. The terrorist act propelled a little-known town in the Russian Caucasus into grievous front-page news. The conceit here is that Read more ...
Marianka Swain
“I’m Death.” “And you’re on holiday?” Well, there’s really no way to disguise the preposterousness of this musical’s premise, nor to reconcile its winking humour and self-serious grand romance. Thus, Thom Southerland’s London premiere wisely diverts attention to its seductive qualities as a stylish period piece – come for the flappers, champers, saucy maids and misty Italian arches.Alberto Casella’s 1924 play, adapted into a 2011 chamber musical by Maury Yeston, Thomas Meehan and Peter Stone, is perhaps best known in another incarnation: the interminable 1998 Brad Pitt/Anthony Read more ...
Matt Wolf
There's an irony to be found in the fact that America's 45th president is already abolishing any and all things to do with the arts even as his ascendancy looks set to provide catnip to artists to a degree not seen since the heyday of Margaret Thatcher. By way of proof, consider the smart, savvy theatrical pop-up that is Top Trumps, in which a dozen playwrights provide a kaleidoscopic range of responses to recent events that offers empathy and reason for alarm in equal measure.Battersea's 63-seat Theatre 503 is to be commended on a four-performance-only venture that surely deserves a broader Read more ...
aleks.sierz
A day or so after Theresa May’s keynote speech about Brexit the words Europe and European carry an electric charge. For Leavers, they represent the evil empire; for Remainers, a world we have lost. In this context, seeing a play by Germany’s most performed playwright feels more than usually significant. Although Roland Schimmelpfennig has dozens of plays to his name, only a handful have been staged in this country so this is a good chance to catch up with his work. The fact that Winter Solstice is billed as a razor-sharp comedy whose subject is Nazism only adds to the interest that radiates Read more ...
David Kettle
We probably think we know the story. From Peter Weir’s cult 1975 film, or even from the original 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay. An excitable gaggle of Australian schoolgirls from an uptight, English-run boarding school take a trip to sinister volcanic Hanging Rock, where four vanish – three students, one teacher – leaving no clues as to what’s become of them.Although it’s entirely fictional, it feels like a tale that’s existed forever, one that needs to be told and retold. And it’s Picnic at Hanging Rock’s mythic status that sits at the core of this superbly fierce, austere staging by Melbourne’ Read more ...
aleks.sierz
You could call it the Corbynisation of new writing. In the past couple of years, a series of plays have plumbed the lower depths, looking at the subject of good people trapped in zero-hour contracts and terrible working conditions. Like Ken Loach’s dreary film, I, Daniel Blake, these plays have integrity, but very little dramatic content. Market leaders of this new fashion are two plays devised under the direction of Alexander Zeldin, Beyond Caring and Love. And the latest addition to this catalogue is Katherine Soper’s Wish List, winner of the 2015 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, co- Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Khaled Hosseini's 2003 bestseller ticks all the boxes as an A-level text. A personal story with epic sweep, it interweaves the bloody recent history of Afghanistan with a gripping family saga. Its treatment of racism and radicalism is timely. Other themes too might have been hand-picked for classroom discussion: bullying, betrayal, bad parenting, family secrets. Its first-person narrative makes it feel real.The trouble with this stage adaptation newly arrived in the West End is that only a small portion of the audience is using it for exam revision. Those merely hoping for a theatre Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It was a good night for British thespians at the 2016 Golden Globes. The stars of The Night Manager – Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie and Olivia Colman – all visited the podium to collect awards. But of the most deserving winner of all was Claire Foy, whose performance in The Crown on Netflix continues a tradition started by Helen Mirren on film and onstage: portrayals of Queen Elizabeth II bring home the statuary. As she collected her Golden Globe, Foy thanked Her Majesty and suggested that the world could do with a few more women in charge.When I first interviewed the rising actress four years Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
When a leading fringe theatre starts the year with a production whose gender ratio is 8:1 in favour of men, it had better have a good reason. When seven of those eight are wearing prosthetic penises, it had better have a very good reason. And a plan in place for a glut of women on its stage next season.Yet the sheer enjoyment to be had from Tony Harrison’s muscular rhyming verse is almost reason enough to revive The Trackers of Oxyrynchus after nearly 30 years. There’s also rarity value in its subject matter: the satyr play. Where a good handful of the many thousand tragedies that once played Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Life threw numerous, possibly irrevocable curveballs at us all during 2016, which in turn made one even more aware of how lucky we were to find ourselves in the midst of so much sustenance by way of art. Time and again throughout the year, one applauded an unexpected casting choice that resulted in triumph (Lucian Msamati's Salieri in Amadeus, to name but one) or a return to the fold (Glenda Jackson's Lear) that made one wish that performer had never gone away. As ever, the willingness of major names to commit to the stage – Mark Rylance and Ralph Fiennes come to mind – kept star wattage Read more ...
David Nice
Tinseltown's relationship to its more sophisticated, older New York brother is analogous to Ethan Mordden's engagement by Oxford University Press. The presentation is a sober, if slim, academic tome with an austere assemblage of black-and-white photos in the middle; what we get in the text is undoubtedly erudite but also racy, gossipy, anecdotal, list-inclined, sometimes camp and a tad hit and miss.The proviso that this is an ideal seasonal read comes with the knowledge that you can have fun searching YouTube for some of the more arcane musicals in question and find out exactly what Mordden Read more ...