Theatre
Ismene Brown
What would a Trump follower make of a successful businessman who grew his company on the proceeds of a negligent decision, and then topped himself because of a belated sense of responsibility? What a dumbass! He wouldn’t be about to become President of the United States, for sure. He’ll be paying his taxes next!Such changes in public morality are the reason why “classic” plays need reviving from time to time. Arthur Miller’s All My Sons – his first success, toiled at throughout World War Two – is a scrupulously hardworking American family drama about two men in partnership in a small aircraft Read more ...
Heather Neill
The signs were there early in Glenda Jackson's career that she would one day have what it takes to "ascend the Everest" (as the cliché has it) of Lear. So powerful was her performance as Ophelia in Peter Hall's production of Hamlet in 1965 that there was talk afterwards of her being cast as the prince himself. Two years later she was another disturbed woman playing Charlotte Corday unforgettably whipping Marat with her hair in The Marat/Sade. Uncompromising directness, a febrile, earthy authority and a strong, resonant, slightly nasal voice characterised these performances.She went on to Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Following no less than three smash-hit, sell-out runs in London and at the Edinburgh Fringe, the King’s Head Theatre production of Joe DiPietro’s Fucking Men, or F*cking Men (as the publicity calls it), now transfers to The Vaults Theatre in Waterloo for a five-week run. It’s clearly been around long enough to attract attention. But, apart from the shocking name, what’s it all about? Well, the title speaks volumes actually, because the play is based on the daisy-chain sexual encounters of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1900 classic, La Ronde, except that here the action is transposed onto the gay Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Terry Johnson's Dead Funny debuted at the same theatre in the West End in 1994 (after opening at Hampstead), and its starting point is the real events of April 1992 when two funnymen, Frankie Howerd and Benny Hill, died in the same week. It was a bizarre coincidence from which he fashioned a very funny play – which he now expertly directs in this welcome revival – about the Dead Funny Society, a collection of suburban oddballs who meet to celebrate their comedy heroes.But underneath the laughter there is pain. Eleanor (Katherine Parkinson) yearns to be a mother, but husband Richard (Rufus Read more ...
edward.seckerson
From Monteverdi to Schubert to Bernstein and Lloyd Webber the dramatic song cycle has travelled far and wide over the centuries, though not until Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years in opposite directions. His two-handed tour-de-force – first seen Off Broadway in 2002 – shadows Cathy (Samantha Barks, who was Eponine in the film of Les Mis) and Jamie (Jonathan Bailey) as they find and lose each other at a time when both are seeking recognition in their creative lives.He is a writer, she an actress; his timeline moves forwards, hers backwards. They meet only once. But as one moves Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Who is the fool in Sam Shepard’s 1983 chamber play Fool for Love? Is it Eddie, the rodeo stuntman who repeatedly cheats on his girl? Is it May, the girl who keeps taking him back? Or is it the Old Man, whose philosophy of rolling-stone fatherhood fails to take account of the damaged lives?You emerge from Simon Evans’ production, his third and last at the atmospheric West End pop-up Found111, wondering whether Shepard might not be taking the audience for fools too. So you thought love was simple, he mocks. You thought love was a wholesome thing that sets people straight. Well, get this.The Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Composer Henry Krieger’s highly anticipated Dreamgirls arrives later this month, but first up is the UK premiere of his less well-known but thoroughly likeable Side Show, based on the real story of a pair of conjoined twins who became 1930s American vaudeville stars.Daisy and Violet Hilton have spent their lives on display, from the abusive midwife who charged punters to peer at them in the back room of a pub to the autocratic guardian who makes them the star attraction in his travelling sideshow. Now, they’re seeking autonomy, but disagree on the form that should take: Daisy wants fame and Read more ...
David Nice
Do we see enough in the UK of continental European drama in translation? No. Is what we actually get the best? Probably not in the case of popular German playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz's The Nest. Still, it's rendered into pithy, convincing vernacular by no less a writer than Conor McPherson, well enough directed by Ian Rickson and plausibly characterised by two fine Irish actors.A greater play could take a fuller outline of its contents than can be given here without depriving the reader of more to chew on as spectator. Let's just say that Caolifhionn Dunn and Laurence Kinlan, who've just Read more ...
Heather Neill
There is nothing more depressing than seeing people you like and admire lining up on opposing sides. Emma Rice’s parting from the Globe has resulted in some unedifying comment, often based more on prejudice than fact. I see value in the arguments of both “sides” but am dismayed at the tone of the debate. Depending on the writer’s point of view, one is likely to be misleadingly characterised as either a joyless old fogey stuck in the past or a mindless iconoclast intent only on vulgar entertainment.The Globe is, first and foremost, a working theatre; it has never been a museum. Emma Rice is a Read more ...
David Nice
So many words, starting with the title - we're told we can call it iHo - and so many lines spoken by anything up to nine characters at once. But as this is the unique world of Tony Kushner, it's all matter from the heart, balancing big ideas and complex characters and leading them beyond the realms of any safe and simply effective new play, in this case towards a father-and-daughter scene as great as anything you'll see in the theatre today.This is a different sort of epic style to the freewheeling mastery of Angels in America. It's unusual to find a Kushner play where you can nominally Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Populist playwright Peter Shaffer, who died in June, gets a rapid honour from this flagship venue, which – aptly enough – is putting on his most popular play. So popular in fact that it has already sold out and is therefore critic-proof. Directed by one of our best youngish directors, Michael Longhurst, and with live music by the Southbank Sinfonia, this spectacular show is certainly a hugely entertaining evening. But is this story of the genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his saturnine rival Salieri the best play ever about a composer, or merely a way of flattering the prejudices of the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Howard Davies, the theatre director who has died at the too-early age of 71, may not have achieved the renown of many of his colleagues. He didn’t direct blockbuster musicals, rarely ventured into TV and film, and didn’t possess the signature style that gets you noticed – and wins awards – early on.But Davies was what one might call a directors' director: a wide-ranging talent who approached text from the inside out with a clarity, vigour and breadth of vision that are pretty much without peer. I saw my first Davies production in New York in 1981, when his London staging of Pam Gems’s Piaf Read more ...