Theatre
Heather Neill
Mustapha Matura's 1974 play is a celebration of liberation, both social and political, and a sly warning about the possible pitfalls of sudden freedom. Mas (or Masquerade) is the Trinidadian version of Carnival, an exotic mixture of Christian and African tradition played out just before Lent. It provides an opportunity to adopt a different persona, to drink to excess and to behave in ways unacceptable at any other time. But Matura's play is set on either side of colonial Trinidad's liberation from Britain in 1962; the acting out of roles and dressing up as policemen and generals takes on a Read more ...
aleks.sierz
As their career progresses, playwrights face a real problem: should they please their fans by writing the same play, over and over again, or should they risk trying out new things? Polymath Philip Ridley has built up a corpus of East End gothic plays, in-yer-face shockers and dystopic visions. But he has also written female monologues and imaginative two-handers about love. His latest one breaks more new ground: it is a comedy, and — unique for this playwright — it is overtly political.Radiant Vermin is about a young couple, Ollie and Jill. They are having their first baby and fantasise about Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
The critic James Christopher describes his first stage play as a black comedy, and the opening few moments set out the noir element efficiently enough, if not with any discernable humour. Charlie (Ben Porter) has inherited an old Suffolk farmhouse and lets it out to pay the bills. Its one drawback is an indoor well, a health-and-safety hazard (and maybe haunted), which he plans to fill in with cement. It’s an unromantic solution, but Charlie, married for two decades to the pragmatic Susan (Joannah Tincey), is not looking for surprises. He gave up a high-earning job to embrace a quiet life. Read more ...
Marianka Swain
The Langham has marked its 150th anniversary in theatrical fashion by commissioning an original drama spanning several decades – and floors – from emerging company Defibrillator, whose Tennessee Williams trio at this venue impressed last year. Now Ben Ellis checks in with a tailored play that gains substance the further it reaches into the past.The first of Ellis’s three half-hour two-handers is the weakest, offering a tired spin on the needy pop diva. It’s present day – as multiple references to Twitter and Instagram make clear – and imploding singer Jade (Hannah Spearritt), due to make a Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Last year the London stage was treated to an electrifying Medea and an intelligent, refreshing Electra, at The National and the Old Vic respectively. Now it’s the turn of the Barbican to unleash the formidable force of Greek tragedy upon us, switching from Euripedes to Sophocles and a heroine who, compared to those others, is a pure-hearted innocent.And how does the production compare? Favourably. In fact, Belgian director Ivo van Hove has offered a modern-dress interpretation as thrilling as his take on Miller’s A View From The Bridge, currently playing across town. It’s elegantly staged, Read more ...
Polly Teale
As a child I was bewitched by the tale of The Little Mermaid. I had it on a record and would play it and sit and sob on the settee, much to the bewilderment of my brothers. It wasn’t until years later that I found myself wondering what it was about this dark coming of age story, about a mermaid who had her tongue cut out, that spoke to me so powerfully. Rereading the story years later I realise that the story is about the experience of puberty and the self-consciousness that comes with it, a sort of loss of self.The mermaids live beneath the ocean in a state of unselfconscious freedom until Read more ...
aleks.sierz
This venue is one of the coolest in London — and its regular audience is both trendy and well-heeled. In the foyer, you get jostled by a better class of person. For this immersive show, written by the prolific and ever-inventive Mike Bartlett, the audience arrives and, after getting its tickets, is divided into four groups: A, B, C and D. Each group is then summoned by tannoy to enter the theatre though a different entrance. Yes, this is not a theatre show — it is a game show.Once inside, we are each given a set of headphones and seated on benches, which are arranged on the four sides of a Read more ...
David Nice
How can a feisty village dame duetting “lackaday”s with the mounted head of a long-lost, nay, long-dead love be so deuced affecting? Ascribe it partly to the carefully-applied sentiment of Gilbert and Sullivan, slipping in a very singular 11-o’clock number after so much Gothick spoofery, partly to two consummate and subtle singing actors, Amy J Payne and John Savournin, in a production of spare ingenuity by the latter, true Renaissance/Victorian man equally at home in opera and operetta.Savournin also makes a virtue out of the necessity of a nine-strong cast guided by a brilliant pianist – Read more ...
Marianka Swain
The quest for liberation is popular dramatic terrain, but the Gate Theatre’s "Freedom Burning" season shifts focus to the aftermath. What do you do when the fight is over, and how can you be sure the sacrifice was worthwhile? It’s a sophisticated – and, given the nature of modern warfare, highly pertinent – line of questioning, but Andrew Whaley’s richly allegorical piece is ultimately too opaque to do it justice.The Rise and Shine of Comrade Fiasco, produced in association with the National Theatre Studio, revisits 1986 Zimbabwe, where three strangers (Kurt Egyiawan, Joan Iyiola and Read more ...
Ismene Brown
It’s a hostage to fortune really to create a play on one of the funniest books ever written, and a Victorian one at that. Still, Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat is regularly mined for stage and small screen entertainment, and this version by Craig Gilbert turns out to be a diverting and enjoyable touring show for Britain’s small town theatres, for which hurray, and particularly so for towns on the Thames, where the boat hired by J, George and Harris is being ever so uncertainly steered.The striped blazers, overgrown schoolboy indolence, and the constant practical joking on each other, Read more ...
Marianka Swain
How do we respond to a tragedy of infinite mystery? We investigate, we speculate, and we seek to impose meaning, to produce a story that safely contains unfathomable horror. However, those hoping for such reassurance via a traditional theatrical narrative in Bush Moukarzel and Dead Centre’s Lippy will come away disappointed. This darkly absurdist piece floats searching, fundamental questions, but answers came there none.Fifteen years ago, in the small Irish town of Leixlip, police discovered the bodies of 83-three-old Frances Mulrooney (Joanna Banks) and her three nieces, Catherine (Eileen Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
How do you take your rom-coms? Full-fat Hollywood schmaltz, Shakespearean, or lean and elegant – a Stoppard perhaps, or Coward? If your answer did not include “With lashings of social philosophy, ethics and a lengthy dream sequence, preferably running north of three hours”, then Man and Superman might not be the play for you. For those who prefer things quick and contemporary there’s Closer up the road at the Donmar, but for anyone prepared to take a risk with an Edwardian oddity – a baggy, generous, thinks-faster-than-it-can-talk comedy – Shaw still has plenty to say.At full length, George Read more ...