Theatre
aleks.sierz
The history play has roots that go deep into our culture. We love to see stories that are kitted out in fancy dress, and long to savour a past that resonates with our present. In the case of Dara, which is adapted by Tanya Ronder from an original by Shahid Nadeem first performed five years ago by Ajoka Theatre in Pakistan, we time-travel back to Mughal India in the mid-17th century to confront once again the problem of militant Islam. But is there more here than contemporary issues clothed in colourful garb?At the play’s heart is a family drama. In the 1650s, at the imperial court of India Read more ...
Marianka Swain
If the London property boom continues post-election, the fight for living space may well develop into all-out war. But what begins as skirmish in Peter Souter’s 2013 play, promoted from the Hampstead’s downstairs space, soon turns to romance as two twenty-somethings with competing claims to a flat discover the benefits of estate agent incompetency. It’s a fairy tale for our times.Alas, as the title suggests, domestic harmony is on a very short let. The first half of Souter’s comedy/drama skews towards the former, acting as effective pilot for an Odd Couple reboot: abrasive City worker Read more ...
Heather Neill
The mother, so often a sentimental figure in art, can be as tenacious and bold as any animal when protecting her young. Mark Hayhurst's play about Irmgard Litten, mother of Hans, a lawyer who cross-examined Hitler – and won – in 1931, celebrates the single-minded determination of a woman daring to take on Nazi might in the cause of her son. Hans was imprisoned in Sonnenburg "for his own protection" on the night of the Reichstag fire in 1933 and, after spending years in concentration camps, was found hanged in Dachau in 1938.Taken at Midnight, with Penelope Wilton as Irmgard, Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Dating in the internet age is rife with complications, and yet Dave Simpson’s amiable romcom manages to eschew nearly all of them. Bar its online matchmaking set-up, this is a chaste, big-hearted time capsule of a play, with nary a glance at Facebook or Twitter, let alone the ephemeral intimacies of Tinder and Snapchat. Simpson’s old-fashioned piece is a perfect partner to his resolutely gauche paramours, but over its almost two-hour running time offers curiously nebulous commentary on contemporary romance.Following in the fine tradition of digital deceit, lifelong singletons Angela and Read more ...
David Nice
Ever been stuck in a claustrophobic space with a group of really unpleasant people? Add mayhem, murder and the kind of razor-sharp wit to be found in only a very few of the nastiest individuals, and you have Dominic Dromgoole’s candlelit production of Middleton and Rowley’s satirical Jacobean nightmare, The Changeling.That wit is what truly distinguishes this strange experience. The bizarre plot wherein an unwanted suitor and a maidservant are horribly dispatched and lunatics mocked could be more genuinely disturbing in a gritty update, but this fine ensemble of actors in period costume Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The future is a bad place. Most of our predictions about climate change and the world’s resources seem to come from a mindset of mute despair. In New Atlantis – part of the Enlightenment Café series produced by LAStheatre, which brings together artists, scientists and thinkers as well as theatre-makers – the future is also dry. Very dry. Water scarcity on a global scale means that the population of Miami has abandoned the city and the people of London are suffering a drought-ridden existence.Set in 2050, the play explores our relationship to water by creating an intergovernmental Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Sometimes the deadliest violence is silent. The publicity for Caroline Horton’s new absurdist satire, Islands, points out that Oxfam estimates that some $18.5 trillion is siphoned out of the world economy into tax havens by wealthy individuals. That’s some nest egg! Likewise, Christian Aid has calculated that 1,000 children die every day as a result of tax evasion. As we know, the super-rich one per cent own most of global wealth. Dreadful. Clearly unjust. But what can theatre do about it?Well, until recently, the most common tactic was verbatim theatre – as in David Hare’s The Power of Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Disillusioned with our modern world? Why not journey back into an idyllic past, when trains were benign, anthropomorphic creatures rather than sources of commuter angst, red petticoats held life-saving powers, and it was perfectly all right for children to accept sweets from a stranger.That’s not to say Mike Kenny’s crisp adaptation of Edith Nesbit’s 1906 novel is devoid of contemporary resonance; the tale of a refugee writer persecuted for daring to question the ruling regime is almost uncomfortably topical. This Edwardian story also carries a timely defence of the Welfare State, with an Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Mike Bartlett is the most prolific and talented British playwright to emerge in the past decade. Not only has he created large-scale epics in a variety of styles — from the science-fiction fable Earthquakes in London to the Shakespearean King Charles III — but he has also delivered a series of short plays — My Child, Contractions and An Intervention — in which he hones down the story into sharp shards of powerful emotion. Running at about 55 minutes, Bull is one of these.The situation is simple: as the blurb on the back cover of the play text says, “Two jobs. Three candidates.” The awkward Read more ...
Tom Morton-Smith
That the truth will always be so much bigger than we can comprehend is something I had to accept as I started to write Oppenheimer. There are so many sources, so much information, so many hundreds of books, declassified files, interviews and history. One biography of the man took its authors 25 years to write. And there are still the hidden thoughts that were never written down, conversations long forgotten by people now long dead. There have to be so many omissions that it is an impossible task to tell this "truth" over the course of one evening’s entertainment. And people have told this Read more ...
Caroline Crampton
When a play is preceded by a long list of content warnings, it’s hard not to let your judgement be coloured in advance. Sexual violence, strong language, strobe lighting, smoke effects, audience-actor interaction – we’re told in advance that Liberian Girl has them all. As such, the atmosphere as the audience arrives and people find a place to stand on the red sand-strewn set is tense.It is only when the action properly gets underway that you realise that this anxiety is being skilfully manipulated by director Matthew Dunster and writer Diana Nneka Atuona. Given the play’s subject matter Read more ...
edward.seckerson
It’s true that there is something wildly, garishly, theatrical about Pedro Almodóvar’s films – none more so than this rampant farce – but it’s equally true that their sensibility is far removed from what the English might deem farce, and that their speed of delivery leaves not a millisecond to draw breath, let alone sing a song. So where does that leave Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, the Musical? Lost in translation; twice over.The conceit is niftily established when our anti-heroine Pepa (Tamsin Greig) staggers sleepily onto Anthony Ward’s sleek duplex set and affects a series of Read more ...