Theatre
edward.seckerson
Santa Claus does make it to the Menier Chocolate Factory this Christmas but his name is Sam Byck and he plans to fly a 747 into the White House and “incinerate Dick Nixon”. So not the Christmas show, not in any traditional sense, actually not in any sense, but a hymn to the disenchanted and disenfranchised of America and in particular the infamous few for whom the Dream finally died when they exercised their right to bear arms and “moved their little finger” around the trigger. Hail to the Chief. Bang.Stephen Sondheim’s bitterest, blackest, musical theatre piece Assassins was ground-breaking Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The Bush is on a roll. Under artistic director Madani Younis, audiences are up, new plays are flowing in and there are plans to build a permanent studio space. Having just staged Radar, its annual festival of new writing, the venue now hosts Barney Norris’s Visitors, his debut play which previously premiered at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham and then had a run at the Arcola earlier this year. If it can hardly be called a cutting-edge example of contemporary playwriting, it is an impressively accomplished piece of craftsmanship.The writing is sensitive, rather quiet and immensely Read more ...
Miriam Gillinson
Russian prisoner Gavriil is telling his psychiatrist a story about a strange and frightening dragon who demands a female sacrifice from the local townsfolk every year. When Gavriil gets to the end of his hot-breathed tale, his doctor drily remarks: "Almost hard to believe that Stalin had a problem with it." The time is 1978 and we are in the USSR, a place where fiction is censored, writers are frequently imprisoned and real life is even more fantastical than fiction. Silent Prisoner is director-turned-writer Eve Leigh's first full-length play, and it is a subtle and slippery beast. The Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Saxon Court joins the growing list of new plays tackling the economic collapse, and while lacking the creative innovation of work like Clare Duffy’s Money: The Game Show at the Bush or Anders Lustgarten’s If You Don’t Let Us Dream, We Won’t Let You Sleep at the Royal Court, Daniel Andersen’s salty, astute debut proves a solid addition to the canon.It’s Christmas 2011 and the employees of recruitment-to-recruitment company Saxon Court are itching to trade work for partying. Boss Donna (Debra Baker) struggles to get into the party spirit: her co-founder is in hospital and a drop in Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Like good wine, some plays improve with age. The first taste is sharp, and tickles the palate; further sips stimulate and impress, but the rich full flavour is only apparent after a few years in the cellar. Such is the case with Piranha Heights, Philip Ridley’s 2008 drama, which has been thrillingly revived by young director Max Barton at the Old Red Lion as the inaugural production of this fringe venue’s new artistic director, Stewart Pringle. As such, it feels like a compelling statement of intent.Set in a top-floor flat of an East End tower block, the play begins as a domestic dispute Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Much of the recent programming of the Royal Court has flaunted a preference for gimmicky gestures rather than the hard work involved in developing new playwrights. So after its staging of book adaptations, fictional documentaries and monotonous lectures here comes the latest gimmick: a play with a cast of a dozen eight-year-olds. Given that the story of the play is about an uprising of primary-school kids, is this a) literalism gone mad; b) an interesting and challenging idea; or c) an innovative approach to casting?Okay, children, are you now all sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. Once Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Behind the Beautiful Forevers, David Hare's adaptation of Katherine Boo's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, works as both play and portent. Viewed on its own terms, the evening grips throughout in its embrace of the multiple contradictions of contemporary Indian life as here filtered through those existing quite literally off the scrap of that country's gathering economic power. Even more importantly is what Rufus Norris's epic staging – this director's most confident work yet at this address – may signal about the sort of National Theatre we have in store when Norris launches his Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Reclaiming lost plays can be unnecessary indulgence, but Blanche McIntyre’s note-perfect production of Emlyn Williams’ 64-year-old work ushers in the renaissance of a thoroughly modern masterpiece. This progressive examination of ethical relativism, trial by media and the tension between public and private life is so topical as to seem positively clairvoyant, but it’s not just a play of ideas – Accolade is among the year’s most riveting human dramas.Nobel Prize-winning author and respected family man Will Trenting (Alexander Hanson, pictured below with Bruce Alexander), about to add Read more ...
Matt Wolf
What ought to be a featherweight holiday confection emerges as a charmless slog in the belated West End bow of White Christmas, a title that at this point in November may induce panic in those playgoers who haven't begun to think about holiday shopping. But even the more industrious gift-givers out there will have a hard time stomaching a hefty slab of seasonal treacle, which is nicely designed (and brilliantly played by musical director Andrew Corchoran's ace orchestra) but suffers from a hole at its very centre. Make that two holes, in fact, where a pair of galvanic, charismatic leading men Read more ...
Naima Khan
Meet Len (Graham O'Mara), a man-child stuck in a world where "gaytard", "bender" and "spastic" are (to him, anyway) harmless insults. He throws them lovingly at niece Jen (Jennifer Clement) to help cheer her up as she struggles to deal with the suicide of her father, who also happens to have been Len's more widely-known brother. As you might imagine, Len's counselling tactics strike a dull note with his 19-year-old niece, but nothing that a couple of cans of cider, Stuart Slade's gently witty writing and some fine performances can't put right. Slade handles grief with a wry smile and a Read more ...
aleks.sierz
How can you convey the sheer incomprehensibility of ghastly acts? While most playwrights, when confronted by the horrors of genocide, settle for a journalistic approach that is realistic and documentary, a brave handful of writers take a less well-trodden path. They explore the terrain of trauma by using their imaginations: they are not so much photographers as painters — and their visionary abstractions are often more emotionally truthful than the formulaic coverage produced by news programmes.Caryl Churchill’s contemporary classic, Far Away, which was first staged in 2000, is a good example Read more ...
David Nice
Earlier this year two giant puppets, plus a bottom (lower case, human) on wheels, dominated Shakespeare’s dream play at the Barbican. Replace the bottom with an ever-present little dog and you might think we’re back more or less where we started nine months ago. But what the febrile imagination of Russian theatre surrealist Dmitry Krymov gives us is the rude mechanicals’ Very Lamentable Comedy of Pyramus and Thisbe, Sort Of, along with audience interpolations beyond anything the priggish Theseus, Hippolyta and lovers ever ventured, in an often hilarious, occasionally tedious and anything but Read more ...