Theatre
Marianka Swain
To do Mamet’s work justice, you must be able to deliver dialogue with the speed, skill and breathtaking bravura confidence of Usain Bolt. In Lindsay Posner’s much-hyped but frustratingly sluggish revival at the Playhouse Theatre, only one of three cast members rises to that challenge – and it’s the one who’s generated by far the fewest column inches. British actor Nigel Lindsay is the breakout star of a strange experiment in meta-satire, in which Mamet’s denunciation of a movie-going public allowing crass commercialism to override creative integrity gains surreal significance. Doubtless this Read more ...
Caroline Crampton
As a political act, the first performance of Angelina Weld Grimké’s Rachel in 1916 is exceptionally important. It was staged in Washington DC by the drama committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and was the first play by an African-American woman ever to be professionally produced (as well as one of the first to feature an all-black cast).As drama, though, it does not quite measure up. The themes it features - segregation, racism, insidious intolerance - are undoubtedly powerful and too-little discussed on the stage. Yet the play’s dialogue Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
As revered as the Greek tragedies may be, I have to admit to feeling a little weary of all that conspicuous, over-ripe angst, and the expectation of our sympathy, even empathy for matricides, patricides, filicides and all such. Rather than resonate through time, they’ve brought me to the point where I’m feeling “enough already”.I’m overstating. Yet a version of the above is one reason why I find Ian Rickson’s production of Sophocles’s Electra, from Frank McGuinness’s 1997 adaptation, so appealing. Rather than pummel the audience with emotion, this leans back a little, lets air into the play, Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Writing is a tedious activity, usually requiring a great deal of time spent alone at a desk with a pen, typewriter or laptop. It gives you bad breath and piles. Since a literal representation of this would be death on any stage, plays about writers need a dash of spice. In Pulitzer-Prize nominee Theresa Rebeck’s 2011 comedy, Seminar, this comes from seeing a quartet of budding writers being humiliated by their teacher. Luckily, there’s no writing on show, but there is rather a lot of silent reading - which is second to writing as a soporific.The seminar involves four young hopefuls paying $ Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Alan Bennett’s 80th birthday last May deserves celebrating not just as a point of respect for a formidable playwright but with awe at his continuing liveliness. More than 40 years after 40 Years On, he is still producing hits, and at Kingston’s Rose an opportune revival of two of his spy plays from the 1980s reminds us that the cuddly Yorkshire macaroon-lover with the swot’s glasses is quite the George Smiley: there are mercilessly observant eyes behind those lenses.It was under the last Soviet president Gorbachev, when the Cold War was a permanent feature of contemporary history still, that Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Britain has entered a “post-Christian” era, declared former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams earlier this year: we acknowledge its cultural presence, but Christianity is no longer an habitual practice for the majority of the population. If that’s accurate, viewers of the 2009 American work Next Fall will most likely sympathise with Charlie Condou’s sceptic Adam, who simply cannot comprehend his partner Luke’s (Martin Delaney) certain belief in Heaven, Hell and an inevitable Rapture, nor how such convictions are reconcilable with their life as a committed homosexual couple.This Read more ...
Heather Neill
Sixteen-year-old Bernadette is determined to write short stories. She's a promising writer, describing her own feelings, the strangers and friends who cross her path in telling detail. Occasionally, the similes are a little forced: an old man has a face like wet Kleenex; the disappearance of her boyfriend's mother "looms over everything like a dinner plate glued to the wall". She admits she gets into trouble for including too many similes, but her descriptions could never be accused of lacking colour. Most of all, like any teenager, she needs an audience.Bernadette's life is going Read more ...
Marianka Swain
In his otherwise unremarkable 1932 debut play Dangerous Corner, JB Priestley employs a promising framing device that hints at the kind of metafictional experimentation found in works like Stoppard’s The Real Thing or Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. I should hasten to add that Priestley does not deliver on this glimmer of promise – in fact, the frame is merely used to emphasise a theme already overstated in his plodding drawing-room whodunnit – but it’s indicative of an early work in which the writer is still figuring out the bounds of his new medium.Curiously, Dangerous Read more ...
Naima Khan
This stage adaptation of Danny Robins' Radio 4 drama is a feel-good show packed with snappy one-liners from a gaggle of intelligently drawn characters. Its roots in radio are evident, to be sure: the action develops significantly at 30-minute intervals with as many jokes crammed in as possible. On the upside, the story of a failing record store and its feckless owner comes with a host of infectious tunes and a seductively atmospheric score. The writing even careers through some keen observations about the emotional consequences of social mobility, happily staying light-hearted all the while. Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Rona Munro’s trilogy of plays about Scotland’s Stuart kings premiered at the Edinburgh Festival when Scottish independence was, for many, still a cherished possibility; it transfers to London – within a clarion call of Westminster – just as the promise has been dashed. As timely as the National’s recent Great Britain, the trilogy is more than merely opportune, resonating with the anger and frustration of centuries.These boisterous, bracing, subtly thought-provoking and hugely entertaining plays are also a rarity in offering a new history cycle to accompany those of Shakespeare. While the Read more ...
Caroline Crampton
As we arrive at the last few months of 2014, the temptation to say “Enough! No more!” to representations of the First World War creeps in. The centenary of 1914 has been so comprehensively commemorated on our stages and screens that you could be forgiven for feeling as if you had little left to understand about what went on. But don’t put it all behind you quite yet – this rediscovery from the 1930s still has something to offer in an overcrowded space.John Van Druten’s Flowers of the Forest was first performed 80 years ago, at a time when the playwright was a prominent feature of the London Read more ...
aleks.sierz
In the context of recent events in Iraq and Syria, the spectre of the ill-fated Iraq War of 2003 looms large once more. What better time for a revival of master-playwright David Hare’s story about conflict and personal relationships? As parliament is recalled to debate bombing the Islamic State, The Vertical Hour — which premiered on Broadway in 2006 and was then staged at the Royal Court two years later — opens at the smart Park Theatre in London’s Finsbury Park. But just how relevant is it?Like most of Hare’s work, this is a play in which the personal is in bed with the political. Nadia, Read more ...