Theatre
Anya Reiss
About a week after my modern adaptation of The Seagull closed in 2012 at Southwark Playhouse the director Russell Bolam texted me, "Same again?" So it’s now in 2014 that at (the new) Southwark Playhouse we’ve got our modern take on Chekhov’s Three Sisters, which has just opened.I made it modern because I can’t see any other reason for me to do it. There are loads of eloquent, clever versions of the original knocking around and I don’t feel any need to throw another one in unless I’m doing something different. The reason to make it modern though is more than that, and I have more than a Read more ...
Jeremy Eccles
"Everyone is beautiful when they dance,” oozes the ballroom MC in the midst of a competition that reveals just how un-beautiful terpsichorean people can be when seriously challenged by other dancers, or by anyone radical enough to try to dance to a different tune. Yes, Strictly Ballroom the 1992 film has become Strictly Ballroom the Musical – premiered in Sydney last weekend with Kylie Minogue in attendance – as it was always destined to be.It is less well known that the work actually began as a 20-minute student exercise at Australian's National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) way back Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Gavin Creel licked his trophy in delight, Zrinka Cvitešić spoke of making Croatian history, and Sharon D Clarke let out an exultant "wow" from the podium that was surely heard well beyond the walls of the Royal Opera House. And so it was Sunday night at the 38th annual Laurence Olivier Awards, which coupled the occasional surprise (the win for Once leading lady Cvitešić very much among them) with the unusually meritocratic sense that for once - and not before time - the right people were receiving the right awards.That was nowhere more true than of the actress prize for Lesley Manville, one Read more ...
Elin Williams
Cardiff Bay’s Bute Street is home to many imposing buildings, a large number of which are derelict. They have the potential to become something more than they currently are. They can be revived, and that’s what Louise Osborn has done by mounting her site-specific production to one of them. Roar Ensemble and Sherman Cymru have brought Maudie’s Rooms back to an old customs and immigration house in Cardiff after sell-out performances last year.An intimate audience of just 20 is summoned to a bus stop opposite the house, where it is met by Professor Arlo Butterworth, who appears to be lost and Read more ...
Jenny Sealey
As an 11-year-old, I used to love writing my address as My Bedroom, 50 Ridsdale Rd, Sherwood Rise, Nottingham, England, Great Britain, The World, The Universe. We belong to ourselves, but our sense of belonging is also about people and places and our sense of who we are in the world. It became our starting point for the collaboration with Circo Crescer e Viver. Graeae's Reasons to be Cheerful was part of Unlimited Festival in Rio and I was also there to share the experience of co-directing the London 2012 Paralympic Games Opening Ceremony. I had the opportunity to meet Junior Perim and Read more ...
Katie Colombus
If you are seeking to keep small children entertained this Easter, there's no need to sit around gorging on chocolate with so many egg-citing cultural experiences on offer throughout the UK. This week's edition of Listed suggests a range of choices, some in London, some touring, in theatres and beyond. Choose from sing-a-long characters and historical adventures, kooky eco-warriors and Shakespearean puppetry shows.The Unicorn TheatreThe primary London venue for children's theatre is home to two shows this Easter. At the End of Everything Else combines music, puppetry and animation in the Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
The Royal Family: politically irrelevant anachronism? Fodder for tourism? Or enduring symbol of what it means to be British? Mike Bartlett’s shrewd new drama, in a taut, economical and strongly acted production by Rupert Goold, tussles with issues of the limits and shifting values of monarchical power, and with questions of national identity. It has a playfulness that occasionally borders on the glib – yet it also has teeth. It’s unquestionably clever, but it sometimes feels like a game of chess in which Goold and Bartlett move the pieces around the board with such skilful deliberation that a Read more ...
aleks.sierz
If rock is magic, then what about its creators? Are they wonderful magicians, or empty charlatans? Infused by the spirit of the Patti Smith song of the same name, playwright Simon Stephens’s new play puts a rock star centre stage — and then lets him implode. Given that he is played by Andrew Scott, one of the most charismatic actors of the British stage, the result is often compelling. Add to the mix some beautifully sculpted visual effects, care of Carrie Cracknell, who directed the award-winning A Doll’s House, and the result is certainly memorable.But is it as good as it could be? At first Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Andrew Lloyd Webber and Ben Elton's musical was first seen in the West End in 2000, where it received mixed reviews and ran for just under a year. In 2009-10, they reworked the show for productions in Canada and South Africa under the title The Boys in the Photograph, and now it receives its first London revival in Union Theatre. Although it has the original title, Lotte Wakeham's spirited and thoroughly enjoyable production is essentially the revised version, with its more uplifting ending.The work is set in Belfast in 1969-71, at an amateur football club in a Catholic area of the city. The Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
Flying masonry put the Apollo in the headlines late last year when part of the theatre’s ceiling collapsed; now an airborne vampire and an impressive refurbishment give it new life. A cyclorama of dark tree branches and cloud-scudded skies covers the ongoing repair work overhead. And onstage, amid Christine Jones’s eerily gorgeous design of woodland shrouded in glittering, feathery, blue-white snow, the company of John Tiffany’s stunning production cast their heartbreaking spell.The first West End transfer for the National Theatre of Scotland, and for the Royal Court under the artistic Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Are the 2010s a rerun of the 1980s? You know that familiar feeling of déjà vu: economic collapse, royal wedding and Tories in power. Not to mention privatization and the spirit of rampant capitalism abroad in the land. Surely, these are the ideal conditions for a revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s exposé of entrepreneurial greed, A Small Family Business, at the National, where it premiered in 1987. But does the play’s criticism of dishonesty remain resonant today?Unsurprisingly, this is a family story. It starts with Jack McCracken taking over the family furniture business, which was founded by his Read more ...
mark.kidel
The popularity of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia owes a great deal to the play’s brilliant weave of themes and ideas, outlined by characters from two different historical periods – Romantic and modern. There is breathtaking brio in the way the writer’s skill combines so many strands, with both humour and irony: from the mathematics of Fermat’s theorem to the exploration of fractals, and from the limits of rationalism to the flights of fancy that inhabit science just as much as poetry.This is director Andrew Hilton’s first venture into contemporary theatre – he has mostly tackled Shakespeare, but also Read more ...