Theatre
philip radcliffe
What price a woman’s liberation? And what price a man’s self-defined honour? By pitching one against the other and against the backdrop of wedlock (the emphasis being on the “lock”), Ibsen forges his classic love-hate drama which still grips as, spellbound, we watch the balance of the relationship between Nora and her husband Torvald shift.Director Greg Hersov has chosen to team up again with Cush Jumbo, following successes together here with Pygmalion (she played Eliza) and As You Like It (Rosalind). Hardly ever off-stage, she meets the challenge of Nora in style. She is no buttoned-up, Read more ...
Johnny Tudor
Very few young people know her name today, but Dorothy Squires was the singing sensation of the Fifties and Sixties, and even 30 years ago this talented but difficult star was a regular feature of the headlines thanks to offstage dramas and scandals. But who was the real Dorothy Squires? I first remember meeting Dorothy Squires, as she renamed herself, when I was only three years old. My father, Bert Cecil, a pianist, had befriended her when, aged 15, she had gone to London armed with nothing more than hope and a train ticket.Edna May (her real name) was born in Llanelli in 1915 into a poor Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Rikki Beadle-Blair is a high-energy polymath. He’s a real phenomenon. Raised by his lesbian mum in sarf London, he wrote his first play at the age of seven and was, he claims, already directing four years later. Nowadays he creates challenging entertainment in film, education and theatre (18 new plays in six years). He also writes self-help books. His heart’s clearly in the right place. There’s only one problem — he’s not a very good playwright.Gutted, his latest trip down to the council estates of South-East London, is a family drama. It’s a grim tale of an Irish cockney matriarch, Bridie, Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
A thunder sheet booms, a didgeridoo hums distantly, a model ship rears and pitches its way forward through the waves of groundlings and suddenly we find ourselves washed up on the shores of the Globe for another season. All eyes may be on the newly launched Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, but just when we were all at risk of getting too distracted by its novelty, Jeremy Herrin and his new production of The Tempest are here to remind us what the original Globe Theatre does best.We’ve not been short on Tempests in London of late, but if there is any space and company that should be able to make sense Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Most theatre directors produce work which is visually the same as everyone else’s. Katie Mitchell doesn’t. Her plays are always brilliantly acted, highly atmospheric and often use film media in an amazing way. But she almost never works in this country any more. Scorned by the National Theatre, by the myopic critics (although loved by audiences), she now works mainly abroad. This production, first staged at the Schaubühne theatre in Berlin, is a perfect example of her genius.In August Strindberg’s Fröken Julie, written in 1888, the set is the kitchen of a country mansion, where on Midsummer’s Read more ...
Peter Michael Marino
If this native New Yorker were in a relationship with the city of London, our Facebook status would read: “It’s complicated.” We’ve been through hell together. London is one of my favourite cities. I blissfully cross the pond several times a year to teach and to see my mates. But, this fabulous city also bestowed on me the worst reviews I’ve ever gotten in my life. So, why the heck am I coming back to do yet a show about the very show that shattered my dreams? Insane!In 2007, I conceived and wrote the musical version of the Madonna movie Desperately Seeking Susan - which featured the hit Read more ...
Jasper Rees
In recent years theatre has sought assistance from a pair of popular art forms. Shows based either on movies, or on pop groups’ back catalogues, have become mainstays of the theatrical economy. So the latest musical to open in the West End has the whiff of boardroom cynicism. What happens when you randomly select a famous film and an iconic songbook, yoke them together and shove them out in front of the footlights? You get Desperately Seeking Susan, a 1985 film which starred a chubby-cheeked Madonna (pictured below), but featuring the greatest hits of Blondie.In fact the idea has the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The Oliviers consider more than twice the number of productions for their annual awards compared to Broadway's Tonys. But you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise following Sunday night's 37th annual shindig, which divvied up the kudos among notably few recipients, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time leading the pack with seven awards - on a par with Matilda this time last year. At the same time, many other worthy hopefuls went home empty-handed, if they were lucky enough to get nominated to begin with. One intends no disrespect to Simon Stephens's adaptation of Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Conor McPherson’s 1997 play has become a modern classic, and it's not difficult to see why. It's a glorious evening of storytelling that allows the cast to display their wares, as the conversation between characters who have known each other all their lives flows and ebbs as they reminisce, josh and cajole each other with both affection and darker, underlying feelings. Such naturalistic conversation is, strangely enough, often hard to present with authenticity, but when it's done well - as it is here - one forgets this is acting. We could be eavesdropping on real people chatting.We are in Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Knock knock. Who's there? Eamonn. Eamonn who? Eamonn Etonian. There's an Eamonn at No 10, an Eamonn is Mayor of London, an Eamonn is even Archbishop of Canterbury. Oh, and Eamonns are third and - for three more months - fourth in line to the throne. Recently Eton has started to dominate British film, television and theatre. In 2012 one Eamonn won an Emmy, another was given a Bafta and a third played a Shakespearean king on the BBC. It’s true that a remarkably talented group of actors from Eton have risen like the richest cream to the top in recent years. They are led by Damian Lewis, Read more ...
Gary Raymond
The play is the thing, to quote one famous bereaved theatrical son, and in this new collaboration between Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru, artist Marc Rees and playwright Roger Williams, it is most definitely the thing. A Welsh-language multi-media promenade production that takes as its themes the erosion of the traditions of agricultural communities, Tir Sir Gâr is a complex balancing act between fact and fiction, and between emotional, involving drama and cold introspective installation art. The balance is delicate, sometimes successful and sometimes not.Granted, the story would not be enough on Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
It’s apt that a drama set among soldiers should be presented with military precision; but corruption, cruelty and perversion can lurk amid the human innards of the machine of war, and in Nicholas Hytner’s well-oiled, impeccably paced production of Shakespeare’s tragedy, the chainlink and concrete of an army base house scenes of cruel humiliation.Hytner's inaugural 2003 season as artistic director of the National included his staging of Henry V, coinciding with the Iraq War and starring Adrian Lester. Now Lester takes on the titular Moor, opposite Rory Kinnear, whom Hytner directed as Hamlet Read more ...