Theatre
Dylan Moore
Adrian Burley MP would probably call In Water I’m Weightless “leftie multicultural crap”. I’d like to bestow similar praise. In common with Danny Boyle’s Olympic opening ceremony, director John McGrath’s exploration of issues facing disabled people is a bit of a mess, a bit of a tick-box exercise and thoroughly enjoyable.The play is a rallying cry for the civil rights of the disabled, and wears its politics somewhat heavily. But despite some meanderings in the middle, by the time we reach writer Kaite O’Reilly’s epic final monologue, a paean to the “gen of the genome”, “the glorious freak[s] Read more ...
Andrew Todd
The vast Avignon Festival is not a neatly curated sequence of works which can be experienced - like certain art biennales or the Proms - as if on a conveyor belt. There are 50 productions in the official “In” during three weeks, and more than a thousand shows - mostly dross - in the “Off” fringe. The festival’s directors - Vincent Baudriller and Hortense Archambault - are probably the only people to “get” the whole thing, but even they are bound to be surprised because some works evolve down to the wire (Romeo Castellucci’s presentation, for one, bears scant relation to his programme notes or Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Simon Stephens (b 1971) is the most prolific British playwright of his generation. Born and brought up in Stockport, he began writing as a student in York University and had produced seven plays before his Bluebird was produced at the Royal Court in 1998. In due course along came angry, searching, passionate statements about society and belonging with punchy titles like Motortown (2006), Pornography (2007) and Punk Rock (2009) (pictured below right). The productivity has not let up, least of all in a summer which sees three new plays from his pen: Morning at the Traverse in Edinburgh, a fresh Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
“Would you enforce me to a world of cares?” croons Rylance’s Richard III, lingering tremulously over his question, the picture of world-sick piety and reluctance. As the groundlings cheer an ecstatic affirmative, Shakespeare’s most compelling villain once again claims the dramatic victory. History may have him as the vanquished, but in Tim Carroll’s new Globe production, even death cannot strip the crown of the vanquisher from Mark Rylance’s brow.Any persistent memories of the strutting Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron are banished within moments. Shrunken and hobbling, withered arm clutched uselessly Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
“Of all the anti-social vested interests the worst is the vested interest in ill-health.” The Preface on Doctors that precedes George Bernard Shaw’s The Doctor’s Dilemma finds the writer at his characteristic best: caustic certainly, witty frequently, but in the service of a serious and lengthy invective on the state of British healthcare. Unfortunately the play that follows doesn’t fully share its brilliance, attempting an awkward dramatic marriage of social satire, melodrama and soapbox sermonising.Which isn’t to say that it doesn’t make for an entertaining evening, just one whose billowing Read more ...
Laura Silverman
Alan Ayckbourn refuses to write down to children, and it shows. The Boy Who Fell into a Book is as sophisticated in structure as it is family-friendly in content. The narrative follows nine-year-old Kevin, who is absorbed (literally) into the detective story he is reading: Rockfist and the Green Shark. Kevin dreams he has joined Rockfist on his latest case, in which they must discover the identity of the shark to save the planet, although the investigation is secondary to the inventive episodes along the way as the pair slip through the books on Kevin's shelf – Chess for Beginners, Grimm's Read more ...
philip radcliffe
Within hours of the opera buffs leaving town, having had their fill of Buxton Festivalia, the old spa changes gear for operetta. For three weeks, the town becomes the jolly international capital for Gilbert & Sullivan. Enthusiasts and performers from all over the country and foreign parts gather to celebrate the seemingly never-ending attraction of those old familiar tunes, characters and satirical send-ups.Year after year, the town brims with them. And some get in the mood by slipping into costume and character. You are as likely to bump into Ko-Ko, the clowning Lord High Executioner of Read more ...
Laura Silverman
“I'm here because I'm concerned,” says scientist Stephen Emmott in direct, measured tones. “I'm concerned about the state of our planet. I think the situation that we're in right now can rightly be called a planetary emergency, an unprecedented planetary emergency.”Emmott, 52, a professor of computing at the University of Oxford and head of Microsoft's Computational Science Laboratory in Cambridge, takes to the stage alone in director Katie Mitchell's latest project. Billed as “a new kind of scientific lecture”, Ten Billion examines the state of our planet when the population Read more ...
judith.flanders
As the much-loved Arthur Marshall so profoundly noted, Ibsen is “not a fun one”. One could, with as much truth, say the same about Shakespeare’s rarely staged Timon of Athens: its misanthropy, missing motivations and mercurial shifts in temper do not spell a fun night out to most. It is greatly to the credit of director Nicholas Hytner and his team, therefore, that the evening, if it doesn’t exactly fly by, is consistently engaging, thought-provoking and downright intelligent.Hytner and his designer, Tim Hatley, have created a world that mirrors our own. Timon is officially “of Athens”, but Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Before Ibsen was, well, Ibsen, he had a successful career as a failed playwright. Producing works on a spectrum between unremarkable and outright bad, he muddled his way through to his late thirties when the publication of Brand derailed what might otherwise have been a spectacularly mediocre life’s work. With the change in fortunes came a change in tone – a welcome and necessary one if the leaden comedy of Ibsen’s early pastoral satire St John’s Night is anything to go by.Inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Ibsen’s play subjects the collision between man and magic to a Read more ...
theartsdesk
Even in this year of years, it has to be accepted that not everyone has a soft spot for sport. Anyone answering to that description may well attempt to sprint, jump or pedal away from the coming onslaught, but if you are anywhere near a television, radio or computer, the five-ring circus is going to be hard to avoid for the next few weeks. Though an arts site devoted to noting, admiring and every so often deploring fresh developments on the cultural map, we felt we couldn’t entirely allow the biggest sporting event ever to visit the shores to pass entirely unnoted. So as of tomorrow, Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Producers did warn it was going to be a bad summer for West End theatre, but the announcement of the closure of Chicago is still a curveball. For 15 years the musical - those credits one more time: music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, a book adapted by Ebb and Bob Fosse from the play by journalist Maurine Dallas Watkins and choreography by Ann Reinking “in the style of Fosse” - has been keeping audiences entertained at the Adelphi, then the Cambridge and, as of last November, the Garrick. In that time it has grossed over £120 million. But as of 1 September one of the pillars of the West Read more ...