Theatre
Lydia Higman
I first read Anne Gunter’s story about five years ago, when I was in my first year of university at Oxford, little knowing it would over time lead to our play Gunter [seen first in Edinburgh and transferring 3-25 April to the Royal Court]. The classic account of her life is found in James Sharpe’s micro-history The Bewitching of Anne Gunter, which he wrote after unearthing the case in the late Nineties.The trial documentation for her case is stored at the National Archives in the Star Chamber stack (named after the star-spangled ceiling of the chamber where the councillors met). So I went to Read more ...
Gary Naylor
In a too brightly tiled Gentlemen’s public convenience (Nitin Parmar’s beautifully realised set is as much a character as any of the men we meet), a lad is shaving his head. He’s halfway to the skinhead look of the early Seventies, but he hasn’t quite nailed it – he's too young to know the detail.Another walks in, older, confident to the point of arrogance, looking not just for another man, but for this particular man-child. Handing over a pair of oxblood DMs with the garish red laces, he doesn’t just complete the boy’s outfit, he inducts him into the two worlds that he will Read more ...
Paul Grellong
I’m writing this in the lobby of the Menier Chocolate Factory a couple of hours before the first preview. I was last here in February for the start of rehearsals. In the time since, I’ve made a handful of, one hopes, helpful adjustments to the script. I’ll let audiences be the judge of that.But having seen the excellent dress rehearsal, here’s one thing I know for certain: our director Dominic Dromgoole has steered this company through a process of careful, searching, and revelatory work to arrive at a place I find electric. As for everyone working on this show, to a person, I will be forever Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Brian Friel’s Faith Healer isn’t noted for its laughs, but Rachel O’Riordan has found more than most directors do in this rich, masterly piece from 1979. Her approach pays dividends in all but one respect.No portrayal of the deep melancholy of a blighted soul speaks more eloquently than the one Friel has fashioned for his leading man, “The Fantastic Francis Hardy — Faith Healer — One Night Only”, as the poster proclaims. His ramshackle life drags those who love him around the backwaters of Great Britain, though not of his native Ireland, to which he returns only for family deaths. The Read more ...
Heather Neill
The reviews of Tyrell Williams' debut play on its first and second outings at the Bush Theatre were universally enthusiastic, even ecstatic. Multiple awards followed, including a clean sweep of those for first-time or promising writers. So how does it look in the newest venue in the West End, in the round – or rather square?The first impression is of relaxed confidence: these young men – both characters and actors (Kedar Williams-Stirling as Bilal pictured below left, Emeka Sesay as Joey and Francis Lovehall as Omz) – own this space. We the audience are welcome to Read more ...
David Nice
In what feels like the beginning, or at least the Old Testament, there was Riverdance. Now, ready to flow through the world once the world knows it needs it, there’s a rainbow-coloured river of just about everything musical and choreographic that’s found its place in contemporary Ireland, performed with a pulsating energy as well as a poetry that stops you wondering too much about all the connections.Such is WAKE, created by pioneering company THISISPOPBABY's Jennifer Jennings, the polymathic Philip McMahon and Niall Sweeney with a score by Alma Kelliher, who sings superbly throughout. Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Is it just coincidence, or something about the post-Covid theatrical landscape, that one-person shows are becoming commonplace; don’t producers know that it’s OK to share a stage again? Hot on the heels of Andrew Scott’s Vanya, in which the actor played eight parts, and Sarah Snook’s whopping 26 characters in The Picture of Dorian Gray, American actor Billy Crudup makes his London theatre debut with eight or so of his own, in a play he premiered in New York in 2017. Though certainly entertaining, this is the most modest and least satisfying of the three productions, the issues Read more ...
Matt Wolf
"We all live here in peace and friendship," notes Telegin (David Ahmad), otherwise known as Waffles, early in Uncle Vanya, to which one is tempted to respond, "yeah, right."As casually bruising a play as I know, Chekhov's wounding yet also brutally funny masterwork exists to explode Telegin's remark across four acts, and adaptor-director Trevor Nunn's terrific in-the-round production for west London's Orange Tree Theatre sees all the characters in the round: you're aware of their dual ability to be fantasists one minute, ruthless about themselves the next.By way of example, barely has Astrov Read more ...
Jane Edwardes
When For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy first moved to the West End in 2023, it felt like a risky venture. It had started in the tiny New Diorama, and later packed out the Royal Royal Court, but was a transfer to Shaftesbury Avenue a crazy step too far?Not a bit of it. The run was a triumph, and now it confidently returns to yet a fourth theatre, with a new cast and all the trappings of a starry first night. It takes its place in a West End that is hosting a particularly adventurous season this spring and is trying to reach out to new audiences. Yes, I Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Sam Selvon’s 1956 novel about a flotilla of Caribbean migrants who came to London filled with expectations of a warm welcome by the Motherland, only to find a cold reception that extended beyond the weather, has been turned into an ingenious play. Playwright Roy Williams’ adaptation slims down the characters and beefs up the roles played by women but still captures the essentials of Selvon’s novel. Seven actors fill the tiny stage at the Jermyn Street Theatre and masterfully navigate Selvon’s creolised English. Moses (Gamba Cole) has been in London the longest and alternately advises and Read more ...
David Nice
“All discord without this circumference,” the Duchess of Malfi tells the good man she’s just asked to be her husband, “is only to be pitied and not feared”. Perhaps the villains should be more feared and less pitied in the imbalanced casting of Rachel Bagshaw’s clear and yet still atmospheric new production of Webster’s supposed shocker.It’s to Bagshaw’s credit and the riveting performances of Francesca Mills as the Duchess, Oliver Huband as her beloved Antonio and Shazia Nicholls as her faithful Cariola that good resonates more powerfully than evil here, even if two of them end up strangled Read more ...
Jane Edwardes
Can there be anyone from Sheffield who has not seen Standing at the Sky’s Edge, possibly several times? This is the once local show, opening at the Sheffield Crucible in 2019, playing at the National Theatre's Olivier in 2023, and now bringing a touch of Sheffield warmth and straight-talking into the West End, where it will no doubt worm its way into the hearts of a multitude of spectators wherever they are from; it also won a Best Musical Olivier Award along the way.Who would have predicted such success for a musical about the great brutalist block, inspired by Le Corbusier, which sits on Read more ...