Theatre
Matt Wolf
Nostalgia for things that probably never were is an animating theme in politics these days. Much the same feeling displaced to the realm of showbiz, lends a vaguely dampening air to White Christmas, this latest stage retread of the 1954 Bing Crosby-Danny Kaye film that its beloved more for its songs, really, than for any inherent durability.The Dominion hosted a colourless iteration of this very title five years ago, with Aled Jones and Tom Chambers in the bromance-heavy central roles. The current upgrade of the material benefits from an altogether more appealing cast, headed by Danny Read more ...
David Nice
It took no time for Elena Ferrante's two Neapolitan friends to join the ranks of great literary creations: Lenù as successful writer-narrator, critical of her past ambivalence; Lila the unknowable fascinator, her brilliance often diverted into poisoned channels. Four volumes amounting to over 1500 pages offer a psychological complexity four acts of fast-moving theatre can't begin to match. In terms of a theatrical whistlestop tour, though, April De Angelis's adaptation and Melly Still's production - both intensively fine-tuned, I'm told, since the Rose Theatre Kingston run, making dazzing use Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Family dramas are a staple of British new writing, but as well as talking about our nearest and dearest, can they also say something about the wider society? The Arrival, by director turned playwright Bijan Sheibani, who won an Olivier award for Bola Agbaje's Gone Too Far! in 2008, has ambitions to be a study of masculinity in crisis. After all, Agbaje's play was about brothers, and both of his recent directing hits – The Brothers Size and Barber Shop Chronicles – were pungent with testosterone. His new one opens at the Bush Theatre, which is enjoying a great run of plays in new artistic Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
We all remember that moment when we walked through the back of the wardrobe: the heaviness of the fur coats, that first crunch of the snow underfoot. It’s an extraordinary moment of childhood that has also become too normal because shared memory has made it so. What does it really mean to walk through a door and emerge in another world entirely? That’s inevitably one of the questions involved in staging The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and Sally Cookson’s production rises magnificently to the challenge. Rae Smith’s thrilling design offers nothing as literal as a wooden cupboard Read more ...
David Nice
No Joan of Arc means no Henry VI Part One. France, where we left the victorious Henry V - the superb Sarah Amankwah, a shining light of this company - in the Globe's summer history plays, only figures briefly in the last act of a candelelit, intimate stepping-back to the more problematic saga. It's earlier in terms of composition - though it seems strange that people used to reject Shakespeare's authorship - but in terms of historic kingship actually shows how everything about England and its French posessions fell apart with the advent of the introverted Henry VI. Concentrating on the second Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
It’s bright, it’s brash, it’s a gazillion times camper than Christmas: but is it such stuff as theatrical hits are made on? If that misquotation is already making you cringe, then this glittery pop juggernaut probably isn’t for you – but it is, unashamedly, Shakespeare for the generation that grew up on TV talent shows. Created around the back catalogue of Swedish songwriter Max Martin, it’s a reworking of Romeo and Juliet that gives the tragic teenage heroine’s story an irreverent, 21st-century spin.The result is a jukebox musical with the broad humour and feelgood fairytale sentiment of a Read more ...
theartsdesk
Aladdin, Prince Edward Theatre ★★★ Disney's latest blockbuster film-turned-stage show remains airborne – justCome From Away, Phoenix Theatre ★★★★ 9/11-themed musical crosses the Atlantic, capacious heart intactDear Evan Hansen, Noël Coward Theatre ★★★★ A stirring new musical that tackles missed connections in the internet age will steal your heart. Until 2 MayEverybody's Talking About Jamie, Apollo Theatre ★★★★ Triumphant West End transfer for this big-hearted, inclusive and utterly joyful British musicalGhost Quartet, Boulevard Theatre ★★★★ Both mystical and alcoholic Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s Tony and Grammy Award-winning musical Dear Evan Hansen is an institution in the States, running on Broadway since 2016 and currently on its second year of a national tour. It also made a star of original leading man Ben Platt, now appearing in Netflix’s The Politician – and this long-awaited West End production could well do the same for the exceedingly talented 21-year-old Sam Tutty.Tutty plays the titular Evan, a 17-year-old high school senior suffering from debilitating social anxiety. His well-meaning, divorcée mother, Heidi (Rebecca Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Because he dramatised power, Shakespeare never really goes out of fashion. Treatments of his plays do though, and the RSC’s Measure for Measure, a transfer from Stratford set in turn-of-the-century Vienna, feels distinctly slack. The backdrop is supposedly a city filled with refugees, artists, political movers and shakers and members of the upper-class and demimonde. The arts and psychoanalysis are flourishing and social grey areas abound. But aside from design touches, little of this combustive social mix makes its way into the production. Psychological complexity already abounds and this Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
How do you begin to dramatise one of the most extraordinary conversations of the 20th century between two of its most charismatic and complex intellectuals? When the philosopher, and then First Secretary at the British Embassy in Moscow, Isaiah Berlin met the Leningrad poet Anna Akhmatova, it proved a transformational experience for both of them, though the political repercussions it had for Akhmatova were devastating. The playwright Olivia Olsen, whose passing physical resemblance to Akhmatova also allows her to bring her elegantly to life, has made a slightly curious decision. One of Read more ...
Jasper Rees
In Peru in 1985, Joe Simpson - then 25 - and his 21-year-old climbing partner Simon Yates were descending the remote Siula Grande, which was hard to get up but even harder to get down, when Simpson broke his leg. They both assumed it was a death sentence, but Yates gave him a couple of paracetamol, dug himself into a bucket seat in the snow and lowered the stricken Simpson down the mountain slope, paying out 300ft of rope, then climbing down and doing it again, and again, for hours.A blizzard blew in, Simpson was lowered over an overhanging ledge, and at that point the rope ran out. Dangling Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Theatre can touch thousands of lives. But can it compete with the success of a bestselling book? First published in 1988, mountaineer Joe Simpson's Touching the Void has apparently sold more than a million copies, and it's been translated into some 20 languages. It tells the adventure story of how he, and Simon Yates, climbed the Siula Grande peak in the Peruvian Andes in 1985. Last year, David Greig's stage adaptation of the book opened at the Bristol Old Vic, and then went on tour. Now the much-praised show comes into the West End, and it's an odd mix of the vertiginous and the banal.Set Read more ...