Theatre Reviews
Periplum 451, Preston Barracks, BrightonMonday, 18 May 2015
Free events at celebratory citywide occasions such as the Brighton Festival are a mixed blessing. Unfortunately, the fact they’re free means we’re supposed to be thankful even when they’re actually a bit ramshackle and rubbish. We are British, after all, and “putting up with” is a national characteristic. Read more... |
High Society, Old Vic TheatreFriday, 15 May 2015
It took approximately 30 years for High Society to first make its laborious transition from screen to stage and there are good reasons for that. The indelible impression left by the movie and its star, Grace Kelly, was undoubtedly the biggest, and before that, of course, was the source play (The Philadelphia Story) and the equally indelible movie made of that. Read more... |
Skin in Flames, Park TheatreFriday, 15 May 2015
The premise might seem familiar: a famous photograph, taken by a Western journalist in fraught military and political circumstances, has repercussions many years later. The subject of the picture, a representative of an entirely different culture from that of the photographer, is anonymous, but the image is familiar all over the world. Attempting to bridge the gulf between subject and journalist leads only to further bitter misunderstanding. Read more... |
Death of a Salesman, Noël Coward TheatreThursday, 14 May 2015
We’ve not been short of memorable London productions of Arthur Miller’s best known works. Ivo van Hove’s triple Olivier award-winning A View from the Bridge, which transferred to the Wyndham’s Theatre from the Young Vic earlier this year, and the Old Vic’s The Crucible, directed last year by Yaël Farber, were two exceptional productions. And now we have the seminal play of the 20th century. Read more... |
The Beautiful Cosmos of Ivor Cutler, Theatre Royal, BrightonThursday, 14 May 2015
The author of such inimitably evocative melancholia as “If All The Cornflakes” and the many episodes of “Life In A Scotch Sitting Room”, Scottish poet and songwriter Ivor Cutler had a stellar cult following for many decades until his death in 2006. This wonderfully fluid ensemble show, making its English debut at the Brighton Festival, was devised by Scottish group Vanishing Point in association with The National Theatre of Scotland. Read more... |
Communicating Doors, Menier Chocolate FactoryThursday, 14 May 2015
Genre mixing is a perilous business. Successful hybrids use duelling forms to re-contextualise or revolutionise; others wind up fatally diluting their disparate elements. Ayckbourn’s 1994 sci-fi comedy thriller – featuring, at its nadir, a farcical defenestration mistaken for a lesbian sex romp – falls into the latter camp. Read more... |
The Father, Tricycle TheatreWednesday, 13 May 2015
André is losing time. It’s not just his perennially mislaid watch, but whole hours, weeks, years. Is he still living in his Paris flat, or did he move in with his daughter Anne? Is she married, divorced, leaving the country with a new boyfriend? And why does that nurse she’s forced on him – the third one, or is it the first? – remind him so strongly of his other daughter, whose unexplained absence is just one of the memories slipping through his fingers like sand? Read more... |
Hay Fever, Duke of York's TheatreTuesday, 12 May 2015
"I sometimes wish we were more normal," sighs one of the adult Bliss children in Noel Coward’s country-house comedy. But it’s her family’s self-dramatising abnormality that provides both the froth and the substance of this early play, written in a blaze of youthful elan over three days in 1924. Read more... |
Beyond Bollywood, London PalladiumTuesday, 12 May 2015
It seems almost redundant to critique a show that so ably – if unconsciously – critiques itself. “The power of Bollywood is it’s unique!” cries one character, before squandering that uniqueness in tired East/West fusion; "Dance should have feeling!” proclaims another as he launches into a propulsive routine as far removed from the emotional narrative as London is from Mumbai. Read more... |
The Angry Brigade, Bush TheatreFriday, 08 May 2015
Today, terrorism means killing as many innocent people as possible. Fear is created by completely random attacks, so that no one feels safe. But there was a time, in the past, when political anarchists would focus their attacks on selected targets and avoid civilian casualties. For a year, begining in August 1970, the Angry Brigade brought armed struggle to Britain, setting off some 25 bombs, mainly aimed at the property of the rich and powerful (although one person was slightly injured). Read more... |
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Advertising feature
★★★★★
‘A compulsive, involving, emotionally stirring evening – theatre’s answer to a page-turner.’
The Observer, Kate Kellaway
Direct from a sold-out season at Kiln Theatre the five star, hit play, The Son, is now playing at the Duke of York’s Theatre for a strictly limited season.
★★★★★
‘This final part of Florian Zeller’s trilogy is the most powerful of all.’
The Times, Ann Treneman
Written by the internationally acclaimed Florian Zeller (The Father, The Mother), lauded by The Guardian as ‘the most exciting playwright of our time’, The Son is directed by the award-winning Michael Longhurst.
Book by 30 September and get tickets from £15*
with no booking fee.
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