Theatre Reviews
Julius Caesar, Shakespeare’s GlobeThursday, 03 July 2014
For those who believe spin is if not a modern invention, then at least a modern fascination, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar offers a sharp rejoinder. Interpretation, manipulation and persuasion pervade this incisive drama about the assassination of the Roman ruler, with the company donning layers of pretence as actors playing politicians whose lives unspool upon a stage; those who do not choose their lines with care are doomed to failure. Read more... |
Forbidden Broadway, Menier Chocolate FactoryThursday, 03 July 2014
Since 1982 it’s been open season on the great and the good of Broadway musicals. It was in that very year that a chap called Gerard Alessandrini created Forbidden Broadway and from the hitherto innocuous sidelines of the fringe set out to cut any and everything with ideas above its station down to size. No show, no star was off limits. It was all good clean fun (sort of) but a sense of humour among those targeted was certainly recommended. Read more... |
Wonderland, Hampstead TheatreWednesday, 02 July 2014
When, before the great miners’ strike of 1984-85, Britain still had a coal industry, the miner was at the centre of a never-ending class war: you saw him either as an honest proletarian, in the vanguard of the struggle for better pay and conditions, or as a uppity worker, whose union held the country to ransom. Since the dismantling of the coal industry, an element of sentiment has entered the equation. Read more... |
Great Britain, National TheatreTuesday, 01 July 2014
The National Theatre delayed the opening of this play about newspapers for two weeks as it waited for the results of the phone-hacking trial. Is this what a tabloid would call “legal health and safety gone mad” – or what a broadsheet would characterise as “a sensible precaution”? Either way, in the wake of last week’s verdict on former News of the Screws editor Andy Coulson, who was found guilty of phone hacking, Richard Bean’s new play is certainly timely. Read more... |
Mametz, National Theatre WalesSaturday, 28 June 2014
Mametz Wood was the objective of the 38th Welsh Division during the First Battle of the Somme in World War One. Numerous failed attempts to capture the wood were made, during which much Welsh blood was spilt. Mametz therefore holds a great deal of significance for the Welsh and their contribution to the First World War. Read more... |
Carousel, Arcola TheatreFriday, 27 June 2014
How do you solve a problem like a musical? Rodgers and Hammerstein's ambitious Carousel seems tailor-made for expansive venues like the National Theatre, where Nicholas Hytner memorably revived this show in 1992: diminutive spaces need not apply. But conventional wisdom gets a robust refutation from Morphic Graffiti's reimagining of the 1943 classic at east London's intimate Arcola, proving that, with creative thinking, small venues can pack a mighty punch. Read more... |
Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act, Jermyn Street TheatreThursday, 26 June 2014
For a play that involves a lot of movement, it is the freeze-frame stillnesses in Athol Fugard’s Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act that linger before the eyes once it is over. Six times bright photographic flashes capture the two protagonists, trapping them, their illicit affair, and their shame, in our gaze for an endless moment. Read more... |
Idomeneus, Gate TheatreWednesday, 25 June 2014
Let's say Greek tragedies exist in a multiverse where the same stories play out simultaneously in thousands of ways. And let's say we're given free rein to argue over those stories, debate their morals and characters and disagree fundamentally over the story arc itself. This is what the German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig explores in his take on the Greek general Idomeneus, who led the Cretan armies to Troy and also inspired a Mozart opera (Idomeneo). Read more... |
The Valley of Astonishment, Young VicTuesday, 24 June 2014
“If we go to the theatre, it’s because we want to be surprised, even amazed.” Peter Brook’s programme note for The Valley of Astonishment stresses emotion and sensation above all things. How curious then that the play itself should be so cold, so cerebral a thing. Read more... |
Adler & Gibb, Royal Court TheatreThursday, 19 June 2014
Theatre-maker Tim Crouch has a thing about art. One of his plays, ENGLAND, was performed in art galleries across the world; another was called An Oak Tree, after the 1973 conceptual art piece by Michael Craig-Martin. In fact, Crouch even looks like an arty type. Now, in his latest production, he tells a story about two fictional artists: Janet Adler and her lover Margaret Gibb. But, really, his main theme, as ever, is the relationship between art and reality. Read more... |
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★★★★★
‘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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