Theatre Reviews
Handbagged, Tricycle TheatreFriday, 04 October 2013
The life of Margaret Thatcher seems to draw sympathetic writers like wasps to a particularly sweet jam. In 2011, playwright and screenwriter Abi Morgan gave us a portrait of the first female prime minister in her film, The Iron Lady, and now Moira Buffini — whose film Tamara Drewe was a hit in 2010 — offers her take on the relationship between Britain’s top two women — Maggie and Elizabeth the Queen. Read more... |
All My Sons, Royal Exchange, ManchesterWednesday, 02 October 2013
The guilt of knowingly sending our sons to war with defective equipment and fatal results certainly resonates today. Who takes the blame? Do we get ministerial resignations or arms-dealers going to prison? Going back to post-World War II, this is the shocking dilemma that Arthur Miller deals with so harrowingly in All My Sons, bringing it home to each one of us by focusing on just one family. Read more... |
The Lyons, Menier Chocolate FactorySaturday, 28 September 2013
That slice of Broadway-upon-Southwark that is the Menier Chocolate Factory has a toxic treat in The Lyons, Nicky Silver's pitch-black and quintessentially New York comedy about a family so in love with truth-telling that they've all but forgotten how to live. Small wonder the cancer-ridden Lyons père (Nicholas Day, in blistering form) swears up a storm throughout the first act as he lies in hospital preparing to die. Read more... |
A Tale of Two Cities, King's Head TheatreSaturday, 28 September 2013
The opening of Charles Dickens's novel A Tale of Two Cities is among the most famous ever written: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…". If the publicity for this stage adaptation is to be believed, it is a scarcely less exalted addition to the mythology surrounding this novel. Read more... |
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Duchess TheatreThursday, 26 September 2013
Arturo Ui, king of the Chicago cabbage trade, is Brecht’s Richard III. Egad, he even speaks in iambic pentameters, with a fair few nods at Shakespeare, though a certain cowlick and moustache locate him firmly at the centre of the 20th century nightmare. Read more... |
Routes, Royal Court TheatreThursday, 26 September 2013
You could call it the iceberg syndrome. It’s a work of art that is a flash, a sliver or an imprint: think of a passport photograph, a cheap trinket or a half-finished graffiti. Yet beneath the simple image there is a world of pain. Rachel De-lahay’s new play, a follow up to her award-winning The Westbridge, offers snapshots of the great migrations of recent years, and slowly reveals the raw emotion of these simple tales. Read more... |
Much Ado About Nothing, Old VicFriday, 20 September 2013
“What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?” Surely never before has Benedick’s opening quip cut so close to the literal, nor drawn such a laugh from its audience. With a combined age of 158, the romantic leads in Mark Rylance’s Much Ado About Nothing take the current trend for an older pair of lovers to the extreme. Read more... |
The Lightning Child, Shakespeare's GlobeThursday, 19 September 2013
Having boundaries actually sets us free. So Neil Armstrong's wife argues. She is dogmatically keen to stop her husband rocketing off to the moon in the first scene of The Lightning Child – a groundbreaking show in so far as it's the first musical to premiere at Shakespeare's reconstructed wooden "O", opening last night. Armstrong (Harry Hepple in a space suit) does not agree with his spouse's imposed limits, however. A lunar voyage is, he says, his chance to become sublime. Read more... |
The Herd, Bush TheatreThursday, 19 September 2013
Once a staple of British drama, the middle-class family play has recently, after about a decade of being unfashionable, made a remarkable comeback. This current example is the playwriting debut of the award-winning actor Rory Kinnear, a star of stage (Hamlet, Othello), television (Southcliffe) and screen (Skyfall). But although it is an accomplished effort, there is something disappointingly déjà vu about this reunion play. Read more... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Noël Coward TheatreWednesday, 18 September 2013
It’s a nothing of a line – “Hail mortal” – spoken by nobody important, but in Michael Grandage’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream it becomes the basis for an entire concept. A trivial bit of linguistic sleight of hand turns it into “Inhale mortal” and there you have it, a fairy troupe high on waccy baccy and the most sexually and socially anarchic of Shakespeare’s comedies transformed into the toothless fantasy of a bunch of New Age stoners. 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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