Theatre Reviews

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Lyric Hammersmith

Carole Woddis Monday, 20 February 2012

Four people walked out of Filter’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream last night. The rest stayed to cheer an hour and 20 minutes of fast and furious filleted Shakespeare from a company which has made its name merging visual and musical forms, reinventing classics and creating new devised pieces.

Comment

Singin' in the Rain, Palace Theatre

Sheila Johnston Thursday, 16 February 2012

Who’d have thought that a long-gone turning point in the story of cinema would be the high-concept theme of the 2011/2012 season? Hard on the heels of The Artist, the lauded silent movie in which a stubborn star can’t, or won’t, make the transition to sound, comes all all-singing, all-dancing treatment of the very same era and story in Singin’ in the Rain.

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King Lear, Tobacco Factory, Bristol

mark Kidel Thursday, 16 February 2012

King Lear was the play that launched Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory 12 years ago. The company, under the inspired artistic direction of Andrew Hilton, opened its 2012 season with a brand new production that displays all the qualities that have made this remarkable company unique in Britain.

Angus, Thongs and Even More Snogging, West Yorkshire Playhouse

graham Rickson Thursday, 16 February 2012

As an evening out, Angus is about as nutritious as the midget gems dispensed by one of the heroine’s confidantes (and offered in heaps to the audience waiting in the foyer). Directed by Ryan McBryde, this stage adaptation of Louise Rennison’s chirpy bestsellers just about hangs together, even though the moments where it succeeds most effectively are the points which most explicitly reference other coming-of-age narratives.

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The Recruiting Officer, Donmar Warehouse

alexandra Coghlan Wednesday, 15 February 2012

Drum rolls, fiddles and flutes were all in action last night at the Donmar Warehouse to herald the beginning of an era. After ten successful years under the direction of Michael Grandage, it was the turn of the theatre’s new Artistic Director Josie Rourke to step forward and lay her claim to the West End’s most intimate space.

Absent Friends, Harold Pinter Theatre

Sam Marlowe Friday, 10 February 2012

One look at Tom Scutt’s meticulous design for Jeremy Herrin’s production of this savage Alan Ayckbourn comedy, and you know you’re in the 1970s. Wood veneer and faux leather lend a shiny, wipe-clean surface to this desolately unhappy home, where everything is in shades of brown: beige carpets, beige walls, beige lives.

Mathematics of the Heart, Theatre 503

aleks Sierz Friday, 10 February 2012

Science rocks. In the theatre, this is a subject that offers to provide powerful experiments in metaphor. Most recently, in Nick Payne’s Constellations - and most classically in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen and Charlotte Jones’s Humble Boy - the world of quantum mechanics, cosmology and chaos theory suggests ideas about the randomness of our daily lives. And there is nothing quite so random as love.

Master Class, Vaudeville Theatre

David Benedict Wednesday, 08 February 2012

A fired-up Maria Callas (Tyne Daly) is hectoring a student. “I don’t want it done like me, I want it done like Verdi!” “With music?” enquires the nervy pianist. “Yes,” she snaps, “With music: this isn’t a play.” Quite. What exactly is Terrence McNally’s Master Class? A classy version of “Tonight, Matthew, I’m going to be Maria Callas”? Yes, but no. There’s impersonation, but not of her singing.

The Devil and Mr Punch, Improbable, The Pit

Judith Flanders Wednesday, 08 February 2012

Dickens has been getting all the press in his 200th year, but there is another performer, even older, who celebrates: in 2012, Mr Punch, of Punch and Judy fame, is 350 years old, and Improbable, in revitalising the old showman’s tradition, has given him the best birthday present that can be imagined.

Sex with a Stranger, Trafalgar Studios

aleks Sierz Wednesday, 08 February 2012

Twentysomething emotional confusion is fertile ground for drama. In this new play, Stefan Golaszewski - writer of the BBC Three sitcom Him & Her and star of BBC Four’s Cowards - explores the situation of a young man who doesn’t really know what he wants. Well, except for lots of sex of course. With lots of different women. Or so it might seem. But does he really?

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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.

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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.

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