Theatre Reviews

The Rattigan Enigma, BBC Four

Adam Sweeting Friday, 29 July 2011

In a recent article, David Hare complained about “a national festival of reaction” in the arts, exemplified by such supposedly Establishment-leaning works as The King’s Speech and Downton Abbey. His real target was Terence Rattigan, currently being hailed in many quarters as a national theatrical treasure enjoying a renaissance in this centenary year of his birth.

Rattigan's Nijinsky/ The Deep Blue Sea, Chichester Festival Theatre

Ismene Brown Tuesday, 26 July 2011

Terence Rattigan’s art of concealment is what makes The Deep Blue Sea so rich and true an observation of the way people behave. Being deprived of his concealing mask is the crucial idea of the interesting new play partnering it at Chichester to mark Rattigan's centenary: Nicholas Wright’s Rattigan’s Nijinsky, which incorporates an unproduced Rattigan TV script into a drama of why it was not produced.

theartsdesk MOT: Anne Boleyn, Globe Theatre

james Woodall Monday, 25 July 2011

In the spirit in which these reviews are intended, I can report that all the bits of Anne Boleyn are working. The chrome is gleaming; all cylinders are firing. It’ll be good – roadworthy, Globe-worthy – for another year at least.

Mongrel Island, Soho Theatre

aleks Sierz Thursday, 21 July 2011

After hours: Robyn Addison in ‘Mongrel Island’

Imaginative plays that explore the expanses of inner space are all the rage at the Soho Theatre this summer. First there was a superb revival of Anthony Neilson’s Realism, which puts on stage the thoughts of one man during a solitary Saturday, then there was Lou Ramsden’s Hundreds and Thousands, which used a horror-film aesthetic to explore female...

Loyalty, Hampstead Theatre

aleks Sierz Thursday, 21 July 2011

Can journalists write good plays? Sarah Helm has been a Washington correspondent for The Independent during the first Gulf War in 1990, reported from Baghdad in the mid-1990s, and was based in Jerusalem for three years. So her debut play about the Iraq War, which stars Maxine Peake and opened last night, is grounded on a career of watching the Middle East.

Ghost the Musical, Piccadilly Theatre

Matt Wolf Tuesday, 19 July 2011

Death means learning to say "I love you" in the woozy world of Ghost, the 1990 film that has become a breathlessly vapid musical sure to keep hen parties happy for some while to come (especially now that Dirty Dancing has closed and Flashdance barely got going). The material is cheesy, often defiantly so, and it's here been polished to...

Comment

A Woman Killed With Kindness, National Theatre

David Nice Tuesday, 19 July 2011

Can Thomas Heywood's prosy Jacobean drama of country folk hunting, card playing, screwing around, sliding aristocratically into debt and harrowing one another to death translate successfully to the aftermath of the First World War? Only, perhaps, as edgy semi-farce, towards which Katie Mitchell's nervy, twilit production sometimes veers, not often intentionally. Acting to make you half believe in impossible characters might have saved it.

theartsdesk MOT: Yes, Prime Minister, Apollo Theatre

aleks Sierz Monday, 18 July 2011

Power play: Richard McCabe and Simon Williams in ‘Yes Prime Minister’

Situation comedy relies on strong brands, and some ideas just run and run. Yes, Prime Minister is the stage version of the long-running 1980s BBC television shows Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, which memorably starred Nigel Hawthorne and Paul Eddington. First seen at Chichester last year, the play now returns, with a new...

In the Penal Colony, Young Vic Theatre

aleks Sierz Thursday, 14 July 2011

Kafka is a bit of a stranger to British stages at the moment, but elsewhere he remains a strong presence. In his short parables, as well as in his classic novels such as The Trial, he conveys a deep understanding of the human condition. But while European postmodern culture might shrug off his insights, he is still close to the heart of some Middle Eastern theatre-makers.

Lay Me Down Softly, Tricycle Theatre

aleks Sierz Tuesday, 12 July 2011

Travelling, gentle man: Michael O’Hagan in ‘Lay Me Down Softly’

Until quite recently, plays about sport were as rare as British Wimbledon winners. Then, over the past couple of years, came a whole slew of plays about various sports, led by punchy stories about boxing, from Roy Williams’s Sucker Punch to Bryony Lavery’s ...

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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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