Theatre Reviews

Shakespeare Double Bill, Propeller, Hampstead Theatre

Matt Wolf Sunday, 26 June 2011

Stealing a march, and then some, on Kevin Spacey: Richard Clothier plays Richard III

As further proof that Shakespeare plays come these days not as single spies but in battalions , the London leg of the all-male Propeller ensemble's lengthy tour has pitched up...

Doctor Faustus, Globe Theatre

alexandra Coghlan Thursday, 23 June 2011

Faustus (Paul Hilton) gets to grips with some of Mephistopheles's fleshier spirits

There be dragons aplenty, angels, demons and ghastly creatures both fleshy and feathered in the Globe Theatre’s inaugural production of Doctor Faustus. Christopher Marlowe’s take on the familiar Faust legend, bold in its religious content, was a controversial hit of its day, but the play’s almost medieval apposition of high thinking and knockabout farce by no means guarantees it success in the contemporary theatre. If...

Being Shakespeare, Trafalgar Studios

alexandra Coghlan Wednesday, 22 June 2011

All the world's a stage: Simon Callow and Jonathan Bate bring Shakespeare to life

There’s a lovely moment in A Midsummer Night’s Dream where Peter Quince assigns roles to his company of rude mechanicals. Unsatisfied with the part of the hero, Bottom interrupts, insisting he be allowed to play not only Pyramus but heroine Thisbe too, as well of course as the murderous lion. It’s hard not to see just a little of Bottom’s eagerness in Simon Callow’s...

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Theatre Royal Haymarket

Matt Wolf Tuesday, 21 June 2011

Lightning hasn't quite struck twice at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, where Trevor Nunn's dazzling reclamation of early Terence Rattigan (Flare Path) has been followed by the same director's transfer from Chichester of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard's first play. How does this 1966 gloss on Hamlet by way of Beckett hold up today? Engagingly enough, not least when its two tireless leads are in full existentialist flow.

The Flying Karamazov Brothers, Vaudeville Theatre

Ismene Brown Monday, 20 June 2011

The Flying Karamazov Brothers: The same routines for 30 years have done them no harm whatever

The Flying Karamazov Brothers give a new meaning to the word “practised”. Their first stage show in 1981 was called Juggling and Cheap Theatrics - a smart title that they could have kept for the show they bring to London’s West End, largely made of routines that this celebrated US comedy-juggling act have been doing for decades. It’s weird to see in YouTubes of their early performances some of the material I watched last night at the Vaudeville. Still, the fact is those old...

The Infernal Comedy, Barbican Hall

Igor Toronyi-Lalic Saturday, 18 June 2011

The Barbican committed a grave sin last night. It forgot that people matter more than art. That their responsibility to the families of those who Jack Unterweger (the subject of John Malkovich's music drama, The Infernal Comedy) murdered trumps any interest in the dramatic potential of Unterweger's bizarre life. However constraining to the autonomy of creativity this may be, these are the rules of common decency.

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Where’s My Seat?, Bush Theatre

aleks Sierz Friday, 17 June 2011

Sharp satire in an empty room: Nina Sosanya in ‘Where’s My Seat?’

They say that moving home is always traumatic. So the Bush Theatre in west London must be feeling a wee bit fragile because it has recently upped sticks and taken up residence in the Old Shepherds Bush Library building just around the corner from its historic but rather leaky former home. Yet it’s typical of this spunky venue that it celebrates the first stages of the move with not only a trilogy of short plays, but also with an invitation to the audience to comment on its new space.

Betrayal, Comedy Theatre

Fisun Güner Friday, 17 June 2011

This is a play that begins after the end of an affair, and threads its precise, forensic way back to the very beginning of it. As the lovers are awkwardly reunited after two years, the theme of deceit as a web of competing and ambiguous claims is firmly established. Jerry, a literary agent, has learned that Emma, the wife of his oldest and dearest friend, with whom he had an affair for seven years, may now be having an adulterous relationship with one of his writers.

Emperor and Galilean, National Theatre

Sam Marlowe Thursday, 16 June 2011

Miracles and omens, blind faith and free will: Ibsen’s epic 1873 drama sinks its teeth into some tough, meaty themes.

Lend Me a Tenor - The Musical, Gielgud Theatre

David Nice Wednesday, 15 June 2011

Yes he can: Damian Humbley's Max Garber finds the tenor within while Michael Matus's Tito Merelli leaps for joy

Acid prophecies of this show’s swift demise, as with that of the great Italian tenor whose supposed transformation from il stupendo to il stifferino results in the debut of a surpise new Otello at the "Cleveland Grand Opera", turn out to be greatly exaggerated. Allora, the tunes and the lyrics aren’t prime cut, but it’s slickly done, strongly cast and contains enough frothy set pieces to earn its salt. And any musical which has stylish fun with both the most...

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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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