Theatre Reviews

The Shape of Things, Soho Gallery

Fisun Güner Wednesday, 02 February 2011

Antonioni Project, Barbican Theatre

Carole Woddis Wednesday, 02 February 2011

Putting the mic into Michelangelo Antonioni: Marieke Heebink as Lidia and Hans Kesting as Giovanni

Back in the early 1960s, anyone with half a curious cultural brain in their heads would take themselves off to small fleapit cinemas like The Academy or the Classic in Oxford Street (now defunct). There you could catch the latest European art film. And at one of these I remember seeing Italian director Antonioni’s La Notte with Jeanne Moreau and Marcello Mastroianni. Such was its impact that neither I nor the flat mates I was with were able to utter a word until we reached...

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Greenland, National Theatre

aleks Sierz Tuesday, 01 February 2011

British theatre prides itself on being contemporary, up to date - in a word, hot. So it’s odd that, over the past decade, there have been so few plays about climate change.

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The Cherry Orchard, Sovremennik, Noël Coward Theatre

Matt Wolf Friday, 28 January 2011

Plays these days come not in single spies but in battalions of two, whether you're talking The Master Builder, King Lear or The Cherry Orchard, the last of which closes the visiting Sovremennik Russian...

King Lear, RSC, Roundhouse

james Woodall Thursday, 27 January 2011

But this comes at the expense of scale, both in characterisation - Jacobi is also simply too feathery - and in terms of space and time. We don't feel the outdoors at the Donmar, ever see and hear boorish Lear's knights, properly sense the passage of years from Cordelia's banishment to her return, or suffer the weight of battle.

Three Sisters, Sovremennik, Noël Coward Theatre

David Nice Tuesday, 25 January 2011

Anyone who's imbibed the common wisdom that Russians play Chekhov for the comedy - one eye wet, the other dry and smiling - might have been alarmed to find the Moscow Sovremennik Theatre's second London offering so doomy and subdued. And the more subdued it got, the more the majority of the company went in for what's become its trademark mumbling.

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Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales, Lyric Hammersmith

Sam Marlowe Tuesday, 25 January 2011

The spinning roulette wheel, the revolver, the devil’s mask, and above all that lissom semi-naked female gyrating in silhouette against flickering infernal flames: we all remember the opening titles to Tales of the Unexpected, which made its first TV appearance in 1979.

Little Platoons, Bush Theatre

aleks Sierz Monday, 24 January 2011

The second play in this venue’s ambitious Schools mini-season is the first drama to tackle the currently contentious subject of Free Schools. While the earlier play, John Donnelly’s The Knowledge, was a powerful account of how a young teacher is blooded in her encounters with a group of unruly kids, the second, by Steve Waters, focuses more on parents, and shows how a fortysomething teacher, Rachel, joins a group of middle-class west Londoners in order to set up a Free School.

Less Than Kind, Jermyn Street Theatre

alexandra Coghlan Sunday, 23 January 2011

“There’s no situation in the world that can’t be passed off with small talk,” claims hostess extraordinaire Olivia Brown in Terence Rattigan’s Less Than Kind. It’s a maxim that could well serve as Rattigan’s theatrical epitaph, the philosophy that allows him to smuggle desperation, frustration and steel-capped social critique in amongst the silk peignoirs and smoking jackets of his drama.

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Into the Whirlwind, Sovremennik, Noël Coward Theatre

David Nice Friday, 21 January 2011

Tradition has often bedded down very comfortably in the Russian performing arts, which ought to be an asset in the current vortex but brings mixed blessings. Detailed ensemble work, the Moscow Sovremennik Theatre's strongest asset, takes time to develop, yet actors with roles for life may be slow to yield to fresh blood.

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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.

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