Theatre Reviews

Wet Weather Cover, King's Head Theatre

Sheila Johnston Thursday, 28 January 2010

Unfair weather friends: Steve Furst (left) and Michael Brandon

"Plays about cinema tend to be written by people who have done some movies, come back and filled their fountain pens from their spleen," the Oscar-nominated screenwriter Larry Gelbart once told me. David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow is probably the best-known example, followed by such works as Christopher Hampton's Tales From Hollywood, Martin Crimp's The Treatment and, most recently, last week's ...

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The Whisky Taster, Bush Theatre

aleks Sierz Wednesday, 27 January 2010

Synaesthesia is a tricky beast. It’s basically a neurological condition which condemns those afflicted with it to a life in which words evoke colours, and emotions can be experienced as colour. Sometimes it is almost playful, with the mere names of the days of the week evoking tonal sensations; at other times it is intensely painful, with the mere glimpse of a buzzy pattern causing dizziness or strong feelings conjuring up great blasts of colour, an unbearable onslaught of confusion and...

The Little Dog Laughed, Garrick Theatre

Matt Wolf Thursday, 21 January 2010

Tamsin Greig takes her mighty stage chops to a new level in The Little Dog Laughed, a minor Broadway comedy that gets a major star performance from Greig in her first West End role since God of Carnage.

Progress, Union Theatre

aleks Sierz Thursday, 21 January 2010

Sexual politics has always been fertile (oops) ground for comedy, and Doug Lucie’s vigorous satire — whose 1984 premiere starred Lindsay Duncan, David Bamber and Kevin Elyot — is here given a revival on the London fringe. We are in Kilburn during the Thatcher era, and the local trendy lefties have turned inward.

Enron, Noël Coward Theatre

aleks Sierz Wednesday, 20 January 2010

Crisis makes people hungry. In the case of the banking collapse, this seems to take the form of an ignoble itch for revenge, and a more laudable hunger for knowledge. What exactly happened and what went wrong? As Enron, Lucy Prebble's wonderful play about a previous financial scandal, roared into the Royal Court after its sell-out run at Chichester, there was time to reflect on just why this play has been such a huge success. And by success, I really mean success.

Six Degrees of Separation, Old Vic

Sheila Johnston Wednesday, 20 January 2010

John Guare's brittle satire, first produced in New York in 1990, was propelled by two phenomena. The first was a certain David Hampton, a con man who persuaded a suite of gullible Manhattan socialites that he was Sidney Poitier's son (and who, when Guare's play became a hit, pestered the playwright for a cut of the profits).

Ockham's Razor, The Mill, Linbury Studio Theatre

Ismene Brown Tuesday, 19 January 2010

The Mill: 'an excellent corporate teamwork video let loose in too large a theatre opportunity'

Call me old-fashioned, but when a bunch of people have trained in circus and French mime theatre, I’m expecting to be astonished, thoroughly surprised, and occasionally to feel the sweat breaking out on my palms. Can one enjoy circus skills without fear and awe being supplied? The aerialist theatre troupe Ockham’s Razor provide a sensational hamster-wheel set for their new show, The Mill, powered by human hamsters, but don’t serve up physical jinks of matching sensationalism. I grew up...

The Caretaker, Trafalgar Studios

william Ward Tuesday, 19 January 2010

It is almost an article of faith that over the 50 years since its first production, The Caretaker has become a classic of the British theatrical canon.

BlackSkyWhite, Institute of Contemporary Arts

Ismene Brown Sunday, 17 January 2010

I whizzed back to my previous reviews of BlackSkyWhite when I got home last night to check how much I’d enjoyed them in the past, so disappointing was their offering for the London International Mime Festival, USSR Was Here.

The Rivals, Southwark Playhouse

james Woodall Saturday, 16 January 2010

How to be silly in Sheridan's most famous play: Celia Imrie and Harry Hadden-Paton in The Rivals

'Tis the season to be jolly. Or, if you're a small theatre and choose not to stoop to panto, time perhaps to be a little light, anyway, tickle some tastebuds. Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals (1775) is his best-known play, followed by The School for Scandal and The Critic. In his early twenties when he wrote The Rivals (and then, after its first London outing was howled down, rewrote it), Sheridan spawned a skittish, playful, self-consciously silly...

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