Theatre Reviews
Peter Pan, Barbican TheatreFriday, 14 May 2010
“All over the world children are safe – but not here, not on my ship.” Despite its wild pack of homeless children, a flesh-eating crocodile and some of the most gut-punching depictions of parental grief in all literature, J M Barrie’s Peter Pan has somehow been consigned to the theatrical remainders bin, its old-fashioned sentimentality acceptable really only at Christmas, or in pantomime form. Read more...
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A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky, Lyric HammersmithWednesday, 12 May 2010
During the past week, as the first coalition government for 70 years has been formed in the UK, we were frequently warned that failure to find a solution might be the end of the world. It’s a solid, if usually over-used, metaphor. But what would happen if we really did face the end of life on Earth? You know, the real thing: a total catastrophe — the implosion of the universe — which we could predict, but not prevent? That is the premise of this unusual new play, a joint effort by playwrights... Read more... |
Love the Sinner, National TheatreTuesday, 11 May 2010
Religion, and a sense of the revival of belief, is such an important part of everyday life in the wider population that it is one of the stranger facts about contemporary theatre that so few plays tackle this subject. In fact, the last new British play to do this at the National was David Hare’s Racing Demon in 1990. Now, 20 years later, the same Cottesloe theatre space bears witness to a new play, which opened last night, about the same subject. Read more... |
Eurydice, Young Vic TheatreTuesday, 11 May 2010
Since Eurydice was the ill-fated wife of Orpheus, master musician, it’s not inappropriate that this reworking of the classical myth by the award-winning US writer Sarah Ruhl should be so much like a song. Her language has a kind of blunt lyricism, and the action of her drama, with its recurrent waves of water imagery, has a vivid, surreal fluidity that eddies and flows like an elusive melody. Sometimes the playfulness is beguiling; sometimes it merely seems arch. And in Bijan Sheibani’s stark... Read more... |
Debbie Reynolds - Alive and Fabulous, Apollo TheatreThursday, 29 April 2010
Let me confess immediately: Debbie Reynolds didn't mean a great deal to me beyond Singin' in the Rain, warbling "Tammy" and Being Princess Leia's Mother (and believe me, she gets plenty of comic mileage out of the Carrie Fisher connection). But I knew she had a fabulous Hollywood history, and having been smitten by old troupers Elaine Stritch and Barbara Cook in London, I wondered if she could match them. Read more... |
Women Beware Women, National TheatreTuesday, 27 April 2010
The recent fuss about British culture being anti-Catholic just because some civil servant wrote a spoof memo satirising the Pope’s upcoming visit may have been overblown, but it is certainly true that, in the past, Italy was a byword for rank corruption. To doughty English Protestants, Rome was a stew of sin and Italians were Machiavellian plotters and idolators. Read more... |
Would Like to Meet, Barbican CentreMonday, 26 April 2010
Is there such a thing as iPod theatre for a new digital generation? Given the enormous boom in site-specific performances and the growing use of electronic gadgets, the answer seems like yes, and this new show by non zero one - a group of recent graduates from Royal Holloway, University of London - is billed as an interrogation of the “new methods of communication that are designed to connect us over huge distances and in all scenarios”. An example of participant theatre, the 50-minute piece,... Read more... |
Pressure Drop, Wellcome CollectionMonday, 26 April 2010
Four podia occupy the Wellcome Collection’s temporary gallery space. Three are stage sets: a living room, a pub and a funeral parlour, all recognisable as “typical” working class - in fact, the living room might have been based on Pauline Fowler’s dog-eared front room. The fourth, placed further back, is where Billy Bragg will intercut the dramatic action with a new set of songs with his three-piece band, plus engage in a bit of ad-lib banter that will direct the audience back and forth across... Read more... |
Pictures from an Exhibition, Sadler's WellsSunday, 25 April 2010
I’ve seen raping Popes, I’ve seen more naked guys dancing with waggling penises than I can count, I’ve seen naked breasts on dancing girls for what feels like all my adult life. But a man with a blood-stained prosthetic cock that looks like a baby’s bottle? A teacher munching a testicle off his pupil? Well, lor' love a duck. Read more... |
Ruined, Almeida TheatreThursday, 22 April 2010
Telling the truth about women in a war zone usually hits hardest through one of two means: clear reportage that presents the facts, or the devastating narrative of a survivor. Making a drama out of atrocity gets harder, though it's an age-old tradition, which is maybe why directors usually prefer to draw parallels through updating Euripides or Shakespeare. Lynn Nottage's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, fired by interviews with women in the Democratic Republic of Congo and premiered last year in... Read more... |
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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.
Book by 30 September and get tickets from £15*
with no booking fee.
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