fri 29/03/2024

Arcola

Don't Destroy Me, Arcola Theatre review - a theatre history curio

British Theatre abounds in forgotten writers. And in ones whose early work is too rarely revived. One such is Michael Hastings, best known for Tom & Viv, his 1984 biographical drama about TS Eliot and his wife Vivienne, so in theory it’s great...

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Under the Black Rock, Arcola Theatre review - political thriller turns soapy

“Darkly comic thrillers” (as they like to say) set in Ireland tracking how families, or quasi-families, fall apart under pressure are very much in vogue just now. Whether The Banshees of Inisherin will garner the Oscars haul it hardly deserves...

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Dinner with Groucho, Arcola Theatre review - often opaque

The set at the Arcola for Frank McGuinness’s Dinner with Groucho naturally features a table with two place settings and a backdrop of clouds in a blue sky. Overhead are pendant globe lights that will transform into stars. But the floor is a key...

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The Dance of Death, Arcola Theatre review - hate sustains a marriage in new version of Strindberg classic

Rebecca Lenkiewicz's adaptation of August Strindberg's 1900 paean to the power of loathing over loving uses the now familiar trick of dressing characters in period detail while giving them the full range of the 21st century's argot of disdain and...

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The Daughter-in-Law, Arcola Theatre review - searing simplicity

There’s a stark power to Jack Gamble’s production of DH Lawrence’s The Daughter-in-Law, which has transferred to the Arcola’smain stage after an acclaimed opening run in the venue’s downstairs studio last May. It still plays with a concentrated...

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Stop and Search, Arcola Theatre review - a murky view of modern-day Britain

A road tunnel through the Alps, stretching underneath Mont Blanc: Tel (Shaun Mason) is ploughing home to London in a borrowed Merc, strung out and sleepless and having been to see his other girl in Monte Carlo. The Arcola Theatre premiere of Stop...

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Thebes Land, Arcola Theatre - meta-theatre at its most thrilling

Thebes Land returns to the Arcola Theatre as part of the wider CASA Latin American Theatre Festival, following a short 2016 run that resulted in an Off West End Award, or Offie, for Best Production. Director Daniel Goldman's pinpoint translation of...

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Richard III review - Greg Hicks gruesomely impressive as power-crazed ruler

There may never have been a time when Shakespeare’s Richard III did not have contemporary relevance, but surely never more than it does right now. And it’s to the credit of director Mehmet Ergen that this production doesn’t go to town on it, but...

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First Person: 'Schizophrenia is still a taboo subject'

On 10 October 2016, World Mental Health Day, the team of Belarus Free Theatre came back together to start the final stages of production for Tomorrow I Was Always a Lion, a new theatre show based on Arnhild Lauveng’s autobiographical book. Arnhild...

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The Sugar-Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie, Arcola Theatre

The playwright Anders Lustgarten has spent a considerable chunk of his life reading and writing and thinking about China, and clearly wants to set a few points straight. Tired of the persistent Western view of that country and its people as...

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CD: Yeti Lane - L'Aurore

It's been a quite while since 2012's critically acclaimed album The Echo Show. In that time, Parisian psych duo Yeti Lane have been backing band for Can legend Damo Suzuki, played with the fractured genius behind Brian Jonestown Massacre, Anton...

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Best of 2015: Theatre

Say what you will about London theatre during 2015, and by my reckoning it was a pretty fine year, there certainly was a lot of it. I can't recall a year that brought with it a comparable volume of openings, not least during September and December,...

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