family relationships
The Courageous review - Ophélia Kolb excels as a single mother on the edgeFriday, 05 September 2025
“I never abandoned you,” says Jule (Ophélia Kolb; Call My Agent!) to her 10-year-old daughter Claire (Jasmine Kalisz Saurer), setting a fairly low bar as far as motherhood is concerned.Swiss-American director Jasmin Gordon’s first feature, with a... Read more... |
Fat Ham, RSC, Stratford review - it's Hamlet Jim, but not as we know itThursday, 28 August 2025
$8.2B. That’s what can happen when you re-imagine Hamlet.I doubt that writer, James Ijames, had The Lion King’s box office in mind when he set out to create a Deep South, black and contemporary version of Shakespeare’s drama of familial dysfunction... Read more... |
The Gathered Leaves, Park Theatre review - dated script lifted by nuanced characterisationMonday, 25 August 2025
The Gathered Leaves is set on the tectonic plates of a middle-class family menu reunion, in which three generations grapple with the shifting values of an indifferent world. Adrian Noble’s sensitively observed production investigates what happens... Read more... |
Oslo Stories Trilogy: Sex review - sexual identity slips, hurts and healsSunday, 24 August 2025
Two chimney sweeps sit by a window. The boss (Thorbjørn Harr) recounts a dream meeting with David Bowie, who disconcertingly looks at him like he’s a woman. Funny thing, his friend (Jar Gunnar Røise) replies. Yesterday, a male client asked him to... Read more... |
Weapons review - suffer the childrenSaturday, 09 August 2025
Weapons’ enigmatic title, as with Zach Cregger’s previous film Barbarian, reveals little of what follows. The smalltown Pied Piper premise is sufficiently alluring: at 2.17 am, all bar one of a primary school class leave their beds and sprint... Read more... |
Oslo Stories Trilogy: Dreams review - love lessonsWednesday, 06 August 2025
Rising temperatures, prickling skin, longing’s all-consuming ache: first love’s swooning symptoms overtake 17-year-old Johanne (Ella Øverbye) in the Golden Bear-winning Dreams, the first UK release from Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud’s Oslo... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews: I'm Ready To Talk Now / RIFTSunday, 03 August 2025
I’m Ready to Talk Now, Traverse Theatre ★★★★There are, inevitably, certain challenges when reviewing a one-to-one immersive show that’s already pretty much sold out its entire Edinburgh Fringe run (though there are rumours of some last-minute... Read more... |
Natalia Ginzburg: The City and the House review - a dying artSaturday, 02 August 2025
Many readers and writers think of epistolary novels as old-fashioned, just as letter writing itself can seem a bit quaint nowadays. The genre became popular during the 18th and 19th centuries following the success of Samuel Richardson’s ... Read more... |
Maiden Voyage, Southwark Playhouse review - new musical runs agroundWednesday, 30 July 2025
As the nation basks in the reflected glory of The Lionesses' Euro25 victory, it could hardly be more timely for the Southwark Playhouse to launch a new musical that tells the tale of The Maiden. That was the boat, built and sailed by Tracy Edwards... Read more... |
The Winter's Tale, RSC, Stratford review - problem play proves problematicTuesday, 29 July 2025
There’s a deal to be made when taking your seat for The Winter’s Tale. It’s one the title alone would have signalled to the groundlings as much as those invited to rattle their jewellery upstairs back in the 17th century – it’s a fairytale, a... Read more... |
A Moon for the Misbegotten, Almeida Theatre review - Michael Shannon sears the night skyThursday, 24 July 2025
Michael Shannon's long legs reach to the stars – or perhaps one should say the moon – in the Almeida's hypnotic revival of A Moon for the Misbegotten, the late Eugene O'Neill play that hasn't been seen in London since Kevin Spacey and Eve... Read more... |
Don't Rock the Boat, The Mill at Sonning review - all aboard for some old-school comedy mishapsTuesday, 22 July 2025
Now 45 years in the past, its dazzling star gone a decade or so, The Long Good Friday is a monument of British cinema. Its extraordinary locations, caught just before London’s Docklands were transformed forever, speaks to a past world. But the... Read more... |
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