family relationships
Smoke, Southwark Playhouse review - dazzling Strindberg updateMonday, 06 February 2023
A play’s title can be an almost arbitrary matter – there’s no streetcar but plenty of desire in that one for example – and it might have crossed Kim Davies’ mind to call her play Ms Julie, since it is a reimagining of August Strindberg’s... Read more... |
The Whale review - Brendan Fraser stars in a fat suitFriday, 03 February 2023
Yes, Brendan Fraser gives a fine, Oscar-nominated performance as a morbidly obese man in director Darren Aronfsky’s mawkish, voyeuristic The Whale. Best known for Gods and Monsters, George of the Jungle and the Mummy trilogy, and more recent TV... Read more... |
2:22 A Ghost Story, Lyric Theatre review - Cheryl makes an impressive stage debutFriday, 03 February 2023
The set of 2:22 A Ghost Story is open to the auditorium when we arrive and locates us at once in gentrification-land. We are in a slick kitchen with white chevron tiling, new units and an obligatory island; big skylights loom overhead and outsize... Read more... |
Album: Sebastian Rochford, Kit Downes - A Short DiarySaturday, 28 January 2023
A Short Diary, a duo album for piano and drums, contains music of astonishing directness, calm and concentration. The story of how it came into being is fascinating, but it also stands on its own as pure music of luminous quality, and is bound to be... Read more... |
The Unfriend, Criterion Theatre review - dark comedy is (largely) audience-unfriendlySaturday, 21 January 2023
We all have that friend. The person you met on holiday and couldn’t shake off. You added each other on Facebook, but they posted so much you’ve quietly unfollowed them. You can’t quite bring yourself to unfriend them, though. In The Unfriend, a new... Read more... |
Allegiance, Charing Cross Theatre review - George Takei's childhood story makes a heartfelt musicalFriday, 20 January 2023
Like families, nations have secrets: dirty linen that they prefer not to expose to the light of day. Patriotic myths need to be protected, heroic narratives shaped, good guy reputations upheld. In 1942, the USA rounded up Japanese-Americans and... Read more... |
A Streetcar Named Desire, Almeida Theatre review - Patsy Ferran rises above fussy stagingFriday, 13 January 2023
It’s a long way from the dank chill of an English winter to the stultifying heat of a New Orleans summer, but we’ve been here before at this venue. Five years on from their award-winning Summer And Smoke, Rebecca Frecknall is back in the director’s... Read more... |
Dolly Parton's Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol, Queen Elizabeth Hall review - Scrooge goes to TennesseeThursday, 15 December 2022
We’ve had 75 years to get used to Scrooge McDuck, so we can hardly complain if the Americans indulge in a little cultural appropriation and send Charles Dickens’ misanthrope to Depression-era Tennessee for another whirl on the catharsis-redemption... Read more... |
Hex, National Theatre review - 12 months after being sent to sleep by Covid, Rufus Norris's show is backWednesday, 07 December 2022
Hovering way, way above us, three aptly named high fairies, in voluminous chiffon, open a show that may not be airy in the metaphorical sense, but invites us to cast our eyes upwards continually – no bad thing to do in the bleak midwinter of 2022.... Read more... |
Elf, Dominion Theatre review - hit musical revival slays it againSaturday, 26 November 2022
Just about the three toughest tricks to pull off in the theatre are making a musical, making a family show and making characters so charming that even the most cynical in the house are pulling for the little guy (or not so little in this case). So... Read more... |
A Christmas Carol, RSC, Stratford review - family show eases back the terror and winds up the politicsSaturday, 19 November 2022
Life is full of coincidences and contradictions. As I was walking to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was on his feet in the House of Commons delivering yet another rebalancing of individual and collective resources. On... Read more... |
Here, Southwark Playhouse review - award-winning kitchen sink drama goes down the drainThursday, 17 November 2022
The kitchen sink drama has been a standby of English theatre for 70 years or more, but not always with an actual sink on stage. But there it is, in an everyday home that harbours a secret or two in Clive Judd’s debut play, the winner of the 2022... Read more... |
