National Theatre
Cleansed, National TheatreWednesday, 24 February 2016
Although everyone agrees that Sarah Kane was one of the most influential British playwrights of the 1990s, revivals of her work have been few and far between. Now, at last, some 17 years after her suicide at the age of 28 in 1999, our flagship... Read more... |
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, National TheatreWednesday, 03 February 2016
"One... Two... You know what to do": that coolly delivered rehearsal intro from a trombonist called Cutler (Clint Dyer) could serve as a synoptic appraisal of the simply overwhelming National Theatre revival of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. The play in... Read more... |
Best of 2015: TheatreTuesday, 29 December 2015
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,... Read more... |
wonder.land, National TheatreFriday, 11 December 2015
Widely hyped as “an Alice for the online generation”, and “a coming-of-age adventure that explores the blurred boundaries between our online and offline lives”, this version of Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland stories is advertised with a poster that... Read more... |
Here We Go, National TheatreSaturday, 28 November 2015
The great Caryl Churchill careers down a blind alley in Here We Go, and the results aren't pretty, especially within the cavernous confines of the National Theatre's Lyttelton – this writer's second play this year at that address. A 45-minute... Read more... |
Evening at The Talk House, National TheatreWednesday, 25 November 2015
A lot of people are going to be enraged, frustrated, or confused by Evening at The Talk House, and in the authorial world of Wallace Shawn, wasn't it ever thus? This is the playwright who gave pride of place to a softly-spoken fascist in Aunt Dan... Read more... |
Waste, National TheatreWednesday, 11 November 2015
Do scandals have a sell-by date? When it comes to sex and politicians, the answer is no. The tabloids, and the news-hungry public, still seem to relish a good story about a powerful man who is caught with his trousers around his ankles. So Harley... Read more... |
Imagine... My Curious Documentary, BBC OneWednesday, 11 November 2015
This "mockumentary" concerning the play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was incredibly well-intentioned and unintentionally baffling. It operated on so many levels at once that the viewer could all too easily keep falling through... Read more... |
As You Like It, National TheatreWednesday, 04 November 2015
Rosalind’s “working-day world” takes an unexpectedly literal turn in Polly Findlay’s sparky new As You Like It for the National Theatre. An opening sequence, set in a windowless trading-floor, opens out in one of the year’s most bewitching set... Read more... |
Husbands & Sons, National TheatreWednesday, 28 October 2015
If the thought of three hours of DH Lawrence fills you with dread, fear not. Ben Powers’ inspired melding of Lawrence’s trio of mining plays births a spellbindingly intimate epic with atmosphere thick as the coal dust engulfing this cloistered 1911... Read more... |
10 Questions for Director Roger MichellMonday, 26 October 2015
It’s not easy to see the pattern in Roger Michell’s career. More than most British directors, he has zigzagged between the stage and the screen. He was the one who first rehearsed such contemporary classics as Kevin Elyot’s My Night with Reg and Joe... Read more... |
Jane Eyre, National TheatreFriday, 18 September 2015
Last February, director Sally Cookson shrunk Charlotte Brontë’s 400-page novel Jane Eyre down to a four-and-a-half-hour play spread across two nights at the Bristol Old Vic. Now, as this co-production finally arrives at the National Theatre, it has... Read more... |
