National Theatre
Frankenstein: A Modern Myth, Channel 4Thursday, 01 November 2012
I think Frankenstein should always be pronounced Fronkenshteen, the way Gene Wilder says it in Young Frankenstein. But that would have been far too frivolous for this intermittently interesting but often irritating film about the legacy of Mary... Read more... |
Damned by Despair, National TheatreThursday, 11 October 2012
Spain's Golden Age turns unaccountably to dross in Damned by Despair, the Tirso de Molina play that is a good half-hour shorter than the running time given in the programme but won't (in this production, anyway) ever be brief enough for some.... Read more... |
Scenes From An Execution, National TheatreFriday, 05 October 2012
Walkouts are always intriguing. When audience members leave before the final curtain, it’s usually a sign that the play is too powerful, or too scandalous, or maybe just not very good. After reports that during previews many people aren’t returning... Read more... |
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, National TheatreFriday, 03 August 2012
When Complicite conceived their beautiful A Disappearing Number they gave maths energy, drama, and above all watchability, but they never quite brought the heart. In Simon Stephens’s new adaptation, A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Playwright Simon StephensSunday, 29 July 2012
Simon Stephens (b 1971) is the most prolific British playwright of his generation. Born and brought up in Stockport, he began writing as a student in York University and had produced seven plays before his Bluebird was produced at the Royal Court in... Read more... |
The Doctor's Dilemma, National TheatreWednesday, 25 July 2012
“Of all the anti-social vested interests the worst is the vested interest in ill-health.” The Preface on Doctors that precedes George Bernard Shaw’s The Doctor’s Dilemma finds the writer at his characteristic best: caustic certainly, witty... Read more... |
Timon of Athens, National TheatreWednesday, 18 July 2012
As the much-loved Arthur Marshall so profoundly noted, Ibsen is “not a fun one”. One could, with as much truth, say the same about Shakespeare’s rarely staged Timon of Athens: its misanthropy, missing motivations and mercurial shifts in temper do... Read more... |
Matthew Bourne's Play Without Words, Sadler's WellsSaturday, 14 July 2012
Sound the trumpets triumphantly - Matthew Bourne’s most original masterpiece has come out of hiding into full view, a giddy, sexy, diabolical confection that hovers on the edge of hellish, and deserves to become a global smash. Play Without Words is... Read more... |
The Last of the Haussmans, National TheatreWednesday, 20 June 2012
When does an urgent new trend become a theatre cliché? Over the past couple of years, the idea of generational conflict between the have-it-all baby boomers and the have-nothing-but-debts youngsters has appeared in plays such as James Graham’s The... Read more... |
Antigone, National TheatreThursday, 31 May 2012
Although some contemporary plays — notably Posh and 13 — have accurately taken the temperature of the times, what about the timeless classics? Does Sophocles’s Antigone (dated about 441BC) have anything to say to us today? How can it be of our time... Read more... |
Detroit, National TheatreWednesday, 16 May 2012
The competition for best dramatic use of a coffee table is won hands down by the wagon-wheel one that prompts a major argument in When Harry Met Sally. Runner-up is the one that appears in Detroit. So deliciously hideous that it gets its own laugh,... Read more... |
Misterman, National TheatreThursday, 19 April 2012
Religious mania is bad for your love life. In Enda Walsh’s revamped 1999 play — which has already been seen in Galway and New York, and opened in London last night — a 33-year-old man (played with immense conviction and enormous presence by Cillian... Read more... |
