Tamsin Greig
Matt Wolf
The water proves newly inviting in The Deep Blue Sea, Terence Rattigan's mournful 1952 play that some while ago established its status as an English classic. Lindsay Posner's production, first seen in Bath with one major change of cast since then, takes its time, and leading lady Tamsin Greig often speaks in a stage whisper requiring you to lean into the words. (This is that rare production that, praise be, is unamplified.) But what develops is a study in coping that is required once people arrive at a place beyond hope, not to mention a scalding portrait of the lacerating effect of Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The theatre director Anna Mackmin has written and directed an extraordinary play about a mother and daughter relationship: extraordinary because it puts the audience inside the maelstrom of these characters’ lives, forcing us to focus on how we interpret them and how our lives might resemble theirs.Things start relatively straightforwardly. A hospital bed dominates the raised half of the stage, with all the familiar accessories: the nurses’ sink in the corner, the IV drip stand, the urine bag. At the top of the back wall is a panoramic screen; at the front of the stage, a country kitchen Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Prolific playwright James Graham aspires to be nothing if not timely. His latest, a play about the Labour Party, was originally due to open during the week of that party’s conference, when our ears were once again ringing to the chant of “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn!” Unfortunately, the play’s TV star Sarah Lancashire had to pull out, so its West End opening was delayed until tonight. Her replacement, Tamsin Greig, joins Martin Freeman in this epic comedy about a Labour MP in an era of change. It’s a starry cast, but does the play’s content live up to its billing?Opening with familiar chords of the Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Everybody’s a little bit gay in Simon Godwin’s giddy new Twelfth Night at the National Theatre. From Andrew Aguecheek, vibrant in candy-coloured check, cuddling up to Sir Toby, and Antonio’s aggressive affection to Sebastian, to Orsino’s passionate snog with the wrong sibling after the big reveal and the lustful looks from Tamsin Greig's repressed Malvolia towards the lovely Olivia (who still can’t keep her eyes off Viola), all’s queer in love and war, it seems. The effect? A stylish sexual free-for-all, with plenty of laughs and just the occasional jarring note.Because while Godwin is busy Read more ...
David Nice
So many words, starting with the title - we're told we can call it iHo - and so many lines spoken by anything up to nine characters at once. But as this is the unique world of Tony Kushner, it's all matter from the heart, balancing big ideas and complex characters and leading them beyond the realms of any safe and simply effective new play, in this case towards a father-and-daughter scene as great as anything you'll see in the theatre today.This is a different sort of epic style to the freewheeling mastery of Angels in America. It's unusual to find a Kushner play where you can nominally Read more ...
edward.seckerson
It’s true that there is something wildly, garishly, theatrical about Pedro Almodóvar’s films – none more so than this rampant farce – but it’s equally true that their sensibility is far removed from what the English might deem farce, and that their speed of delivery leaves not a millisecond to draw breath, let alone sing a song. So where does that leave Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, the Musical? Lost in translation; twice over.The conceit is niftily established when our anti-heroine Pepa (Tamsin Greig) staggers sleepily onto Anthony Ward’s sleek duplex set and affects a series of Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Britain, as Tamsin Greig’s soothing voiceover told us at the top of this hour, is a nation in love with its animals. Still, it’s unlikely that BBC Two is betting the house on this docu-soap, which will follow the lives of 10 students through their final year at the Royal Veterinary College and which is screening every night for the rest of this week. The cynic in me expects that the channel had a few too many episodes and not enough weeks before the next series of The Apprentice was due to begin.Which is a bit of a shame because, although Young Vets is hardly reinventing the genre - unless Read more ...
Jasper Rees
How much is too much of quite a good thing? They – whoever they are – always say that two series is the platonic ideal for the perfectly formed sitcom. The example forever cited is Fawlty Towers, joined latterly by The Office. To that short list you could now add Rev, which after two series ceased to be a comedy in order to become something else. While nothing like as well shaped as any of the above, Episodes looked to have ingested that wisdom, having terminated its second series with a satisfactory clash of cymbals featuring a thunderstorm, a showdown and a reunion kiss. Where to now?The Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Scientists may have found a cure for insomnia. It’s thinking up names for television detectives. Have you noticed how elephant-tranquilisingly dull they are? Alec Hardy and Ellie Miller. Len Harper. Denise Woods. Tony Gates, Steve Arnott and Kate Fleming. Sergeant Geoff Plank. DS Fiona Photofit. Oh go on then, couple of ringers in there, but the rest have lately been busting crime on a mainstream channel near you (see sidebar to ID them all).Apparently they end up with these vapid non-names because the plausible ones are all taken by real coppers already. The TV companies are not allowed to Read more ...
Heather Neill
If only there were more Chekhov! Theatregoers in England, for whom Anton Pavlovich is little short of a god, must have wished this often enough. The handful of great plays come round almost as frequently as Shakespeare. Yet, as well as a couple of lesser plays and some crude farces, Chekhov wrote almost 600 short stories, counting the comic squibs with which he helped to support his family as a very young man. Some of the more mature ones are masterpieces, works of extraordinary imagination and psychological insight. He occasionally adapted them himself and others have done since. Now William Read more ...
Laura Silverman
Not even a cameo by Tamsin Greig can redeem this painful adaptation of Euripides' The Trojan Women. For an hour and a half it screams with anguish, verging at times on the parodic. The production is a puzzle. Caroline Bird has updated the language, stripping the original of much of its poetry and adding expletives. Jason Southgate has designed a brilliantly claustrophobic modern hospital ward as the set, and Noelle Claude has chosen simple, if sometimes bland costumes that could pass for modern outfits (those worn by Helen of Troy are designed by Sonia Rykiel). Yet these are Read more ...
Laura Silverman
Affairs, arguments, accidents. Feminism, marital failure and a fear of ageing. Jumpy has plenty of conflicts and issues, dunked in a wonderful bittersweet humour. But while April de Angelis faces uncomfortable truths, she fails to deal with them with equal courage. This play gnashes its teeth – at the gap in communication between generations and at the eternal pursuit of youth – but it lacks bite.Jumpy, which was first on at the Royal Court last autumn, is worth seeing for Tamsin Greig alone. Greig plays Hilary, a middle-class, middle-aged mother having an identity crisis. As Tilly, her Read more ...