Theatre Reviews
Jeepers Creepers, Leicester Square TheatreMonday, 01 February 2016
You might think that the combination of a play about one of the funniest comics of the second half of the 20th century, written by his biographer and directed by a member of Monty Python would be a winning one. But sadly Robert Ross's Jeepers Creepers: Through the Eyes of Marty Feldman is anything but. Read more... |
Escaped Alone, Royal Court TheatreFriday, 29 January 2016
Caryl Churchill is a phenomenon. Now 77 years old, she remains not only prolific but also immensely inventive, having notched up more than 35 original plays, many of which have been innovative in form and imaginative in content. Added to this, she has penned dramas for radio and television, as well as adaptations of the classics. She also retains the power to annoy: the National Theatre staging of her Here We Go last autumn provoked walkouts and howls of critical derision. Read more... |
The Mother, Tricycle TheatreWednesday, 27 January 2016
Anne longs for her 23-year-old son Nicholas to return home. One night, he appears. Or does he? Welcome back to the queasily elliptical world of Florian Zeller, where certainty fractures as familiar elements are repeated, dissected, made strange and menacing. Zeller used this immersive dislocation to powerfully communicate the experience of dementia in The Father, which last year travelled from Theatre Royal Bath to the Tricycle and on into the West End. Read more... |
Pink Mist, Bush TheatreWednesday, 27 January 2016
The war in Afghanistan has not exactly been neglected by contemporary British theatre, and the plight of returned soldiers is a standard trope of new writing. These distant wars function in our culture like worse-case scenarios, an excoriating version of hell on earth, where survivors come back to haunt the comfortable, and to tell us things about being human that we never really wanted to know. Read more... |
Yen, Royal Court TheatreTuesday, 26 January 2016
Feral kids are a media stereotype, but they make good strong subjects for drama. In Anna Jordan’s new play, which was first seen at the Manchester Royal Exchange last year after winning the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting in 2013, we are introduced to two young brothers who have been abandoned by their parents. Hello Hench, who’s 16 years old; and hello Bobbie, who’s only 13. Read more... |
Herons, Lyric HammersmithFriday, 22 January 2016
Be careful what you wish for. I’ve often moaned about the fact that British theatre is too naturalistic, and that its stagings are too banal, full of quotidian detail and a specific sense of place, but strangers to the wildness of the imagination. So I have found myself wishing for more exciting settings, and bolder directing. Read more... |
The Rolling Stone, Orange Tree TheatreThursday, 21 January 2016
I’m still pondering the title of Chris Urch’s new play. On the surface it’s clear enough: The Rolling Stone is a weekly newspaper in Uganda that has been notorious for pursuing that country’s anti-gay agenda. In particular, at the beginning of the decade, it started a campaign of publishing the photographs and addresses of those it believed to be homosexual. Read more... |
The Weir, Royal Lyceum Theatre, EdinburghThursday, 21 January 2016
Since its unveiling at London’s Royal Court in 1997, Conor McPherson’s The Weir has become something of a modern classic, notching up dozens of productions worldwide and even winning inclusion in the National Theatre’s list of the 100 most significant plays of the 20th century. It’s also a deceptively simple, unassuming offering – on the face of it, not much even seems to happen. Read more... |
4000 Days, Park TheatreWednesday, 20 January 2016
It is a nightmare scenario: you have an accident that leaves you comatose. You are out of action in hospital for three weeks and then, when you wake up, you gradually realise that you don’t remember anything of the past 10 years. Not three weeks, but 10 years! So what has happened to your life? Read more... |
This Will End Badly, Southwark PlayhouseSaturday, 16 January 2016
You have to admire Rob Hayes’s choice of titles. Although his latest doesn’t quite have the shock value of Awkward Conversations With Animals I’ve Fucked, his 2014 Edinburgh Festival hit, This Will End Badly is certainly full of enough foreboding to wipe any superficially optimistic grin off your face. Read more... |
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★★★★★
‘A compulsive, involving, emotionally stirring evening – theatre’s answer to a page-turner.’
The Observer, Kate Kellaway
Direct from a sold-out season at Kiln Theatre the five star, hit play, The Son, is now playing at the Duke of York’s Theatre for a strictly limited season.
★★★★★
‘This final part of Florian Zeller’s trilogy is the most powerful of all.’
The Times, Ann Treneman
Written by the internationally acclaimed Florian Zeller (The Father, The Mother), lauded by The Guardian as ‘the most exciting playwright of our time’, The Son is directed by the award-winning Michael Longhurst.
Book by 30 September and get tickets from £15*
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