Theatre
Jenny Gilbert
You might think you know what you’re in for with a play by Anders Lustgarten, winner of the inaugural Harold Pinter Playwright’s Award and current go-to political activist for the Royal Court and the National. Listed alongside the plays on his CV is the boast that he’s been “arrested in four continents”.But if Lampedusa was merely an angry rant, you’d switch off before it had run its course, short as it is at 65 minutes. It’s hard enough being eyeballed by the two actors, each of whom starts out sitting inconspicuously among the audience on benches in the round, and subsequently monologues us Read more ...
mark.kidel
Andrew Hilton’s immensely enjoyable Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory production of the Sheridan classic opens with a display of hilarious brio from Byron Mondahl, who steps into the intimate arena of this South Bristol venue, only half in character as he has yet to don his powdered wig, to deliver a quick fire introduction on the joys of gossip. He is wearing salmon pink brocade and breeches and suddenly whips out a red mobile to catch up with the latest tweets, shooting a selfie of himself in front of the audience. This stunning and energising piece of anachronistic warm-up sets the Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Hollywood has never met a cliché it didn’t love; unfortunately, neither has Dylan Costello. His peek behind the curtain of Tinseltown’s Golden Age employs every stock type imaginable, from the boorish, chain-smoking manager to a pill-popping Marilyn-lite. It’s a play with admirable aims, but desperately in need of a good script doctor.Playing the part of fresh-off-the-bus ingénue is British thesp Patrick Glass (David R. Butler), getting his big break in 1949 when – you guessed it – the movie’s lead actor is forced to withdraw. Not the victim of All About Eve scheming or a good shove down the Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The Royal Court has had a makeover. Recently, the walls have had a fresh coat of paint and huge messages have appeared on them: the front doors now say, “Come In”. (Oh, thanks for telling me...) Inside, there are so many arrows pointing you to the stalls, circle and bar that sometimes it seems like these places are harder than ever to find. In the foyer, you can read a wall message about the need for fundraising, facts about how big audiences were last year, and how many watched a show in school (a measly 2500). The theatre fabric is now the marketing department’s dream, but what about the Read more ...
David Nice
A journey into dreams through songs from Dowland to The Kinks; a Swiss director who, Covent Garden’s Director of Opera Kasper Holten assures us, is “one of the most important European theatre artists”; a Norwegian chanteuse who, I assure you, is a performer of real originality. All that should add up to something just a little bit extraordinary, shouldn’t it? Sadly not. What I saw last night was the kind of thing I’d shrug off having chosen at random from offerings at the Edinburgh Fringe.Perhaps anticipation was misguided: buy into Christoph Marthaler’s reputation as “radical and renowned”, Read more ...
Jonathan Lewis
A Level Playing Field is the first play in my trilogy Education Education Education. The trilogy is my response to the black cloud of exams which has arrived in our household every spring for the last nine years – just as the sun was beginning to shine.It is my response to the maniacal devotion to testing and prescriptive teaching in our schools, in which exams are not just a diagnostic part of learning but the sine qua non of an education based on conformity and compliance.The first of the plays is an attempt to present the A-level experience from the students’ point of view. The second is Read more ...
Marianka Swain
The Young Vic’s victory parade came as no surprise after a bumper year, but, in an impressive night for studio and publicly funded theatre, the egalitarian 2015 Oliviers also showered affection upon the Hampstead, Donmar, RSC, Chichester, Royal Court and Almeida. Many of their pioneering productions have already made it into the West End, proving – once and for all – that creative risk and profitmaking need not be mutually exclusive.Belgian director Ivo van Hove was rewarded for his revolutionary take on A View From the Bridge, as was visibly stunned leading actor Mark Strong, and the Young Read more ...
Marianka Swain
From Singin’ in the Rain and Anything Goes to Hello, Dolly! and Mary Poppins, Olivier Award winner Stephen Mear has done more than any other British choreographer to usher classic musicals into the modern era. But adept as he is at razzle-dazzling ’em, there’s more to Mear, as recent excursions like City of Angels at Donmar Warehouse and Die Fledermaus for the Metropolitan Opera prove. His contribution to the lauded Gypsy revival, opening next week at the Savoy Theatre following a triumphant Chichester run, demonstrates the combination of emotional engagement and quick-witted Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Some dramas begin with a brilliant idea. April De Angelis’s new black comedy, After Electra, is one of these. It starts with an audacious premise: the octogenarian artist Virgie is celebrating her birthday in her abode on the Essex coast, and invites family and close friends to join her. So far so normal. Then, as they assemble, she drops a bombshell. She tells them that she has decided to commit suicide. She’s had enough of life, and, dreading the numerous indignities of old age, wants to end it all.How do Virgie’s guests react? Her fiftysomething daughter, Hadyn, ironically a bereavement Read more ...
Marianka Swain
While seven-way debate rages, broadcaster and debuting playwright Jonathan Maitland takes us back 25 years to a radically different political landscape: a time of regents, and of regicide. It’s 1990 – Thatcher the leader claiming divine right to rule, Geoffrey Howe her unexpected assassin. How did the mild-mannered Welshman, whose rhetorical powers Denis Healey compared with those of a dead sheep, become a wolf in sheep’s clothing?It’s an intriguing question, answered with wit and insider wisdom, but too simplistic a reading in Maitland’s sketch satire-meets-modern Macbeth. Second-half Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Andrew Comben, CEO of the Brighton Festival, chooses ten locations that have resonance with the annual event. He talks about their past and future but, most particularly, what will be happening this May“Brighton Festival is all about the spaces and people of the city,” he explains, “Some of these spaces are especially evocative. They make artists think about doing things in different ways and make audiences respond accordingly. We have to strategise, sometimes taking over places that are used for other things most of the time. It’s always an adventure.”Comben, 40, became the Festival's Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Despite the age of austerity, London theatre is booming. Not just the West End, but Off-West End and the fringe as well. One sign of its health is its openness to Continental imports, especially to plays that have been transposed into English by their own authors. If the market leader of this trend is Croatian-born Tena Štivičić’s 3 Winters, then the latest example is Maria Milisavljevic’s often equally compelling Abyss.This play originally opened as Brandung at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 2013, and is still running in that venue’s repertory. It won the prestigious Kleist Award for Read more ...