Theatre
Marianka Swain
The quest for liberation is popular dramatic terrain, but the Gate Theatre’s "Freedom Burning" season shifts focus to the aftermath. What do you do when the fight is over, and how can you be sure the sacrifice was worthwhile? It’s a sophisticated – and, given the nature of modern warfare, highly pertinent – line of questioning, but Andrew Whaley’s richly allegorical piece is ultimately too opaque to do it justice.The Rise and Shine of Comrade Fiasco, produced in association with the National Theatre Studio, revisits 1986 Zimbabwe, where three strangers (Kurt Egyiawan, Joan Iyiola and Read more ...
Ismene Brown
It’s a hostage to fortune really to create a play on one of the funniest books ever written, and a Victorian one at that. Still, Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat is regularly mined for stage and small screen entertainment, and this version by Craig Gilbert turns out to be a diverting and enjoyable touring show for Britain’s small town theatres, for which hurray, and particularly so for towns on the Thames, where the boat hired by J, George and Harris is being ever so uncertainly steered.The striped blazers, overgrown schoolboy indolence, and the constant practical joking on each other, Read more ...
Marianka Swain
How do we respond to a tragedy of infinite mystery? We investigate, we speculate, and we seek to impose meaning, to produce a story that safely contains unfathomable horror. However, those hoping for such reassurance via a traditional theatrical narrative in Bush Moukarzel and Dead Centre’s Lippy will come away disappointed. This darkly absurdist piece floats searching, fundamental questions, but answers came there none.Fifteen years ago, in the small Irish town of Leixlip, police discovered the bodies of 83-three-old Frances Mulrooney (Joanna Banks) and her three nieces, Catherine (Eileen Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
How do you take your rom-coms? Full-fat Hollywood schmaltz, Shakespearean, or lean and elegant – a Stoppard perhaps, or Coward? If your answer did not include “With lashings of social philosophy, ethics and a lengthy dream sequence, preferably running north of three hours”, then Man and Superman might not be the play for you. For those who prefer things quick and contemporary there’s Closer up the road at the Donmar, but for anyone prepared to take a risk with an Edwardian oddity – a baggy, generous, thinks-faster-than-it-can-talk comedy – Shaw still has plenty to say.At full length, George Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
In the beginning was the Word and, not long after, came a need for ritual purification. “When Adam was banished from Eden, he sat in the river that flowed from the garden. Adam immersed in the water, in the very first Mikvah …”.Goyim audience members will be grateful, as I was, for the gloss on this traditional Jewish practice given by one of the characters in the opening minutes of The Mikvah Project, the first full-length play by Josh Azouz, who is currently on the Royal Court’s writers programme. We were more grateful still for his bringing the ballast of comedy to such topics as faith, Read more ...
mark.kidel
Teen spirit explodes time and time again in the intimate space of Bristol’s Tobacco Factory, with piercing electronic sounds, fierce lighting and a torrent of high-energy movement. The frenetic pace of Baz Luhrman’s film has left its mark on intepretations of Shakespeare's classic love story, and this isn't necessarily a good thing. There is more than enough youthful energy in Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory's production of Romeo and Juliet, and the decision to place the action in the rebellion-torn 1960s feels misguided and undermines a show that nevertheless features some very good Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Stars continue to be born from Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. Following on from the ongoing Broadway run of the show, which catapulted to name status its Tony-winning leading lady Jessie Mueller, along comes the immensely likeable West End version and – oh, Carole! – much the same looks likely to happen again here.Until this point, English actress-singer Katie Brayben was best-known for playing Princess Diana in last year's hit play King Charles III. But from this point on, and for as long as she chooses to stick with it, Brayben (pictured below) and the West End incarnation of Read more ...
Heather Neill
The big news was that dashing Greg Wise was returning to the London stage after an absence of 17 years. Still best remembered as the handsome cad Willoughby in the film of Sense and Sensibility – now 20 years old – he appears in the intimate Park 200 auditorium as a middle-aged, care-worn father, oblivious to wrinkles and grizzled locks. He gives a performance so physically and emotionally charged, however, that his looks are irrelevant.Kill Me Now is advertised as a dark comedy; it would be closer to the truth to describe it as a tragedy enlivened with glints of wit and humorously Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Plays about Muslims in British theatre tend to open a door on a segregated community, a place cut off from the mainstream. But stories that show cultural conflict – between whites, Asians, Muslims, Hindus, Poles and Sikhs – are much rarer. So it’s good that actor-turned-playwright John Hollingworth’s debut play, with a title which alludes to Walt Whitman’s “I am large. I contain multitudes” from Song of Myself, dares to explore conflict between social groups.Dateline: Bradford. Some time in the nearish future. As Conservatives gather for their annual conference in this Read more ...
Gary Raymond
For many the story of Welsh rugby star Gareth Thomas will be familiar. It has been told in many forms, and powerful and inspirational as it is, many times too. Thomas (known to all bar his mam as “Alfie”) is now not just a totemic figure in the sport he graced for 16 years, but a symbol of courage and hope for the LGBT community and indeed anyone who has at some point in their lives felt the walls closing in.The story of the first man in world sport to come out as gay is one that does not lose its power in the retelling, and National Theatre Wales’s much anticipated staging of it – in Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Political sleaze, arguments over Europe and fears for the NHS – sometimes it feels as if it’s the 1990s all over again. And, right on cue, theatre has been staging a whole shelfload of revivals of work from that decade: Kevin Elyot’s My Night with Reg, Conor McPherson’s The Weir and Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing. The Donmar Warehouse, under the spirited leadership of Josie Rourke, has led this trend, and its latest offering is Closer, Patrick Marber’s brilliant 1997 play, revived now with Rufus Sewell in the cast.Set in London, and partly a Valentine to the hidden nooks and crannies Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Farinelli and The King is pretty much a perfect piece of theatre. More importantly, though, it’s perfectly timed. In a month when English National Opera’s troubles have made the front page, when op-eds are all about why Simon Rattle’s dreams of a new concert hall for London are fruitless, this paean to music – to its serious, healing, transformative power – is not only resonant, but necessary.This is Claire van Kampen’s first play, but far from her first encounter with the Globe. A former Associate Artistic Director of the company, van Kampen (who also happens to be Mrs Mark Rylance) has Read more ...