Theatre
Demetrios Matheou
We never glimpse the source of the old money in Sarah Wooley’s new play, for it’s his funeral that opens proceedings. We will get no sense of the man, or the extent of his wealth, or the way he spent it. The eventual irrelevance of such a specific title typifies a muddled and terribly trite evening.Maureen Lipman plays the dead man’s widow, Joyce, who appears at the funeral as a rabbit trapped in the headlights, a sexagenarian naïf, who seems to be completely ignorant of the world and its ways. We’re asked to believe that Joyce has been, if not literally locked up, then cloistered by her Read more ...
kate.bassett
When I first mentioned to a colleague that I was embarking on a biography of the doctor/director Jonathan Miller, he instantly yelped, “My God, your work’s cut out! The man must have met half the famous names in the twentieth century!"My subsequent conversations with Miller provided a cornucopia of highly entertaining anecdotes. These included his brushes with Princess Margaret (who was very taken with his comic turns in the 1950s); Bobby Kennedy (who told him to shut up, shortly before being shot); Bridget Riley (who nearly sued); and Kevin Spacey (who got his big break by stalking Miller Read more ...
Matt Wolf
It's Academy Award season within the showbiz-centric world of The Bodyguard, but even the greatest of Oscar obsessives - count me among them - would be hard-pressed to toss many a trophy in the direction of the 1992 film or toward the largely stillborn stage musical that it has now spawned. Widely panned at the time of release (the film received more Golden Raspberry nods for the year's worst than it did golden statuettes), its pulpy narrative looks even more threadbare on the West End stage, notwithstanding the news value of the return to the musical theatre after a dozen years of Broadway Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
There’s no ignoring gender in Julius Caesar. Whether it’s Portia’s “I grant I am a woman” speech, an enfeebled Caesar likened to a “sick girl”, or Cassius raging against oppression – “our yoke and sufferance make us womanish” – the issue is written into the language and ideological fabric of the play. So all those who might be tempted to rage against the travesty of Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female production for the Donmar should take their complaints directly to Shakespeare’s door.Wherever there is political tyranny there are inevitably the silenced, the disenfranchised, so it seems only natural Read more ...
philip radcliffe
Having 30 “rats” running around hardly seems the stuff of festive fare, but since the begetter of the show is Carol Ann Duffy, known in her children’s writing for dark fairy tales, we might expect something different. And, after all, these rodents are actually local children dressed as ragamuffins. Rats, it seems, can be cute and not necessarily baddies – and, in any case, the Pied Piper is at hand.This is the world premiere of an imaginative entertainment concocted by director Melly Still and our Poet Laureate, inspired by the latter’s three stories in The Stolen Childhood, but taking in Read more ...
graeme.thomson
The idea of making the princely hero of Cinderella a preening, vacuous lead character from some BBC Three-style reality show is a good one. These days the notion of a smart, self-respecting young woman limiting her horizons by playing accessory to a standard-issue posh bloke is ripe for subversion. Best to turn the entire concept on its head and have a little fun with it.Which is precisely what Johnny McKnight’s retelling of the classic Cinderella story attempts, to sadly limited effect. It begins with a young Cinders scattering her Mum’s ashes around a blossom tree, and throughout is weighed Read more ...
Peter Nichols
It was in Singapore in 1947 that my real education began. For the first time I read Lawrence, Forster, Virginia Woolf, Melville, Graham Greene and Bernard Shaw’s political works, becoming a lifelong Leftie. When Stanley Baxter explained Existentialism in our billet block, we nodded intelligently. When Kenneth Williams spoke Parlyaree, we were in advance of the rest of the nation who wouldn’t hear of it till Beyond Our Ken.Our post-war National Service was spent defending our far-flung (and about to be abandoned) empire. Twelve of us were in a revue called At Your Service. In the opening Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Is discretion really the better part of valour? This question arises in a particularly acute form in this new play, which looks at Danny, a gay primary school teacher who decides to come out — despite the risk of being seen as a paedo. But although it is great to enjoy EV Crowe’s follow up to her 2010 debut Kin, which was an account of a posh girls boarding school in the 1990s, does her latest — which opened last night — have a lesson to teach us about the meaning of courage in daily life?Danny’s choice is not ideological: it comes about almost by accident. He lives in a civil partnership Read more ...
Matt Wolf
On Broadway, Merrily We Roll Along remains forever scarred as the Stephen Sondheim musical that ground to an abrupt halt, closing after two weeks in 1981. But New York's theatrical failures often exist to be discovered anew across the Atlantic, and so it has long proven with a show whose last London incarnation (at the Donmar in 2000) led to a best musical Olivier Award and that lives again at the Menier Chocolate Factory thanks to a first-time director in long-time Sondheim leading lady Maria Friedman, alongside three of the savviest, sharpest, most resonantly moving performances in town. Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
Cole Porter’s musical spin on Shakespeare demands the fluidity, fizz and acidity of champagne. In Trevor Nunn’s revival, which transfers to London after a successful run in Chichester, it’s more like gelato. It has sweetness, and a rich abundance of detail, but it’s also thick, cloying, and somewhat bland. There’s plenty of stagey pizzazz on display, but it too often feels strained and soulless. The production lingers when it should zing, and despite some fine song and dance, it never conjures either the sexual heat or the showbiz buzz that should set it sparkling.The show takes place on and Read more ...
Laura Silverman
Love and loneliness, broken homes and broken hearts, child abuse and communities clinging on through war... This adaptation of Michelle Magorian's children's book treats the darkest and most difficult of themes with a firm but tender touch, breathing life into the friendship at the heart of her World War Two story. Oliver Ford Davies leads the cast as Tom Oakley, the elderly recluse looking after an evacuee, with a calm confidence. He exudes an almost palpable warmth. Tom's community might think him a miserable widower, but he responds with enveloping kindness to the vulnerability of nine- Read more ...
carole.woddis
Given the present Middle East uproar, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that contemporary versions of The 1001 Arabian Nights are sprouting everywhere. With their variety of stories and roots in countries undergoing such political upheaval, they offer rich and important pickings.The Tricycle next week opens a version for the Christmas season aimed at younger audiences. Before that, at the Soho, Metta Theatre’s co-founder and young director Poppy Burton-Morgan has come up with a bravely topical, stripped-down adaptation from six writers drawn from across the region. Their impact Read more ...