Theatre
aleks.sierz
Can an ordinary wooden chair be an instrument of torture? Of course, every brute investigation makes use of such furniture, whether as a place to tie the victim down, or as a weapon to attack them with. But, as Debbie Tucker Green’s new play so eloquently shows, the wooden chair can also be a more subtle and unexpected instrument of fraught emotion: at every meeting of a truth and reconciliation commission, the wooden chair is there in the hall, itself a dumb witness to the clash of old enemies.Dealing as it does with the horrors of genocide, war and violent conflict, Truth and Reconciliation Read more ...
Veronica Lee
When The Lion King first opened in London in October 1999, there were cries from some quarters that it was merely following in a long line of stage shows that had been lifted lazily from films. Indeed its creator, Julie Taymor, didn't depart too far from Disney's 1994 animated film of the same name for dramatic inspiration, but why would she when the movie had been a huge hit, winning two Oscars (for composer Elton John, lyricist Tim Rice and Hans Zimmer's original score), grossing nearly $800 million worldwide on its release and selling more than 60 million DVDs. The stage version was, then Read more ...
hilary.whitney
The stage musical The Lion King has been seen by nearly 10 million people in the UK - almost 60 million worldwide – and Lord only knows how many must have seen Walt Disney’s animation. I have a friend who reckons he has seen it at least 26 times and a female acquaintance who firmly believes that curling up in front of the DVD is the cure-all for heartache – well, we can’t all write songs like Adele - but until recently, The Lion King had completely passed me by. I couldn’t even have hummed so much as a crotchet and a quaver of Elton John and Tim Rice's Oscar-winning song “Can You Feel the Read more ...
Ismene Brown
On 9 September theartsdesk, Britain's first professional arts journalism site, will be two years old. To celebrate we’re holding a live debate with four leading performers during the Kings Place Festival. An actor, a singer, a dancer and an instrumentalist will share their different experiences of performance. Join us, live or online, for a stellar event.Toby Jones actor | Mara Carlyle singer | Mahan Esfahani harpsichordistBridgett Zehr ballerinaLeading performers in different art forms join us for a live debate and lunchtime reception in the Kings Place Festival.Actor Toby Jones, acclaimed Read more ...
Matt Wolf
It's grin and bear it - even on occasion bare it - time at Shakespeare's Globe, which closes its 2011 season not with a bang but with a wearyingly facetious whimper. A nice idea that in differing ways evokes such previous Globe newbies as Helen and The Frontline while paying homage to the Bard's own penchant for many and varied couplings, Chris Hannan's latest aims for a giddy, carnival atmosphere that it only fitfully achieves. As for its apparent obsession with scatology, Hannan at least allows for conversational variety where least expected: "I'm shitness," our heroine Natty (Emma Pierson Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
A monolithic slab, like a giant incarnation of a Biblical tablet of stone, dominates Mark Thompson’s set for Jamie Lloyd's production of the third play by Alexi Kaye Campbell. Nothing else is so solid in this big, weighty work, which wrestles with abstract notions of faith, the human soul and the myths and narratives by which we choose to live.It’s an ambitious piece of writing, and at times Campbell trips over his own verbosity. In an evening of nearly three hours’ duration, carved up by two intervals, it’s difficult not to wish at times that he had more full-bloodedly dramatised his Read more ...
David Nice
"Whoring after the public taste" is how Ingmar Bergman described some rather funny hanky-panky in one of his most singular films. It's what showbusiness thrives on, and it's fine if done well. Yet a decade ago Trevor Nunn crowned the National Theatre's trio of keenly observed Rodgers and Hammerstein stagings with South Pacific characters of flesh and blood, as its creators had surely envisaged. Here, despite strong delivery of a string of hits and fluid, evocatively lit designs, Bartlett Sher's Lincoln Center Theater revival too often takes us back to the Broadway whorehouse.Admittedly the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
It's one of the distinctions of the London theatre to be at once highbrow and middle-of-the-road, to offer up esoterica from Ibsen and Schiller while allowing audiences elsewhere the chance to rock out to the beloved pop icons of their choice. And so in the town that gave us The Roy Orbison Story and offered numerous West End homes for Buddy, we now have Dreamboats and Petticoats twisting away into its third year, and second London playhouse (namely, the Playhouse), with no end in sight. What could possibly be wrong with that?Plenty, some might say, at least those for whom there's a limit to Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Alfred Uhry, now 74, may boast the greatest ratio of accolades to output of just about any American playwright, having copped two Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize across merely a handful of works and an Academy Award for the film version of his best-known play, Driving Miss Daisy; the movie itself won the Best Picture Oscar in 1989 and a further trophy for its beloved star, Jessica Tandy. This autumn, the era-spanning comedy-drama arrives back on the West End in the same starry version, headlined by Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones, seen last year on Broadway. Immediately before that Read more ...
fisun.guner
This warm-hearted production of E Nesbit’s most famous novel premiered to glowing reviews at its site-specific venue last summer. I didn‘t catch it last year, but I doubt this swift revival is any less captivating, nor the new cast any less sure-footed or engaging. Marcus Brigstocke has taken on the role of the gruff but loveable station master Mr Perks, whilst the three adult actors playing the children - Amy Noble as the sensible Bobby, Tim Lewis as the ever so mildly rebellious Peter and Grace Rowe as the charmingly ditzy Phyllis - bring just the right balance of earnestness and Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It was early in 1949. South Pacific, the follow-up to Rodgers and Hammerstein’s huge wartime hit Carousel, had entered the try-out phase before hitting New York. Late one night the production team were deep in one of those 11th-hour how-do-we-make-it-better meetings that always precede the launch of a new musical. Eventually the composer Richard Rodgers cut to the chase. “Fellas,” he said, “this show is perfect. Let’s go to bed.”For all its perfection, for all the familiarity of “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair” and “There’s Nothin’ Like a Dame”, only a few flocking to South Read more ...
David Nice
From 69 hours of King James Bible reading over Easter Week to this racy evening of adapted medieval pith as we head towards Assumption Day, the word they tell us is God moves in fluid if not necessarily mysterious ways around the Globe. “Mysteries” refers to the guilds that put on these popular street shows in the Middle Ages, real enough for the company of York Pinners, say, to supervise the nailing to the cross. It needs the forthright actors and everyday props of Deborah Bruce's alternately funny and quietly moving production, as well as the blood and sawdust you can taste in Tony Harrison Read more ...