new writing
Rachel Halliburton
A loo with fuschia-pink carpet to catch splashback; an Archbishop of Canterbury who’s in it for the skirts; a gobbing Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. A Jacobean theatre like the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse will have witnessed most extremes of human behaviour, but this soaringly irreverent, camper than tinsel, and – let’s face it - outrageously Eighties evening, takes it down alleys it’s never ventured before.It starts with a literal bang: heavenly music from above, a bit of a shriek, darkness, and then a man lying prone on the stage. The next thing we know, the Archbishop of Canterbury is Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
“We don’t love you any less.” A natural sentiment to express to your child when you’re separating from your partner, but the very fact of saying it plants doubts in the child’s mind as to whether you really mean it. As the audience of Wilderness at the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, a new play written by Kellie Smith and directed by Hampstead regular Anna Ledwich, we feel Alistair’s doubts and fears keenly – mostly because we are him.The story treads familiar territory as parents Joe (Finlay Robertson) and Anne (Natalie Klamar) try to stay amicable for Alistair’s sake, and inevitably Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Contemporary British theatre loves time travel — and not just to the past. It also enjoys imagining the future, especially the bad stuff ahead. So Ella Road's debut play, The Phlebotomist, is set in a convincingly coherent dystopia where genetic profiling reigns supreme, and one blood test can fuck up all your life chances. First staged at the Hampstead Theatre's Downstairs studio space last year, the play has been well reviewed and nominated both for an Olivier Award and for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. But how does it look on this venue's main stage?Road's Brave New World is one in Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
It's an ideal time to revive James Phillips's debut The Rubenstein Kiss. Since it won the John Whiting Award for new writing in 2005 its story, of ideological differences tearing a family apart, has only become more relevant. Joe Harmston directs a slick production at the Southwark Playhouse, which never quite manages to coalesce into something great.It's based on the lives of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the first US civilians to be executed for espionage after they allegedly passed information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union during the Second World War. The title refers to a real Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Joshua Harmon knows how to stir and excite an audience and does that and more with Admissions, newly arrived in the West End as part of the ongoing tsunami of American theatre across the capital just now. Opening the same day as news reports of financial bribery and malfeasance deployed to gain admissions to America's top universities, Harmon's portrait of a family poleaxed by their teenage son's fraught route to college comes with an unexpectedly topical urgency. But neither this writer nor his exceedingly smart director, Daniel Aukin, needs to coast on headlines to make their point. As Read more ...
Tim Cornwell
We're Staying Right Here, Henry Devas's debut play premiering on the smaller of the Park Theatre's two stages, carries a trigger warning on the theatre website: "May be affective for people coping with mental health issues". There's also, we're told, "very strong language, simulated violence, flashing lights, and vaping". Worst of all is when a baby gets handed over to the care of a drunk suicidal depressive as a ticket to calming him down. Don't ever try this at home. The set reveals an apartment with the door and windows barricaded from the inside, bolted and nailed shut, where empty Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
"It's gonna be the best golf course in the world," a man in an Aertex shirt and a bright red baseball cap is assuring us. "The best. I guarantee it." You can tell he's the kind of person who thinks talking quickly and loudly is the same thing as being right.If this sounds vaguely familiar, that's because Hannah Patterson's new play Eden, staged at the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs by Matthew Xia, is based on a true story, that of Donald Trump's luxury golf course in Aberdeenshire and the backlash it faced from local residents. Patterson transports the action to the fictional village of Eden, Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Time once again to roll out that line about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. The creators of All in a Row, a new play at Southwark Playhouse about the last evening at home for an autistic non-verbal 11-year-old before his despairing parents send him away to residential school, was doubtless conceived with the dramatists’ belief that they were shining a light on a dark place. But the result is a grim 90-minute shouting match of bitter mutual recriminations and self-lacerating jokes which only reinforces every stigmatising cliché about the torment of having a child with Read more ...
Veronica Lee
David Ireland is a playwright who likes to jolt his audience and Cyprus Avenue, a dark absurdist comedy about an Ulster unionist afraid of losing his identity, does just that. This co-production between Dublin's Abbey Theatre and the Royal Court was first seen in 2016, followed by runs in Belfast and New York. Now, with a slightly changed cast, it's being given a very welcome revival, again under the steady stewardship of director Vicky Featherstone.Set among the festering sectarian bitterness in Northern Ireland, Cyprus Avenue tells the story of Eric (Stephen Rea) an Ulster Protestant in the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The striking cover for the Brighton Festival 2019 programme shouts out loud who this year’s Guest Director is. Silhouetted in flowers, in stunning artwork by Simon Prades, is the unmistakeable profile of Malian musician Rokia Traoré. Taking place between 4th and 26th May at a host of south coast venues, this year’s Festival, which launched its schedule of events this morning, looks to be a multi-faceted extravaganza with true international reach. Once again, theartsdesk is proud to be a media partner.“I set out to bring new voices to the city to tell their stories,” Traoré explained, “ Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The Off Broadway production of Cost of Living two years ago brought Martyna Majok the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the height of acclaim of which most new writers – Majok, with four plays behind her, has yet to turn 35 – can only dream. High expectations then for Edward Hall’s production, the work’s trans-Atlantic premiere, which demands, and deserves engagement in a variety of ways, some very good indeed.As the title suggests, it shines a light on sections of American society that are increasingly challenged by economic circumstances, here the post-industrial subsistence suburbs of New Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Write what you know, says the adage, and that's exactly what playwright Ishy Din has done with his new play, Approaching Empty, now at the Kiln in Kilburn. The middle-aged Middlesbrough-born writer, who has had a handful of casual jobs (retail, warehouse, office), and also tried his hand at managing a restaurant, a furniture store and a video shop, spent much of his working life as an occasional cab driver. So it's not altogether surprising that his latest is set in a cab office in Middlesbrough, and that it's about a group of middle-aged Asian friends.Starting in April 2013, symbolically on Read more ...