new writing
aleks.sierz
Can the theatre be a courtroom? A good public place to debate morality and to arrive at profound decisions? You could answer this with a history lesson that ranges from the ancient Greeks to more recent tribunal plays in the 1960s and 1990s. But I’ll just concentrate on Ferdinand von Schirach’s Terror, which premiered simultaneously in Berlin and Frankfurt in 2015 and now gets a British outing at the Lyric Hammersmith. It’s a courtroom drama with a gimmick – the audience gets the chance to vote on the result of the trial. But is the gimmick better than the play?Despite its deliberately Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Donald Trump’s electoral success was, we have been told, fuelled by the anger of the American working class. But how do you show that kind of anger on stage, and how do you criticise its basis in traditional masculinity? One way, and this is the path chosen by playwright and performer Taylor Mac in Hir, a satirical comedy which was first staged in New York in 2015 and now gets its European premiere at the Bush Theatre, is to view the family from a transgender perspective. And, at first, this strategy looks very promising.Hir is set in a settlement somewhere in California’s Central Valley, Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The Bush is back! After a whole year of darkness, the West London new writing venue has reopened its doors following a £4.3million remodelling and refurb, a project close to the heart of its artistic director Madani Younis. Designed by architect Steve Tompkins, and including beautiful ceiling paintings by local artist Antoni Malinowski, the venue looks brilliant, with its new terrace, fully accessible entrance and extra rooms. These include a lovely new rehearsal space, expanded offices and a sedum roof (complete with two black cats). Plus, most significantly, a brand new studio theatre that Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Michelle Collins, actor and TV presenter, is so strongly associated with her roles in EastEnders and Coronation Street that it is something of a shock to see her live on stage at the Park Theatre, and not behind a bar or in a snug. And although she has always had an energetic versatility, she’s been most comfortable as a chatty Cockney, a quality that Stewart Permutt says attracted him to writing the part of Gina in his engaging new two-hander, A Dark Night in Dalston, specially for her.Set, unsurprisingly, in East London, the story starts as an odd-couple encounter. Gina (Collins), a 49-year Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The beauty of the past is that it’s a foreign country, and you don’t need a visa to visit it. With the free movement of the imagination you can conjure up life as it might have once been experienced. You can even join a re-enactment society. In the theatre, the evocation of a pre-industrial landscape has a noble lineage, with outstanding examples such as Sue Glover’s lyrical Bondagers (1991) or David Harrower’s haunting Knives in Hens (1995) always on the far horizon. Now it’s the turn of EV Crowe to journey to this enchanting location, and to tell us a bit about what she finds there.The Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Who do you trust? The EU Referendum campaign has exposed a mounting suspicion of the establishment, from financial institutions to press and politicians, and our sense of nationhood has never been murkier. But if we cease to believe in anything, how does that affect our sense of self?Mike Bartlett’s latest takes Edward Snowden as a jumping-off point for this existential exploration. American leaker Andrew (Jack Farthing, pictured below with Caoilfhionn Dunne) is holed up in a Russian hotel room, awaiting contact from a man holed up in an embassy – a fellow member of the “everyone Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Musicals are cheesy by nature, aren’t they? If not cheesy, then picturesque. The cast of Les Mis may be grimy and poor, but they’re picture-postcard poor. Even modern musicals play by the rules.But Aemonn O’Dwyer and Rob Gilbert break most of them in their new musical, The House of Mirrors & Hearts. Forget exotic settings: this type of family terrace house can be found by the thousand off the Kingsland Road. And forget happy families: this one’s falling apart. What’s more, the climax of the first act is a grisly accident involving a character we haven’t even met. And two of the key Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
“The only way is up” might have been the motto for the Orange Tree over the past year. Last spring, the future couldn’t have looked bleaker for the Richmond producing house when it lost its entire Arts Council grant overnight. Yet here we are, seven productions later, looking back at a season that has included an almost bullish proportion of new and rarely performed writing.Buckets, by director-turned-playwright Adam Barnard, is a collection of 27 scenes, mostly monologues and duologues, some of them just a couple of lines, like theatrical haikus, others quite extensive, though the entire Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Agitprop is a term that seems to have dropped out of use. It has too many negative connotations; it smacks of political rant. Yet artistic director Neil McPherson, whose small and feisty Finborough Theatre at Earls Court receives no public funding whatsoever, has never pandered to delicate West London sensibilities, and I Wish to Die Singing: Voices from the Armenian Genocide, scripted by him, certainly doesn’t flinch from its task. This is, no less, to fill a gaping hole in the official history of the 20th century. Propaganda? You decide.McPherson’s bold project sprang from a perceived need Read more ...
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 ...
Jenny Gilbert
The critic James Christopher describes his first stage play as a black comedy, and the opening few moments set out the noir element efficiently enough, if not with any discernable humour. Charlie (Ben Porter) has inherited an old Suffolk farmhouse and lets it out to pay the bills. Its one drawback is an indoor well, a health-and-safety hazard (and maybe haunted), which he plans to fill in with cement. It’s an unromantic solution, but Charlie, married for two decades to the pragmatic Susan (Joannah Tincey), is not looking for surprises. He gave up a high-earning job to embrace a quiet life. Read more ...
aleks.sierz
This venue is one of the coolest in London — and its regular audience is both trendy and well-heeled. In the foyer, you get jostled by a better class of person. For this immersive show, written by the prolific and ever-inventive Mike Bartlett, the audience arrives and, after getting its tickets, is divided into four groups: A, B, C and D. Each group is then summoned by tannoy to enter the theatre though a different entrance. Yes, this is not a theatre show — it is a game show.Once inside, we are each given a set of headphones and seated on benches, which are arranged on the four sides of a Read more ...