Park Theatre
Veronica Lee
Les Dennis was once a marquee name on Saturday night television as host of Family Fortunes, but since giving up the light entertainment lark he now plies his trade as an actor, and a very good one at that. If you've not seen it, give yourself a treat and watch his bang-on-the-nose performance as “Les Dennis”, a delusional, whinging has-been, in Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's Extras.Only slightly less meta is his role in Danny Robins' dark comedy, in which Dennis plays Bobby Chalk who was once, with his comedy partner Eddie Cheese, a household name with 20 million viewers. But now the Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Britain is rightly proud of its record on multiculturalism, but whenever cross-cultural couples are shown on film, television or the stage they are always represented as a problem. Not just as a normal way of life, but as something that is going wrong. I suppose that this is a valuable corrective to patting ourselves on the back about how tolerant a society we are, but do such correctives make a good play? The latest exploration of this cross-cultural theme is Stephanie Martin’s new play, which is half comedy and half drama about Islam, and which opened tonight at the ever-enterprising Park Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Forget about dark alleys, deserted parks and slippery slopes: the most dangerous place in the world is likely to be your family. That’s where the traps are, the minefields and the surprise betrayals. As its title suggests, Torben Betts’s new comedy is all about failing marriages and imploding families. The focus is on a celebrity chef, but does Betts have anything new to say about the state of our emotional nation, or is this just another rehash of the same old ingredients? After a national tour, Monogamy comes to the Park Theatre – and boasts Janie Dee and Charlie Brooks in its cast.The Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Writer Robert Schenkkan’s Building the Wall imagines modern America in the not-too-distant future. The date is 22nd November 2019 and following an attack on Times Square in which 17 people were killed, martial law has been imposed. Demands for illegal immigrants to be thrown out of the country have resulted in mass round ups and swollen detention centres. Hysteria stalks the country.We find ourselves in an interview room in El Paso prison, Texas. Rick (played by Trevor White) is a Trump-voting felon incarcerated in a surveilled solitary confinement cell. Gloria (played by Angela Griffin) is Read more ...
aleks.sierz
There are few things more British than talking about the weather. What makes this play about a meteorologist interesting, however, is its historical setting: the eve of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. Although stories from the Second World War are hardly a rarity in contemporary British culture, this one is fascinatingly original and arrives at the Park Theatre after a national tour, having originally been seen at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum and Chichester in 2014. Already on its way to the West End, it is a huge personal triumph for actor and writer David Haig, who stars in Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Is Buddhism a path to finding spiritual enlightenment – or just an excuse for not facing your personal problems? Given that this question is implicit in the debut play by Sam Bain, script co-writer of nine series of Channel 4’s Peep Show, as well as having other credits on Fresh Meat, Babylon and Four Lions, you’d expect the answer to be the latter. And you wouldn’t be wrong. But, as The Retreat opens at the Park Theatre, can Bain – with help from director Kathy Burke – transfer his sitcom skills from the small screen to the stage?Set entirely in a one-roomed hut in the Scottish Highlands, 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
There are few modern literary fables that really resonate in the wider culture. And most that do are dystopias. Think of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, or even Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? And, of course, Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. This 1962 novel explores the myth of the unique violence of modern alienation in a hectic parable which is told in “nadsat”, a teen language of the future which mixes Russian with English while sporting a distinctly Shakespearean cadence.This is a testosterone-heavy, noisy and boyish Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Neil LaBute’s exercise in self-flagellation, first seen in 2005 and adapted for film in 2013, offers his familiar misanthropic take on the battle of the sexes. This one concerns Guy (Charles Dorfman), engaged to be married and embarking on a tour of ex-girlfriends across America – ostensibly to right wrongs, but murkier motives soon emerge.It’s inescapably formulaic and repetitive, with Guy visiting a series of women in a series of hotels, each exchange following a similar pattern: defensiveness, rekindled intimacy, revelation and recrimination. Gary Condes’s production differentiates the Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Infertility affects one in six couples, but it’s still something of a taboo subject. Gareth Farr’s new play throws welcome light on the challenges of conception, and is accompanied by a Fertility Fest that brings together artists and medical experts to address the issues raised. If Farr’s drama occasionally feels like a case study for that discussion, with a few awkward sitcom beats tossed in, it’s still a searingly honest and genuinely affecting piece of work.Jess (Michelle Bonnard) and Dylan (Oliver Lansley) have been married for five years and after trying, unsuccessfully, to start a Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Satire, we’re solemnly instructed in Dougal Irvine’s new musical The Busker's Opera, “has to strike a fine balance of entertainment and teaching”. Well yes, but it’s also generally wise (discretion, valour, and all that) to keep the theatrical crib sheet to yourself, just in case your product doesn’t quite measure up. This latest show from the award-winning composer and lyricist of Departure Lounge and Britain’s Got Bhangra leads with its chin, and despite energy and bags of insouciant confidence, can’t quite pull off the pose.John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera was a nose-thumbing attack on the Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Theatregoers suffering from First World War fatigue may want to pass on Jonathan Lynn’s merely competent historical drama about two mythic figures: Charles de Gaulle and Philippe Pétain. It’s a fascinating subject – de Gaulle had his former mentor tried for treason in 1945 after Pétain led France into Nazi collaboration – but Yes Minister co-creator Lynn, who also directs, seems unsure whether it warrants winking satire or solemn historical re-enactment, settling for a fitfully engaging hybrid.The relationship began in 1913, with de Gaulle supporting Pétain's (Tom Conti) unpopular Read more ...