Theatre
Heather Neill
Oliver Goldsmith was a literary all-rounder – novelist, poet and playwright – remembered chiefly for one example of each discipline, respectively The Vicar of Wakefield, "The Deserted Village" and, of course, above all, She Stoops to Conquer. This play, Goldsmith wrote, was a return to "laughing comedy" as opposed to the fashionable "sentimental" kind, which exhibited "the virtues of private life" rather than exposing its vices, and focused on the distresses of characters rather than their faults. It is 250 years old this year and regularly revived, its laughter quotient intact Read more ...
Gary Naylor
“But that’s what they’re paying for!” replied my son as we, a little shellshocked by the previous three hours, skirted Trafalgar Square on the way home. I had reservations about some key components of the alchemy that produces great theatre, but none about the spectacle, even more impressive (as we subsequently agreed) than the big Cirque du Soleil extravaganzas that cost a helluva lot more for a seat in Vegas. On its own terms, The Mongol Khan is a five-star show – and I’m already recommending it to friends. Not without reservations of course. As is the case for Grand Opera newbies, one must Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
“It’s nothing like Christmas,” Rachel (Amy-Leigh Hickman) hisses at her brother David (Kishore Walker). She’s trying to wrangle her family into their first ever Diwali celebration, but everything’s going wrong. Her dad Yash (Bhasker Patel) is getting on far too well with her boyfriend Matt (Jack Flammiger). And to top it off, mum Ruth (Catherine Cusack) has found everything but the most important item on Rachel’s meticulous shopping list: the matches.Passing, Dan Sareen’s new “family comedy-drama” at the Park Theatre, raises some interesting points about identity and belonging. But it goes Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The Comedian runs, bounces even, onto the stage. The audience immediately applauds. He seizes the mic and makes self-deprecatory gestures. Then he rubs the mic stand suggestively. We laugh. When he turns around we can see a laughing mouth printed on the back of his shirt. It’s Samuel Barnett – former history boy and star of stage and screen – and the audience instantly warms to him. He’s that kind of guy. Which is just as well because the Comedian who delivers Marcelo Dos Santos’s 65-minute monologue, now at the Bush Theatre after opening last year at the Edinburgh Fringe, is not Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Four centuries on from the publication of the First Folio, is there anything new to be said about William Shakespeare? Well, the fact that there is nothing old to be said about him (very little is known about the life of the glover’s son from Stratford) means that there’s always something new, as the evidence to gainsay any claim is minimal. Tedious conspiracy theories aside, it’s the kind of paradox the man himself might have appreciated.That’s the jumping off point for 72 Films’ lavish production for BBC Arts, a three-hour series that sits somewhere between the "clips and talking heads" Read more ...
Gary Naylor
You really don’t want to pick up The Time Traveller’s Wife in a game of charades. Half the clock would be run down just showing that it’s a novel, a film, a TV series and a musical. That spawning of spin-offs over the last two decades is a testament to the appeal of Audrey Niffenegger’s characters and story, but their relatively lukewarm critical and popular receptions speaks to the difficulty of going from page to screen. Is it any more successful travelling from page to stage? For anyone who has not seen any of those previous adaptations, the plot is tricky to follow Read more ...
Gary Naylor
A middle-aged man, expensively dressed and possessed of that very specific confidence that only comes from a certain kind of education, a certain kind of professional success, a certain kind of entitlement, talks to a younger woman. Despite the fact that she isn’t really trying, she’s attractive, bright and just assertive enough to weave a spell of fascination over men like him, with a tinge of non-dangerous exoticism evidenced by her East European accent to round things out. They are catnip to each other. And so it had been until almost two years ago. A torrid affair had been conducted, Read more ...
aleks.sierz
As Christmas looms, ’tis the season for comedy. And even the traditionally austere Royal Court feels obliged to join in. So here we go again with the same team — writer Rory Mullarkey and director Sam Pritchard — who brought the colourfully cartoonish Pity to this venue in 2018. Their latest, Mates in Chelsea, is billed as a comedy of manners inspired by Oscar Wilde and PJ Wodehouse, with a nod to reality TV show Made in Chelsea, and stars Laurie Kynaston and George Fouracres. But, in a society where reality is so much more satirical than fiction, can the team pull off a fun show that Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Rarely has a play's opening been so opportune. Just when it looked as if the West End was slipping into decline, along comes the smart, shrewd Backstairs Billy to allay mounting fears of late that the commercial theatre had lost all sense of quality control. (The offending titles know who they are.)It helps, of course, that Marcelo Dos Santos's royalty-themed play is getting a luxuriant production whose visual allure is evident from our first sight of designer Christopher Oram's spare-no-floral-arrangement recreation of the Garden Room of Clarence House. But just when you think you've heard Read more ...
aleks.sierz
There’s only a couple of things you need to know about playwright Richard Bean: he started out as a stand-up comic, and he comes from Hull. Oh, and he wears Hawaiian shirts to press nights. So that’s three things. Oh, and that his masterpiece One Man, Two Guvnors (a populist farcical version of Carlo Goldoni’s Servant of Two Masters) was a global megahit.That’s four things – now you’re in the zone. Here’s some more: his latest, To Have and To Hold, is an acerbic take on marriage and aging, which premiers at the Hampstead Theatre, starring Alun Armstrong and Marion Bailey, and it’s co-directed Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Journalism is a despised profession. And when you consider the story behind the interview that Diana, Princess of Wales, gave to BBC journo Martin Bashir in 1995 you can see why. As anyone who follows current affairs knows, it has been revealed that Bashir used less than honest methods to get this scoop and the whole sorry process has once again thrown an ugly light on the BBC as an institution.Now writer Jonathan Maitland, who has previously had Dead Sheep, An Audience with Jimmy Savile, and The Last Temptation of Boris Johnson staged at Park Theatre, gives us a documentary account of the Read more ...
David Kettle
You can almost feel the energy blazing off the stage in this fast, furious and fiercely funny two-hander from writer Racheal Ofori and Newcastle-based Alphabetti Theatre. Don’t blink or you’ll miss a crucial plot twist, or a nifty swerve into new characters, or even a major technological development.But behind all the japes, attitude and theatrical playfulness, there are broader, more human issues being explored here. Carleen and Crystal are urban 20-somethings who’ve done well with their amusing musings for online consumption via a platform that feels very much like YouTube ("Questions I Read more ...