Theatre
Laura de Lisle
I’ll admit, I’ve never been a fan of murder mysteries. Patience is not one of my virtues; if I can’t work something out in 30 seconds, I’m liable to give up, and whodunnits tend to need a bit longer than that. Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Hung Parliament was, therefore, a lovely surprise: well-paced and earnest without taking itself too seriously, it’s a new interactive experience from Les Enfants Terribles, the company known for madcap, immersive work like their 2016 Olivier-nominated Alice’s Adventures Underground (which returned the following year). Don’t be fooled by Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The four monologues that make up Barnes’ People were filmed in the grand surroundings of the Theatre Royal, Windsor, and that venue's atmospheric spaces (now deserted, of course) seem to tell a sad tale of their own, one that chimes rather appropriately with the mood of some of them. Peter Barnes wrote them for Radio Three in the 1980s – the eponymous first series appeared at the beginning of that decade, its successor (More Barnes’ People) towards its end – and they have now been lovingly developed by Original Theatre Company for these filmed adaptations, treated with what feels like Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
This production of The Color Purple is an extraordinary testimony to the fact that many of the 20th century’s most joyous forms of music – jazz, ragtime and of course blues – had their roots in misery and oppression. Alice Walker’s powerful story of how a teenage black girl transcends rape, serial abuse and brutalisation first became an unlikely candidate for success as a musical in 2004, playing in Atlanta before it successfully hit Broadway in 2005.Last month it was announced that a film version of the musical will be released in cinemas – microbes permitting – in December 2023. In the Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Contact without touch: among the many readjustments that the pandemic has brought to theatre, its demands that restrict direct contact almost to nothing must be among the most testing. We have learnt much about how rigorously any new production – for now, only live-streamed – must be prepared: the regular testing in rehearsals, the two-metre distancing, the repeated cleaning of props. But what can it actually be like, once the process is finally rolling, to be performing without some of the most elemental physical resources of theatre, like embracing?There are moments in Lolita Chakrabarti’s Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
This stunningly delivered online monologue from a bereaved widow to her husband feels simultaneously incredibly timely and very dated. At this time of lockdown it is chilling to wonder how many rooms across the world contain individuals with only ghosts for comfort. Yet while Terence Rattigan’s 1968 script, written originally for TV, touches on a current aspect of bereavement, the details of the marriage depicted stem from a world as distant as corned beef fritters and Harold Wilson’s pipe.Janie Dee (main picture) is pitch perfect as a woman teetering between denial and self- Read more ...
Heather Neill
The story of Romeo and Juliet is well known, worth revisiting endlessly and always relevant. But there is another story here: the making of the piece using innovative digital technology including CGI, to keep actors and creative team safe in a pandemic. The actors didn't meet (except for Sam Tutty and Emily Redpath, the two leads, who had one, Covid-tested, day together), neither did they visit the Palace Theatre in Manchester, yet this production appears to use the whole building – stage, auditorium, bar and costume store.In a studio much smaller than the theatre, over hundreds of hours Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
Good Grief, a new show from American screenwriter and playwright Lorien Haynes, can’t work out what it wants to be. It’s billed as an “online filmed production”. Its stars, Sian Clifford (fresh from a BAFTA win for Fleabag) and Nikesh Patel (last seen in Mindy Kaling’s new version of Four Weddings and a Funeral), are acting for a big auditorium, despite their TV chops. But it was filmed, with a masked-up crew, and is being broadcast as a recording. So what is it, then? First and foremost, a show that lives up to its title. We follow Cat (Clifford, pictured below) and Adam (Patel) in Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Film is the new theatre – this we know, but does the distance imposed by the change of medium increase or decrease the impact of the story? The latest example of this problematic switch from stage to screen is the strongly acted Shook, Samuel Bailey’s debut play, which won the 2019 Papatango New Writing Prize and had a run at the Southwark Playhouse in November of that year. Although its planned transfer to the Trafalgar Studios in the West End was curtailed when the pandemic hit, the drama has been superbly filmed and is available to watch online on the Papatango website.Set in a Read more ...
Heather Neill
Swaggering rakes, posturing fops, sexual intrigue, illicit encounters, wit, artifice, wigs, fans and beauty spots - these are familiar ingredients of Restoration comedy. It is a louche world where the word "mask" is associated with naughty goings on under cover of darkness rather than health worries, and where social distancing and restraint have no place. On the face of it, Hermione Gulliford's choice of William Wycherley's first play, Love in a Wood or St James's Park, for a rehearsed Zoom reading "with a few mates" is surprising.The project began as a diversion, like many another during Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
The blurb for Peter Pan: The Audio Adventure, Shaun McKenna’s new adaptation of JM Barrie’s classic, tells us, with a hint of firm matronly love, that it is “to be enjoyed with a large cup of cocoa before bed”. Truer words have never been spoken. In four half-hour chapters, director Tobias Deacon and his star-studded cast have created a bedtime treat to rival hot chocolate. A lot of that is down to Sharon D Clarke as the Narrator; it’s her Olivier-winning voice we hear first, and what a voice it is. Smooth as warm butter, it guides us to the home of the Darlings: Mary (Joanna Riding) and Read more ...
Veronica Lee
In a much-depleted and truncated pantomime season that withered on the vine, the National Theatre's debut production of Dick Whittington lasted only four performances before the show was cancelled; it has now released this recording, which will be available throughout the current lockdown. It's an enjoyable two hours spent in amiable company, with lots of bright colours and fart gags to keep the young ones entertained while the adults will enjoy the saucy humour which the title character's name invites.The production started life in 2018 at the Lyric Hammersmith and writers Jude Christian and Read more ...
Matt Wolf
"Goodbye": The single word lingered heavily in the air last March 16, as the scripted closing both of the terrific Southwark Playhouse revival of The Last Five Years and as an ancillary farewell to live theatre. Late afternoon on that same day, in response to the gathering spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, a decision had been taken to shut theatres down, but the Jason Robert Brown two-hander (plus band) decided to go ahead anyway for the simple reason that the talent were already assembled in the building.And so it was that an audience sat held both by the musical's depiction of marital woe Read more ...