Theatre
Tom Birchenough
David Greig’s reimagining of Stanisław Lem’s 1961 novel has brought a masterpiece of intellectual science fiction back to its philosophical core. Over the concentrated two hours of Matthew Lutton’s production, which reaches the Lyric Hammersmith from Melbourne via Edinburgh, we are compelled to contemplate, in the best tradition of the genre, ideas that go “beyond the reach of human beings”, as Lem himself put it. The experience is mesmerising. And if that sounds somehow cold or inhuman, the dramatic kernel of the story hits home at a deeply human level: Lem’s premise in this space Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Sabrina Mahfouz is a British-Egyptian writer who has explored issues of Muslim and British identity in various formats. Her work includes poetry, fiction, anthologies and performances, as well as plays. And she's pretty prolific. Since her Dry Ice was staged at the Bush in 2011, she has written some 18 other plays, of various lengths. Now she makes her debut at the Royal Court, the capital's premiere new writing theatre, with a short play that boasts an intriguing title, A History of Water in the Middle East, and which features Mahfouz in the cast. It is also part of the recent trend for gig Read more ...
aleks.sierz
True stories, even in a fictional form, have the power to grip you by the throat, furiously shake your body and then give you a parting kick in the arse. This is certainly true of stand-up comedian Richard Gadd's Baby Reindeer, a blistering monologue which was first seen in Edinburgh this summer, and is now at the Bush Theatre in West London. Apparently based on his true experience with a female stalker, this is an obsessive story about about obsession, and one which asks pertinent questions about what it means to be a victim, complicit or not, and how difficult it is to recover from trauma. Read more ...
Matt Wolf
If ambition were all, Groan Ups would get an A*. Marking the first of a very welcome three-show residency at the Vaudeville Theatre, this latest from the cheerfully unstoppable Mischief Theatre tethers the japery we have come to expect from the team behind The Play That Goes Wrong – mishaps aplenty, verbal hi-jinks – with a newfound interest in the human psyche. Think of an amalgam of, say, Alan Ayckbourn mixed with Feydeau, and you get somewhere near the landscape of a terrifically likable, if overlong, study of how we got here from there. Or how they got there, that is Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
This ingenious short work deftly investigates themes of love and identity with a breezy assurance that marks first time playwright, Ruby Thomas, out as a daring and exciting new voice. In an age where gender fluidity and polyamory are becoming increasing part of the daily discourse, Either casts a simultaneously humorous and breathtakingly bold light on whether or not gender affects the way you love.In 1897, Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler wrote the play Reigen, known more widely as La Ronde, which was initially banned by the censors and subsequently condemned Read more ...
Matt Wolf
“Every now and then the country goes a little wrong”: so goes one of the many lyrics from the Stephen Sondheim-John Weidman musical Assassins that makes this 1990 Off Broadway musical (subsequently chosen to open Sam Mendes’ Donmar Warehouse in 1992) a piece of theatre very much for our time. Some shows need textual tweaking when they come around again but not this one. If anything, this musical's excavation of an abiding societal fury seems more pertinent than ever today.Building in resonance every time I see it (at least if done well), Assassins has now been revived in a very smart co- Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
You wonder about the title of French dramatist Sam Gallet’s Mephisto [A Rhapsody], an adaptation for our days of Klaus Mann’s 1936 novel about an actor unable to resist the blandishments of fame, even if they come at the cost of losing himself. Those who know the story from Hungarian director István Szabó’s celebrated 1981 film with its mesmerising central performance by Klaus-Maria Brandauer might come to this looking for an element of tragedy, one moderated by the merciless accusation of complicity directed at a character unable to resist the enticements offered by Nazism, a figure who Read more ...
Marianka Swain
A hit comedy about a textile scientist? It might sound unlikely, but Ealing Studios’ 1951 sci-fi satire, starring Alec Guinness, was one of the most popular films of the year in Britain. Now, Sean Foley hopes to repeat its success with his new West End stage version, which tweaks the formula to go big, broad and occasionally Brexit-referencing – with varying results.Stephen Mangan, who also collaborated with Foley on the similarly goofy, high-energy Jeeves and Wooster: Perfect Nonsense, plays chemist Sidney Stratton, whose great invention is fabric that never gets dirty or wears out. But Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Shuck 'n' Jive is an hour-long two-hander about writing a play about being black in a white industry. The industry? Theatre. Performance. The stage.Simone (played by Olivia Onyehara), an opera singer, is from Lincolnshire. Cassi (played by Tanisha Spring), an actress, is from south London (so south, in fact, it's the part of Croydon where you can see countryside). But hold on. Is the play really about what it says it is? On the one hand, yes: the anecdotes come thick and fast. Meta-pastiche minstrel shows take over the auditions which Cassi and Simone attend. Hamilton and Porgy and Bess are Read more ...
Marianka Swain
“Doors and sardines. Getting on, getting off. Getting the sardines on, getting the sardines off. That’s farce. That’s the theatre. That’s life.” Michael Frayn’s laugh-til-you-weep backstage comedy transfers from the Lyric Hammersmith (where it first appeared in 1982), and Jeremy Herrin’s superb revival has tightened up further for this encore run, resulting in the funniest night you’ll have in the West End.Since staging Noises Off seems to tempt fate even more than uttering “Macbeth”, the production was once again visited by misadventure – this time a minor prop mishap, rather than Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The American dramatist Katori Hall has created a work of rare accomplishment in Our Lady of Kibeho, a play that combines a beautifully established picture of a particular world – a church school in rural Rwanda, in the early 1980s – with profound themes such as faith and belief.That she brings her story, one that indirectly references the genocide that the country would experience a decade later, together with some choice character comedy is further testimony to her skill in combining the sacred and the secular. Premiered in New York in 2014, it reaches Theatre Royal Stratford East in James Read more ...
Heather Neill
Reviewing Ian McKellen's show is, in one sense, like appraising the Taj Mahal or Mount Everest: he too is an awe-inspiring phenomenon. In another sense, Sir Ian is not like that at all, going out of his way to be available to the adoring patrons filling the theatre, apparently enjoying every minute of up to three hours from a jokey beginning geared to Gandalf and Widow Twankey to shaking a collecting bucket at the door as the audience leaves. Apparently indefatigable - despite this show marking his 80th birthday - he can even be found chatting to punters in the stalls during the interval. He Read more ...