Theatre Reviews
The String Quartet’s Guide to Sex and Anxiety, Brighton Festival review - molto nervosoFriday, 25 May 2018
Calixto Bieito has a reputation as a radical theatre-maker, and by any standards The String Quartet’s Guide to Sex and Anxiety is an unusual, genre-breaking piece; Bieito has described it as “like a symphonic poem for a quartet of musicians, and a quartet of voices”. Read more... |
As You Like It / Hamlet, Shakespeare’s Globe review - ensemble emphasis sets a leaner styleFriday, 18 May 2018
There’s a distinct feeling of back to basics to this opening double bill at the Globe under the theatre’s new Artistic Director Michelle Terry. The elaborations (some would say gimmickry) of Emma Rice’s short tenure have been reined back, and a new concentration prevails. Read more... |
Effigies of Wickedness, Gate Theatre review - this sleek cabaret conceals desolation behind a smileThursday, 17 May 2018
The show’s subtitle – “Songs banned by the Nazis” – is a catchy one, and somewhere under the confetti, the stilettos, the extravagant nudity, the sequins and even shinier repartee that are wrapped around Effigies of Wickedness like a mink coat on the shoulders of an SS officer’s mistress is the bruised and grubby story of one of history’s foulest episodes. Read more... |
Life and Fate / Uncle Vanya, Maly Drama Theatre, Theatre Royal Haymarket review - the greatest ensemble?Wednesday, 16 May 2018
Towards the end of the Maly Drama Theatre of St Petersburg's Life and Fate, a long scene in director Lev Dodin's daring if necessarily selective adaptation of Vasily Grossman's epic novel brings many of the actors together after a sequence of painful monologues and one-to-ones. Read more... |
Red, Wyndham's Theatre - Mark Rothko drama paints a vivid pictureWednesday, 16 May 2018
The band’s back together. Alfred Molina plays Rothko for the third time in Michael Grandage’s revisiting of John Logan’s richly textured two-hander, first seen at the Donmar in 2009 and then bypassing the West End for Broadway. Read more... |
Describe the Night, Hampstead Theatre review - epic take on the mythology of PutinFriday, 11 May 2018
Five years ago, when New York playwright Rajiv Joseph started on his fantasy disquisition on truth, lies and the recent history of Russia, no one was talking about a new Cold War and trump was still a thing you did in a game of cards. Read more... |
Problem in Brighton, Brighton Festival review - comic but patchy rock showFriday, 11 May 2018
Problem is Brighton is down in the Festival programme as an “alt-rock/pop pantomime”, with actors involved and the inference it’s some sort of musical featuring “instruments specially created by David Shrigley for the performance”. This turns out to be seriously over-selling it. In fact, Problem in Brighton is a... Read more... |
The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, Brighton Festival review - a dynamic dedication to an artist's museThursday, 10 May 2018
They say that behind every successful man is a strong woman. The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk is as much – if not more so – the championing of the unsung hero in this story of the famous early modernist artist, Marc Chagall. Read more... |
Nightfall, Bridge Theatre, review - moving but over-exposedWednesday, 09 May 2018
Playwright Barney Norris is as prolific as he is talented. Barely out of his twenties, he has written a series of excellent plays – the award-winning Visitors, follow-ups Eventide and While We’re Here – as well as a couple of novels and lots of poetry. Read more... |
IOU Rear View, Brighton Festival review - imaginative odyssey around townSunday, 06 May 2018
Yorkshire theatre company IOU have a tool in their armoury that most of their peers do not. It’s an open-topped bus with tiered seating, as pictured above, built in Halifax and the only one of its type, replete with headphone sets for every seat. It is at the heart of Rear View, their show which takes to the streets of Brighton and puts the participant right at the blurred connecting point between art and reality. It’s a unique experience. Rear View starts at a barge... Read more... |
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★★★★★
‘A compulsive, involving, emotionally stirring evening – theatre’s answer to a page-turner.’
The Observer, Kate Kellaway
Direct from a sold-out season at Kiln Theatre the five star, hit play, The Son, is now playing at the Duke of York’s Theatre for a strictly limited season.
★★★★★
‘This final part of Florian Zeller’s trilogy is the most powerful of all.’
The Times, Ann Treneman
Written by the internationally acclaimed Florian Zeller (The Father, The Mother), lauded by The Guardian as ‘the most exciting playwright of our time’, The Son is directed by the award-winning Michael Longhurst.
Book by 30 September and get tickets from £15*
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