Theatre Reviews
Brighton Festival: Stella, Theatre RoyalSunday, 29 May 2016
A Victorian transgender celebrity is a fitting and timely subject for this Brighton Festival premiere. Writer-director Neil Bartlett turns Stella’s scandalous life into a stark horror story, marked by the regular, jarring crash of glass which sounds like splintering flashbulbs, mirror images breaking and jabbing at an older man (Richard Cant) whose hand is already slashed and bandaged, as he awaits a fatal knock on the door. Read more... |
The Threepenny Opera, National TheatreFriday, 27 May 2016
Last seen at the National Theatre over 10 years ago, Brecht and Weill’s The Threepenny Opera is back in a new adaptation by Simon Stephens. But looking at Rufus Norris’s epic-theatre-lite production – all exposed stage-mechanics and makeshift sets – and listening to Stephens’s brutal but non-committal text, you’d swear it had never been away. Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, Garrick TheatreThursday, 26 May 2016
Trouble remembering in which country Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers cross paths? Branagh’s panting paean to Fellini will sort you out. Stylish as a monochromatic Vogue spread, and as self-consciously Italian as Bruno Tonioli guzzling lasagne in a gondola, it’s not exactly a triumph of cultural nuance. Read more... |
A View from Islington North, Arts TheatreWednesday, 25 May 2016
Is there any point to political satire? The great thing about the glory years of this genre in, say, the early 1960s was that the jokes punctured people’s deepest held beliefs in a deferential society, or that, as in say the 1980s, they had a target that was an unbearable person, Maggie Thatcher. Read more... |
Running Wild, Regent's Park Open Air TheatreWednesday, 25 May 2016
Running Wild is a theatrical safari with no expenses spared. This latest stage adaptation of a novel by Michael Morpurgo (of War Horse fame) boasts a jungle-full of puppets – a majestic elephant and some affectionate orangutans included – and a tsunami that sweeps right over the audience. Read more... |
Human Animals, Royal Court TheatreTuesday, 24 May 2016
As I sit down to write this, a crow is cawing outside my window while night falls; for an awkard moment I think it might be a raven, and this reminds me of Edgar Allan Poe. Is the black bird saying “Nevermore”? And why should that worry me? Well, I’ve just seen Stef Smith’s resonant and disturbing new play, Human Animals, and it’s made me particularly sensitive to all of the creatures with which we share our urban spaces. Read more... |
King John, Rose Theatre, KingstonSaturday, 21 May 2016
According to Sellar and Yeatman in 1066 and All That, the true Bible of English history, King John was a Bad (to be exact, an Awful) King. Shakespeare had quite an interest in Bad Kings – Richards II and III were also subjected to his selective dramatist’s forensics, and like Sellar and Yeatman he only remembered the bits he wanted to remember, and then partially. Read more... |
Blue/Orange, Young VicFriday, 20 May 2016
Joe Penhall’s Blue/Orange is one of the best plays of the past two decades. First staged at the National Theatre in 2000, with the dream cast of Chiwetel Ejiofor, Andrew Lincoln and Bill Nighy, it won an Olivier Award for Best Play and has been constantly revived ever since. Not only does it have a strong story, but the characters, and their interaction, are credible, engaging and dramatic, while the play fizzes with ideas as well as emotions. It is a contemporary classic. Read more... |
The Invisible Hand, Tricycle TheatreFriday, 20 May 2016
In the long tradition of fictional characters who embody their monikers, the naming of Nick Bright hardly counts as the most colourful, but it has a sardonic edge. Clearly the young American banker at the centre of Ayad Akhtar’s tight political thriller is too bright for his own good. Read more... |
Monster Raving Loony, Soho TheatreWednesday, 18 May 2016
The sense of humour is a funny thing. It raises questions about whether what we find funny can tells us anything about who we are, or what we might become. The case of Screaming Lord Sutch, the semi-legendary rock singer and founder of the satirical Official Monster Raving Loony Party, begs the question: is his wild eccentricity an example of our national pride in tolerating bonkers people, or just an individual act of wonderful silliness? 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*
with no booking fee.
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