Theatre Reviews

Don Juan, Lesya Ukrainka Theatre, St James Theatre

David Nice Friday, 18 September 2015

Whose Don Juan – progenitor Tirso de Molina’s, Molière’s or Pushkin’s? None of the above. Unless you have some knowledge of Ukrainian culture, you won’t have heard of Lesya Ukrainka, born Larysa Petrivna Kosach-Kvitka in 1871 to a proudly nationalist (if half-Byelorusian) father and a mother whose pioneering work in women’s rights she continued.

Kinky Boots, Adelphi Theatre

Edward Seckerson Thursday, 17 September 2015

If the shoe fits, they say, wear it. But in truth there's always been a bit of a size differential between Kinky Boots, the modest urban Brit-flick set in a struggling shoe factory, and the Cyndi Lauper/Harvey Fierstein musical that it spawned, first on Broadway and now here.

Fuck the Polar Bears, Bush Theatre

aleks Sierz Thursday, 17 September 2015

With the election of lefty outsider Jeremy Corbyn to the Labour leadership, are we entering a new era when upsets and surprises have become a new way of life? Is it really true that anything is now possible? As if to engage with these pressing questions, Tanya Ronder’s new play is all about how a perfect family is suddenly visited by some totally unexpected events. What starts with a dodgy doorknob escalates over 90 minutes into a full-scale domestic breakdown.

The Sting, Wilton's Music Hall

Demetrios Matheou Wednesday, 16 September 2015

One of the oldest and most striking venues in London lends itself to immersive theatrical experiences. A few years ago the Victorian interior of Wilton’s Music Hall was infused with pre-show activity to recreate the 1920s of The Great Gatsby. Now a similar flick of the wrist by the same director draws punters into the 1930s and an adaptation of one of cinema’s great con capers.

Photograph 51, Noël Coward Theatre

Matt Wolf Tuesday, 15 September 2015

Nicole Kidman has returned to the West End 17 years after causing an innuendo-laden sensation in The Blue Room, the David Hare play that promptly transferred from the Donmar to Broadway, where one major magazine at the time actually bothered to inform readers where best to sit for the optimal view of a stage semi-neophyte en déshabillé.

Mouthful, Trafalgar Studios

Marianka Swain Monday, 14 September 2015

Metta Theatre’s didactic "short plays" evening takes a rigorously Poppins approach: a spoonful of drama to help the medicine go down. The sobering facts – “We need to produce more food globally by 2050 than we have done in the whole of human history” – come thick and fast, emblazoned on a screen and spouted by four versatile performers. Some pieces, written in collaboration with scientists, are fuelled by those stats, others crumble under their weight.

One Minute, The Vaults

Tom Birchenough Saturday, 12 September 2015

The repercussions of loss ripple inexorably through Simon Stephens’ 2003 play One Minute. Foreshadowing elements the prolific playwright has developed in his later work, it’s a testing piece that speaks most of all about the currents of loneliness that fan out within the fabric of the modern metropolis.

Future Conditional, Old Vic

Marianka Swain Friday, 11 September 2015

Can we – should we – control the future? That’s the dilemma faced by anxious parents attempting to steer their offspring through a labyrinthine school system, educational think-tanks, and the teachers shaping young lives. Tamsin Oglesby’s play is an intriguing opener for the Matthew Warchus era: impassioned, fiercely topical, and – with its relatively youthful cast – kicking against the “old” in “Old Vic”. That, and electric guitars as rousing musical accompaniment.

Comment

Lela & Co, Royal Court Theatre

aleks Sierz Thursday, 10 September 2015

When is a monologue not quite a monologue? When it is interrupted by another voice, one that contradicts and argues with it. In Cordelia Lynn’s Lela & Co, her Royal Court debut which is effectively and savagely staged in the claustrophobic heat of the upstairs studio space, the drama starts off as a classic monologue, with Lela telling the story of her life, starting with her birth. Then she tells of her rather brutish upbringing up to the age of about 15.

When We Were Women, Orange Tree Theatre

Marianka Swain Tuesday, 08 September 2015

Can you peg a whole play on a decent twist? When We Were Women’s narrative tease pays off interestingly, but takes a hell of a long time getting there. It leaves little space to explore the ramifications of an intriguing revelation, a frustration amplified by the constant chronological cross-cutting in this revived Sharman Macdonald work, first seen at the National in 1988.

inside theatre

Advertising feature

★★★★★

‘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.