Theatre Reviews

Fiddler on the Roof, Grange Park Opera

Kimon Daltas Friday, 05 June 2015

Many matches are made in Fiddler on the Roof but the matchmaking prize goes to Grange Park Opera for getting Bryn Terfel to take on the role of Tevye. Having only recently played Sweeney Todd, and indeed throughout a varied career, Terfel has proved that he can treat lighter music with respect and sincerity, not to mention plenty of good humour.

Buckets, Orange Tree Theatre

Jenny Gilbert Friday, 05 June 2015

“The only way is up” might have been the motto for the Orange Tree over the past year. Last spring, the future couldn’t have looked bleaker for the Richmond producing house when it lost its entire Arts Council grant overnight. Yet here we are, seven productions later, looking back at a season that has included an almost bullish proportion of new and rarely performed writing.

Stop! The Play, Trafalgar Studios

Marianka Swain Thursday, 04 June 2015

The play’s the thing, once again, in the latest backstage comedy, an affable if limited dig at luvvie pretensions. Noises Off still reigns supreme in this genre, with successors unable to match the bravura precision of Michael Frayn’s masterful multitasking farce, though the triumph of The Play That Goes Wrong proves there is an appetite for further displays of theatrical chaos.

The Elephant Man, Theatre Royal, Haymarket

Matt Wolf Monday, 01 June 2015

Beauty transforms itself into a beast but an inner grace shines forth regardless: such is the enduring power of Bernard Pomerance's stage play The Elephant Man, first seen in London almost 40 years ago and a Broadway semi-regular ever since.

Temple, Donmar Warehouse

aleks Sierz Thursday, 28 May 2015

St Paul’s Cathedral is an icon of national identity. The building that rose up from the fire and smoke of the Blitz has also witnessed the funeral of Winston Churchill in 1965 and the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Di some twenty years later. In October 2011, this temple of God found that the Occupy anti-capitalist movement had set up camp outside its monumental front steps.

The Beaux' Stratagem, National Theatre

alexandra Coghlan Wednesday, 27 May 2015

Between Light Shining in Buckinghamshire and Everyman it was beginning to look like we were never going to get a proper, uncomplicated laugh in Rufus Norris’s National Theatre. Thank goodness for Restoration comedy, stepping into the breach as reliably as it did with The Man of Mode in 2007 (who could forget Rory Kinnear’s Sir Fopling Flutter?).

Comment

Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson, Corn Exchange, Brighton

Nick Hasted Monday, 25 May 2015

Margaret Atwood’s Forties childhood was spent knocking around the Canadian backwoods with her forest entomologist, proto-ecologist dad, and it shows. Interviewed alongside her husband Graeme Gibson on the Brighton Festival’s closing night, the international literary prizes, like the gushing reverence with which she’s introduced by Festival director Ali Smith and received by the sell-out crowd, seems to have made little impression.

King Lear, Northern Broadsides, Touring

Ismene Brown Monday, 25 May 2015

Jonathan Miller’s new King Lear is rustic to its core, spoken in broad Northern accents, and the whole production could be packed onto a travelling theatre’s wagon and taken around Britain pulled by a couple of shire horses.

Peter Pan, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre

Marianka Swain Friday, 22 May 2015

“All children, except one, grow up.” So begins J. M. Barrie’s iconic tale of arrested development, given new power and poignancy in this high-flying production. A century after one of Barrie’s youthful collaborators, George Llewelyn Davies, was killed at Ypres, it tells their familiar story through the prism of the brutalising First World War, in which context Peter’s neverending youth becomes an escapist beacon.

McQueen, St James Theatre

Matt Wolf Thursday, 21 May 2015

"You make clothes that make the darkness in me matter": If such an accolade strikes you as profound, make a beeline for McQueen, the James Phillips play about the tortured, all-too-brief life of the maverick talent Alexander McQueen that constitutes the longest 100 minutes I have spent in a theatre in many a month.

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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.