Theatre Reviews
Bullet Catch, Spiegeltent, BrightonFriday, 17 May 2013
Magicians’ online forums are seething at Bullet Catch’s host and writer-director, the Scottish actor and magician Rob Drummond. This is because at one point in the show he levitates a small table then takes an audience poll as to who would like to know how the trick is done. When a majority vote they’d like to know, he shows us, simple as that. Read more... |
The Victorian in the Wall, Royal Court Theatre UpstairsFriday, 17 May 2013
The past: it’s etched into the fabric not just of our lives, but of the architecture that surrounds us – the streets we tread, the buildings where we work or make our homes. In this whimsical, winning 90-minute piece by Will Adamsdale, the past has a niggling habit of leaping out from the places where it should lie buried, rubbing up cheekily against the present, and sticking its nose into the future. Read more... |
Knee Deep, Theatre Royal, BrightonThursday, 16 May 2013
Knee Deep, the show by four-person Brisbane acrobatic troupe Casus, is only an hour long but packs more eye-popping antics into its first 10 minutes than many circuses muster in three hours. Their fluid, almost faultless displays of gymnastic skill have a theatrical dynamic that’s so gripping I feel I’ve missed something vital every time I look down for a few seconds to scribble a note on what's occurring. They really are something special. Read more... |
These Shining Lives, Park TheatreThursday, 16 May 2013
North London has a splendid new theatre, The Park, whose £2.5 million existence – without a penny of government subsidy – is something of a miracle given our cash-strapped times. The building itself is also a bit of a marvel, tucked into a Tardis-like space (originally a blacksmith’s) in the heart of Finsbury Park. With two stages – a 200-seat main theatre and a 90-seat studio – and a strong community ethos, The Park has heaps of promise. Read more... |
Public Enemy, Young VicTuesday, 14 May 2013
Everything seems so free and easy, so do-as-you-darn-well-pleasey, in the Stockmanns’ fjord-view model home. Cheery friends in bright 1970s clothes drop in to chew the social cud as well as Mrs S’s cooking; only her medical-officer husband’s mayoral brother jars, and surely he’s too daft to be taken seriously. Read more... |
The Hothouse, Trafalgar StudiosFriday, 10 May 2013
Throughout Harold Pinter’s The Hothouse, the characters of an ill-defined institution split hairs over the service it provides. Is it a rest home, a nursing home, a sanatorium? They may be kidding themselves, but not us; not when their chief asserts that “the key word is order”, or when these patients “recommended by the ministry” are known not by their names, but numbers, and not when we glimpse the diabolical misdeeds behind the door of Room 1A. Read more... |
Passion Play, Duke of York's TheatreWednesday, 08 May 2013
What’s the price of betrayal? In Peter Nichols’s 1981 play it’s a painful splintering of the psyche. The betrayer mentally compartmentalises in order to be both affectionate husband and ardent lover; the betrayed loses her confidence, her purpose, even her identity until she is – in ways that Nichols makes theatrically explicit – beside herself. Read more... |
A Doll's House, Royal Exchange, ManchesterWednesday, 08 May 2013
What price a woman’s liberation? And what price a man’s self-defined honour? By pitching one against the other and against the backdrop of wedlock (the emphasis being on the “lock”), Ibsen forges his classic love-hate drama which still grips as, spellbound, we watch the balance of the relationship between Nora and her husband Torvald shift. Read more... |
Gutted, Theatre Royal Stratford EastSaturday, 04 May 2013
Rikki Beadle-Blair is a high-energy polymath. He’s a real phenomenon. Raised by his lesbian mum in sarf London, he wrote his first play at the age of seven and was, he claims, already directing four years later. Nowadays he creates challenging entertainment in film, education and theatre (18 new plays in six years). He also writes self-help books. His heart’s clearly in the right place. There’s only one problem — he’s not a very good playwright. Read more... |
The Tempest, Shakespeare's GlobeFriday, 03 May 2013
A thunder sheet booms, a didgeridoo hums distantly, a model ship rears and pitches its way forward through the waves of groundlings and suddenly we find ourselves washed up on the shores of the Globe for another season. All eyes may be on the newly launched Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, but just when we were all at risk of getting too distracted by its novelty, Jeremy Herrin and his new production of The Tempest are here to remind us what the original Globe Theatre does best. Read more... |
Pages
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.
latest in today
London Tide, National Theatre review - haunting moody river...
“He do the police in different voices.” If ever one phrase summed up a work of fiction, and the art of its writer, then surely it is this...
Jonathan Pie, Duke of York's Theatre review - spoof pol...
If you don't like sweary comics – Jonathan Pie uses the c-word liberally – then this may not be the show for you. In fact if you're a Tory, ditto...
Baby Reindeer, Netflix review - a misery memoir disturbingly...
Richard Gadd won an Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2016 with...
Machinal, The Old Vic review - note-perfect pity and terror
Virtuosity and a wildly beating heart are compatible in Richard Jones’s finely calibrated production of Renaissance woman Sophie Treadwell’s ...
Fantastic Machine review - photography's story from one...
The first photograph was taken nearly 200 years ago in France by Joseph Niépce, and the first picture of a person was taken in Paris by Louis...
Simon Boccanegra, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester...
If ever more evidence were needed of Sir Mark Elder’s untiring zest for exploration and love of the thrill of live opera performance, it was this...
All You Need Is Death review - a future folk horror classic
Music, when the singer’s voice dies away, vibrates in the memory. In the hypnotic new Irish horror film All You Need Is Death, those who...
Album: Jonny Drop • Andrew Ashong - The Puzzle Dust
As I sat down to write this review, the sun came out. It was a salutory reminder of the importance of context: where I’d previously thought “mmm,...
theartsdesk on Vinyl: Record Store Day Special 2024
Record Store Day is tomorrow! At theartsdesk on Vinyl...
If Only I Could Hibernate review - kids in grinding poverty...
Teenage Ulzii (Battsooj Uurtsaikh in an elegantly restrained performance) is looking after his little sister and brother in Ulaanbaatar after...