Theatre Reviews
Spades, RoundhouseTuesday, 12 February 2013
You don’t so much watch a Robert Lepage show as surrender to it, and his latest project sees Canada’s most innovative theatre-maker in full assault. It’s hard to think of another director whose response to the Iraq War would involve an Elvis impersonator, menopause as a major plot point and a visual cadenza for twelve perspex chairs, but that’s the love/hate thrill of Lepage. Spades is the first in a planned tetralogy of plays each themed around one of the suits of cards. Read more... |
Desolate Heaven, Theatre 503Monday, 11 February 2013
In a draining first work, Ailís Ní Ríain infuses a coming-of-age saga with Irish folklore. The outline sounds gripping enough: burdened with caring for their ill parents, two teenage friends run away to the Irish coast. But then come cultural threads that weave uncomfortably into the canvas, plus surreal overtones that suggest the story is not so straightforward. Read more... |
The Stepmother, Orange Tree TheatreSunday, 10 February 2013
When's the last time you encountered a play with a hissable anti-hero and a young heroine who radiates charity, decency, and all things good? Read more... |
Great Expectations, Vaudeville TheatreSaturday, 09 February 2013
There’s nothing novel about novel-adaptations on stage. We’ve seen every classic from Pride and Prejudice to Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Woman in White (and The Woman in Black) get the full theatrical treatment, and I’m not sure any have ended up the better for it. The power of a tale is in the telling, and unmoored from the delicate narrative handling of an Austen or a Dickens things can go horribly awry. Read more... |
Saer Doliau, Finborough TheatreWednesday, 06 February 2013
Last weekend it was the 50th anniversary of an important event in postwar Welsh history. In early February 1963 the Welsh Language Society – Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg – protested for the first time about the right of Welsh speakers to live their lives in Welsh. Read more... |
The Captain of Köpenick, National TheatreWednesday, 06 February 2013
A little man takes on Authority and fails. A little man dons a colourful uniform, complete with boots and spiked helmet, and he becomes Authority. Carl Zuckmayer wrote Der Hauptmann von Köpenick in 1931, two years before Hitler came to power. Read more... |
Our Country’s Good, St James TheatreTuesday, 05 February 2013
Plays about plays are often touched by theatrical magic. This is certainly the case with Timberlake Wertenbaker’s masterpiece, first staged in 1988, and now revived by the same director, Max Stafford-Clark, who originally eased it into the world. And, just as a quarter of a century ago the play felt like a protest against the moronic anti-arts prejudices of the Thatcher gang, so today it once again asserts the power of theatre as against the crippled vision of Arts Council cuts. Read more... |
London Wall, Finborough TheatreSaturday, 02 February 2013
The walls of the staircase to the Finborough Theatre off the Earls Court Road are lined with framed awards. Downstairs for the umpteenth time, the café/restaurant has gone bust. But no other London fringe theatre has achieved such stellar success as this tiny pub theatre under the helm of its restless, irrepressible artistic director Neil McPherson, who has made a cottage industry out of discovering forgotten gems. Read more... |
Feast, Young VicSaturday, 02 February 2013
Feast aims high. Very, very high. Steered by experienced and much-lauded director Rufus Norris, five playwrights and one choreographer seek to make a fusion of physical theatre, dance, onstage music, straight drama, abstract poetic dialogue, projected animation and knockabout comedy to tell no less a story than 350 years of the history of the Yoruba people of west Africa. Read more... |
Old Times, Harold Pinter TheatreFriday, 01 February 2013
This production of Old Times is a big deal. It’s the first of Harold Pinter’s plays to be performed in the theatre renamed after him; it marks the reunion of director Ian Rickson and Kristin Scott Thomas, after their exhilarating Betrayal; and it feels like a seminal reading, involving a casting conceit that makes a rich work even richer, even more mesmerising. 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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