Theatre Reviews
1984, Almeida TheatreMonday, 17 February 2014
Winston Smith is alone. Isolated in a pool of light, with an anglepoise lamp at his shoulder, he is about to pen the first entry in his private diary. But he is, of course, being watched. Mark Arends' Winston is, after all, living in the nightmarish superstate where Big Brother keeps every citizen perpetually under surveillance, even when they don’t know it. Read more... |
HMS Pinafore, Hackney EmpireMonday, 17 February 2014
Showboys will be boys – gym-bunny sailors, in this instance – as well as sisters, cousins, aunts, captain’s daughters and bumboat women. We know the ropes by now for Sasha Regan’s all-male Gilbert and Sullivan: a loving attempt to recreate, she says, the innocence of musical theatre in same-sex schools (mine, for which I played Sir Joseph Porter with a supporting army or navy of recorders, two cellos and piano, was mixed). Read more... |
Oh What a Lovely War, Theatre Royal Stratford EastWednesday, 12 February 2014
The trend of celebrating anniversaries by digging out old classics might suggest that no good new plays are being written, but at least it gives us the chance to re-assess their worth. Theatre Royal Stratford East, the legendary Joan Littlewood’s old venue, presents a new production of Oh What a Lovely War in its 60th anniversary year to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the First World War. Read more... |
It Just Stopped, Orange Tree TheatreWednesday, 12 February 2014
Would you be able to tell if the world had ended? For Beth and Franklin, the wannabe intellectuals at the heart of Stephen Sewell's play, it proves quite difficult to ascertain whether life as they know it has come to an end from their privileged life high in a luxury Melbourne apartment. Whether they are bickering about how the New Yorker has gone downhill or despairing about terrorism, they remain insulated from the world by their own self-absorption. Read more... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream, BarbicanTuesday, 11 February 2014
An insider once told me that you get a grant for including puppets in a production. Which may account for the amount of crap puppetry haphazardly applied in the theatre. That certainly can't be said about the work of husband-and-husband team Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones of Handspring as they collaborate again with War Horse director Tom Morris, this time on Shakespearean texturing of organic discipline. Read more... |
Infinite Lives, Tobacco Factory Theatres, BristolFriday, 07 February 2014
Plunging into the lonely vortex of the long distance web wanker isn’t obviously gripping theatre, but Chris Goode’s seventy-minute descent into tawdry solitude and digital fantasy doesn’t do too badly. Read more... |
The Mistress Contract, Royal Court TheatreThursday, 06 February 2014
What exactly is unconventional about an unconventional couple? In Abi Morgan’s new two-hander, an adaptation of last year’s book of the same name by She and He (a West Coast American couple now aged 90ish), the situation is simple. Boy meets girl at college, they lose touch, then meet again 20 years later, when both are married with kids. Read more... |
The Domino Heart, Finborough TheatreTuesday, 04 February 2014
Canadian playwright Matthew Edison's award-winning 2003 play The Domino Heart receives its European premiere in rather reduced circumstances. As a Sunday to Tuesday production at the Finborough (directed by Jane Jeffery), it takes place on the set of another play (Chris Thompson's Carthage). Luckily the play itself is essentially a shared act of storytelling. Read more... |
Stroke of Luck, Park TheatreMonday, 03 February 2014
In 2011 Tim Pigott-Smith gave us an impressive, humane King Lear at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Here he is again, a patriarch learning how "sharper than a serpent's tooth" it is to have thankless children, but this time his character decides to do something about it and to acknowledge his own failings. The result is good-natured comedy rather than tragedy. Read more... |
Blindsided, Royal Exchange, ManchesterWednesday, 29 January 2014
There’s no place like home – and home for writer Simon Stephens is Stockport. He doesn’t live there any more, but he was born there in 1971 and still finds the place, particularly its seedier side, a rich source of emotionally charged material. So, having started life less than 10 miles from the Royal Exchange, he keeps coming back. This is the fourth play he has written for the theatre, starting with Port in 2002. 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*
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