Theatre Reviews
Or You Could Kiss Me, National TheatreWednesday, 06 October 2010
Theatrical conceits, much like London buses, seem these days to come in threes. Or so it is suggested by the Neil Bartlett/Handspring collaboration Or You Could Kiss Me, the third Cottesloe production this year to peer into the future, albeit only as far as 2036, whereas Mike Bartlett's Earthquakes in London leapt forward to 2525. (Completing the... Read more... |
Lower Ninth, Trafalgar StudiosMonday, 04 October 2010
The news last week that Michael Grandage will step down next year as artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse feels like one of those moments when an era ends. His ability to programme not only the small Donmar but also to bring excellent productions to the West End — notably Jude Law in Hamlet — is exemplified in the current mini-season at the Trafalgar Studios, which opened last night with American playwright Beau Willimon’s new play about the New Orleans floods of 2005. Read more... |
A Number, Menier Chocolate FactoryMonday, 04 October 2010
There are any number of ways, it's increasingly clear, to approach A Number. Caryl Churchill's astonishingly prismatic and beautiful play about genetic cloning, nature versus nurture and the ineffable mystery of existence as amplified by Shakespeare in a certain well-known tragedy gets its latest London airing this week. To be (happy) or not to be (happy)? Read more... |
Faust, Young Vic TheatreSaturday, 02 October 2010
It's hard to overestimate the importance of Goethe's Faust to the German soul, though I did once have a German friend who valued George Eliot's Middlemarch more highly. If there's a real English competitor to Goethe in the literary stakes, it is of course Shakespeare, but that doesn't really work either, because, when not thinking of Goethe, many Germans consider Shakespeare neither better nor worse; simply theirs. Read more... |
The Country, Arcola TheatreThursday, 30 September 2010
Adultery has had a good press recently. Websites such as meet-to-cheat.com, illicitencounters.com and lovinglinks.co.uk have been in the news, and statistics suggest that more of us are being unfaithful than ever before. Read more... |
Birdsong, Comedy TheatreWednesday, 29 September 2010
Sebastian Faulks’s Birdsong has reached phenomenon status: number 13 on a recent BBC Big Read competition, part of the school curriculum along with World War One poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, three million copies sold worldwide. Its lyrical, descriptive writing, dense and subtle in detail, consistently moves people to tears. Read more... |
Yes, Prime Minister, Gielgud TheatreTuesday, 28 September 2010
The business end of 1980s BBC sitcom, the Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister series delivered political body-blows while sporting a dapper suit – satire with a gracious smile. Read more... |
The Big Fellah, Lyric HammersmithMonday, 27 September 2010
When cultural talk drifts toward Mr Big, thoughts tend to turn to Sex and the City's Chris Noth, whose New York is world enough and time away from the doomed metropolis populated by the "big fellah" played by Finbar Lynch in Richard Bean's play of the same name. This big guy is, in fact, slight but menacing: the type of man not unacquainted with the very methods of violence which... Read more... |
Les Misérables, BarbicanFriday, 24 September 2010
It's the Mousetrap of musicals, the wholly unstoppable show and, to mark its 25th anniversary this year (the 30th, if you date it back to the initial French concept album and Paris production), it will be staged in London at three different venues. You can even see them all in a single, mighty weekend bender, if the mood takes you:... Read more... |
Krapp's Last Tape, Duchess TheatreThursday, 23 September 2010
A play could be written about, or for, Michael Gambon's fingers, and perhaps Beckett's 1958 Krapp's Last Tape is it. I've seen this solo piece many times, most recently in a studio theatre rendition from Harold Pinter that opened a window on to his own mortality and won't quickly be forgotten. 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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