adaptation
Marianka Swain
It seems only too fitting that David Lan’s luminous reign at the Young Vic should draw to a close with this bold, creatively thrilling international import. Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s Tony-winning musical, which premiered Off-Broadway in 2013, is an exquisite adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s graphic-novel memoir – a heartfelt detective story that traipses through memory in order to decode our loved ones, and ourselves.We meet Alison at three different ages: as a child in small-town Pennsylvania, where her father runs the funeral – or “fun” – home; as a college student coming out as a Read more ...
Matt Wolf
It seems appropriate that an onstage blender features amidst Tom Scutt's sleek, streamlined set for Julie given how many times Strindberg's 1888 play has been put through the artistic magimix. Rarely, however, have the results been less illuminating than in this National Theatre rewrite by Polly Stenham that replaces Strindberg's charged three-hander with a lazy recap of themes and situations Stenham has explored to far more rending effect elsewhere. Running shy of 90 minutes, Carrie Cracknell's production nonetheless feels as if it is struggling to fill time, due in no small measure to Read more ...
David Benedict
In Harold Pinter’s memory play Old Times, one of the women declares, “There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened.” Elizabeth Strout’s heroine in My Name Is Lucy Barton is in the reverse position. When it comes to the difficult childhood she has long since escaped, she’s uncertain of what she can – or wants to – remember, yet she is anything but the standard issue unreliable narrator. In Richard Eyre’s flawless production at the Bridge Theatre, Strout’s writing, as adapted by Rona Munro and performed by a luminous Laura Linney, pulls off the considerable trick Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Add Catalan writer Jordi Galcerán to the shortlist of European playwrights who are finding an international perch, in this case with a tricksy four-character play that has had more than 200 productions in over 60 countries. The UK premiere of The Grönholm Method follows six years on from a Los Angeles staging that boasted the same director (Mike Nichols protégé BT McNicholl) and leading man (Jonathan Cake as the bilious Frank), while a 2007 Spanish movie, The Method, expanded the premise for the screen. Given all this activity and attention, it's moderately surprising Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Ian McEwan has said that he decided to adapt his 2007 novel On Chesil Beach for the screen himself at least partly because he did not want anyone else to do so (with earlier works, including Atonement, he was glad not to have taken on the adaptation). The sensitivity of the original lies in its interiority, a quality that moves medium with far more difficulty than most. It’s a moot point whether the challenge could have finally been met by anyone, but somehow Dominic Cooke’s film, his screen debut, never quite attains the perfect, lonely poignancy of the book.That said, Cooke has made a film Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
There’s a distinct feeling of back to basics to this opening double bill at the Globe under the theatre’s new Artistic Director Michelle Terry. The elaborations (some would say gimmickry) of Emma Rice’s short tenure have been reined back, and a new concentration prevails. This first presentation – two plays written around 1599, the year in which Shakespeare's original Globe opened: As You Like It was staged that year, Hamlet a little later – is built on a new approach to ensemble that draws on a broader casting base than usual.That involved a gender-neutral approach (with a 50:50 gender ratio Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Much has been made of this adaptation of The Woman in White having an especial relevance for our times. Its concern with the power dynamics of gender relations was certainly hammered home right from the beginning, as Jessie Buckley uttered its loaded opening question, “How is it men crush women time and time again and go unpunished?”, effectively delivered to us, the audience, to boot. But despite such references being periodically dropped into the dialogue – and that opening sentence certainly didn’t come from the Wilkie Collins novel, either – as its five episodes developed, Fiona Seres’s Read more ...
Owen Richards
British director Andrew Haigh's Lean on Pete is a heartfelt and surprisingly stark affair. Based on the novel of the same name by Willy Vlautin, the film follows a young boy and his stolen horse across America. Despite its simple premise, Haigh and his lead Charlie Plummer (main picture) deliver a complex and moving piece of cinema.Charley is a quiet 15-year-old, malnourished and poorly supported by his father Ray (Travis Fimmel), who mostly drinks beer and brings home women. There’s an awkward but distant love between the two, both evidently still struggling from Charley’s mother walking out Read more ...
David Nice
With the eyes of musical fashion turned relentlessly on the calculating stage works of chilly alchemist George Benjamin, hopes ran high for a brighter spark in a new opera by his contemporary Mark-Anthony Turnage. Would Coraline, a music-drama for children of all ages based on the celebrated story by Neil Gaiman, burst into flames like Greek and the last two acts of The Silver Tassie or continue the elegiac strand in the best of Anna Nicole? Alas, no: despite the dedicated musicianship and the nifty staging of Aletta Collins, no-one is going to come out of this two-hour immersion fired up or Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Ordeal by Innocence belongs to a new and, you hope, short-lived sub-genre. The only other stablemate is All the Money in the World. Both were in the can and good to go when very serious sexual allegations were made against a member of the cast. For the latter, Ridley Scott reshot every scene which featured Kevin Spacey, subbing in Christopher Plummer. For BBC One’s now annual serving of an Agatha Christie drama, everyone came back to redo the bits which previously contained Ed Westwick and now have Christian Cooke (pictured below). Fortunately most of these seem to be interiors, as the Read more ...
David Benedict
About a decade ago, theatre-makers started routinely describing themselves as being in the business of storytelling. And “storytelling” is most certainly the term that best describes Matthew Lopez’s two-part, seven-hour epic The Inheritance. Beautifully cast, economically designed and directed with strikingly elegant simplicity by Stephen Daldry, it has plenty to recommended it but there’s no denying a central problem. This gay male revamp of E.M. Forster’s novel Howards End is a case of too much telling of story at the expense, all too often, of true drama. “Who Read more ...
Matt Wolf
No, this isn't the large-scale Kander and Ebb musical, which opened in 1992 in London before transferring for a sizeable run on Broadway. Laurie Sansom's expert production instead both revisits and revises the lesser-known source of that song-and-dance adaptation: an intimate two-hander (with a prison guard thrown in for good measure) between a gay window-dresser and an ardent revolutionary who find themselves sharing a prison cell in 1975 Argentina. William Hurt won an Oscar for the showier of the two roles, but the Menier Chocolate Factory revival boasts two ideal interpreters in Samuel Read more ...