adaptation
aleks.sierz
We’ve all heard of the male gaze, but what about its subversion? Overturning masculine dominance is one of the themes of Boy Parts, the acclaimed debut novel by Eliza Clark, first published in 2020 and now adapted as a monologue for the stage by Gillian Greer.Playing in the main space at the Soho Theatre (currently also expanding into Walthamstow) and co-produced with Metal Rabbit, both great advocates of the capital’s new writing, this psychological thriller features Aimée Kelly and raises some disturbing questions about gender stereotypes and the relationship between art and life.The story Read more ...
David Kettle
An all-female production of Bram Stoker’s Dracula – well, kind of – that transplants the novel’s more local action to the northeast of Scotland, and finds a bloody new calling for one of its less ostentatious characters? Elgin-born writer Morna Pearson is asking a lot from Stoker purists in her bold reimagining of the iconic, endlessly retold tale for the National Theatre of Scotland.For some, truth be told, Dracula: Mina’s Reckoning might push their patience and credulity a bit too far. But ultimately, this is an ambitious, highly effective and gleefully provocative rethink of the classic Read more ...
Mert Dilek
Jamie Lloyd has the gift that keeps on giving. Hot on the heels of recent productions on Broadway and at the National Theatre, the visionary director is back in the West End with a stupendous reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s modern classic Sunset Boulevard, starring Nicole Scherzinger (of Pussycat Dolls fame) as the forgotten screen queen Norma Desmond.With book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton, Webber's 1993 piece is an adaptation of Billy Wilder’s cult 1950 film, and finds itself, in this instance, subjected to a further adaptation in Lloyd’s masterful hands. Read more ...
Jane Edwardes
There were shrieks, gasps, and nervous laughter in the Nöel Coward Theatre during press night of a kind rarely heard in the theatre. The startled cries marked the triumphant return of Joel Horwood’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s magical novel, first seen at the National Theatre in 2019 and now returning to the West End after a long tour.An exploration of the liminal space between memory and imagination, the play focuses on a young, unhappy boy: friendless, distressed by the absence of his mother, frustrated by his father’s attempts to look after him and his sister – burnt toast anyone? – and Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Writing about the upcoming 60th anniversary of the founding of the National Theatre in The Guardian recently, the usually reliable Michael Billington made a rare misstep. He called for the successor to Rufus Norris, the departing artistic director, to stage neglected classics: “I would also argue that the National, given its resources, has a civic duty to revive the drama of the past that, Shakespeare aside, is in danger of being consigned to the dustbin.” But does it need to? Whilst it is obvious that an NT production would be a very different beast to a fringe show, Lazarus Theatre Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Like theatre itself, the law finds its voice in stories, performance and spectacle. Any law student will, from that very first induction lecture, become suffused in a culture that is informed by and in turn informs theatre, some classes more like an evening at the Old Vic than an afternoon at the Old Bailey.A Voyage Round My Father mines that lucrative seam of inspiration, John Mortimer (creator of Horace Rumpole, unforgettably given life on screen by Leo McKern) writing a kind of love letter to his blind barrister father. In its latest manifestation, this touring production casts Rupert Read more ...
Gary Naylor
There are times when it’s best to know as little as possible before taking one’s seat for a show – this new production of Rebecca would be a perfect such example.It was once talked up as the new Phantom, the next smash hit musical that would do on Broadway in the 2010s what it had done in Europe in the 2000s. Mysterious backers sent emails from dubious addresses, one bearing news of the death of a key investor and, while real sets were built and real actors rehearsed, the money, like the deceased investor, was never real at all. More than a decade on, Rebecca, adapted from the 2006 Read more ...
The SpongeBob Musical, QEH review - musical based on popular kids' animation sinks for lack of focus
Gary Naylor
There are many things that you are not told about being a parent, a vast landscape of details that batter you with unwelcome difference from that comfortable life of Friday night prosecco and pizza. One is a whole new palette of garish colours barging into your eyeline – fluorescent yellow, eye-bleeding orange, vomity green. As quickly as you learn about this hitherto unknown spectrum that even van Gogh might think a little too much, you forget, the brain too addled by fatigue to retain any information from those shocking sleepless years. Until you go to see The SpongeBob Musical – then they’ Read more ...
Marc Burrows
In a very real sense, Terry Pratchett taught me how to write. I first came across his work when I was 12 years old, in the early 90s.My parents had been given copies of two of the earliest books in his Discworld series, Guards! Guards! and The Colour of Magic, by a bloke down the pub – which is how you’re supposed to get Discworld books – and, knowing that I was an utter nerd with a preposterously overactive imagination and a love of silly humour, passed them down to me.I loved them from the word go, and not just because there’s (unusually for Pratchett) swearing in the opening pages of both Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Who says you can't go home again? As proof that you can, and to giddy and gorgeous results, along comes the current West End revival of Crazy for You, which reunites Broadway name Susan Stroman with the Gershwin-inspired title that launched this singular talent on her career ascent more than 30 years ago. I saw that production in New York, as I saw its London original with Ruthie Henshall and also the (unrelated, in creative terms) Regent's Park revival that followed, and can report without hesitation that this current iteration is very much the best of them all. Back at the show's Read more ...
Gary Naylor
There are better musicals in town, but can you find me a more spectacular show in a more comfortable theatre? I doubt it. Not that Jonathan Church's new production at Sadler's Wells is flawless. It's a 90-year-old blockbuster so, for all its references to breadlines, insecure employment and heat-or-eat decisions, one wonders if so much effort might be better expended on something a little more recent, a little less bound by the cliches of musical theatre? And there's also Les Dennis neither dancing nor singing. Why? If you set aside such minor gripes, one can delight in a show that Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The inspirations for the directing debut of Benjamin Millepied, choreographer and dancer in Black Swan, are cited as Merimée’s novella Carmen and Pushkin’s narrative poem The Gypsies, the former better known as an opera guaranteed to raise the emotional temperature. Millepied has employed the brilliant Succession composer Nicholas Britell for some of the music; and, in the kind of tender-hearted beefcake role he has shown he can play so effectively, he has Paul Mescal. So why doesn’t this Carmen knock it out of the park?It seems to have taken three writers to craft the Read more ...