Donmar Warehouse
Coriolanus, Donmar WarehouseThursday, 19 December 2013
In his later life Shakespeare, who never ducked ways to define a hero, offered the public a challenge: Coriolanus is a professional warrior, deaf to reason, patrician hater of people power. To beat all, this man’s man’s a mother’s boy. In a world... Read more... |
Preview: Arnold Wesker's RootsThursday, 19 September 2013
Arnold Wesker has a theory that plays require a certain DNA to endure. When thoughts turn to the 1950s and the revolution in British theatre which allowed ordinary working-class life up onto the stage, the name which always comes up is John Osborne... Read more... |
The Same Deep Water As Me, Donmar WarehouseWednesday, 07 August 2013
Britain today: while the total of car crashes is falling the number of whiplash claims is rising by 25 per cent. Yes, the compensation culture is speeding ahead. In Nick Payne’s follow up to his immensely successful West End transfer, Constellations... Read more... |
The Night Alive, Donmar WarehouseThursday, 20 June 2013
Can theatrical lightning strike twice? That certainly looks to be the case at the Donmar, which has followed Josie Rourke's expert revival of Conor McPherson's contemporary classic, The Weir, with the world premiere of McPherson's latest, directed... Read more... |
The Weir, Donmar WarehouseFriday, 26 April 2013
Conor McPherson’s 1997 play has become a modern classic, and it's not difficult to see why. It's a glorious evening of storytelling that allows the cast to display their wares, as the conversation between characters who have known each other all... Read more... |
Trelawny of the Wells, Donmar WarehouseWednesday, 27 February 2013
His recent film adaptation of Anna Karenina framed the action of Tolstoy’s novel in a theatre, so it seems only natural that director Joe Wright should follow it up with a return to the stage himself. Redolent with the smell of “gas and oranges”,... Read more... |
The Dance of Death, Trafalgar StudiosTuesday, 18 December 2012
It sounds unlikely but The Dance of Death makes the perfect Christmas play. Half a minute with Strindberg's squabbling couple makes the ordinary family row over underdone/overdone turkey seem like a parlour game. Need a reminder that your relatives... Read more... |
Julius Caesar, Donmar WarehouseWednesday, 05 December 2012
There’s no ignoring gender in Julius Caesar. Whether it’s Portia’s “I grant I am a woman” speech, an enfeebled Caesar likened to a “sick girl”, or Cassius raging against oppression – “our yoke and sufferance make us womanish” – the issue is written... Read more... |
The Promise, Trafalgar StudiosTuesday, 20 November 2012
An expert cast delivers on their promise in Aleksei Arbuzov's triangular Russian drama from 1965 of the same name, which offers up war and peace and the shifting tides of love. There's so much of the last, in fact, that Alex Sims's production at... Read more... |
Berenice, Donmar WarehouseWednesday, 03 October 2012
It’s not often that the works of 17th-century French classicist playwright Jean Racine make an appearance in the West End, and you can’t fault the ambition of the Donmar’s artistic director, Josie Rourke, in bringing us this new version of his... Read more... |
Philadelphia, Here I Come!, Donmar WarehouseWednesday, 01 August 2012
Philadelphia, Here I Come! ends in its Donmar invocation with the roar of a plane taking off, which only amplifies one’s sense that the show has taken some while to take wing. Markedly better after the interval than during an abrasive first half,... Read more... |
The Physicists, Donmar WarehouseFriday, 08 June 2012
If you weren’t sick when you arrived at Les Cerisiers, the private psychiatric hospital in this satiric early Sixties drama by Swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt, you probably would be by the time the institution had finished with you. Its all-... Read more... |
