farce
The Pirates of Penzance, English National OperaSunday, 10 May 2015
When ENO announced its return to Gilbert and Sullivan, rapture at the news that Mike Leigh, genius Topsy-Turvy director, would be the master of wonderland ceremonies was modified by its choice, The Pirates of Penzance. Last staged at the Coliseum –... Read more... |
The Three Lions, St James TheatreSaturday, 28 March 2015
The devil gets the best lines, as usual. That may depend, of course, on whether we’re prepared to qualify David Cameron in that role, but in William Gaminara's rapid-firing farce The Three Lions, the PM (played with real brio by Dugald Bruce-... Read more... |
Sex TapeWednesday, 03 September 2014
Slap and tickle and slapstick meet to varying degrees of not very funny in this comedy starring Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel as a married couple who attempt to spice up their love life with a home-made skin-flick. Extreme product placement, a lack... Read more... |
The Grand SeductionThursday, 28 August 2014
Taylor Kitsch’s doomed film career continues with this trite but good natured Canadian mash-up of Doc Hollywood and Waking Ned. Just like in major box office failure John Carter, Kitsch finds himself dumped in a foreign, mysterious land but... Read more... |
Some Like It HotSaturday, 19 July 2014
In what is undoubtedly one of the earlier recorded examples of the single entendre, the original ad campaign for Some Like It Hot yelled “Marilyn Monroe and her Bosom Companions”. Well, the posters may not have minced words, but there’s more than a... Read more... |
The Importance of Being Earnest, Harold Pinter TheatreFriday, 18 July 2014
“Some might say we’re getting too old for this sort of thing,” declares Martin Jarvis’s Jack Worthing, going off Wlldean piste. Well, we did wonder whether the reunion of Jarvis with Nigel Havers’s Algernon after 32 years might not be some sort of... Read more... |
Two Into One, Menier Chocolate FactoryThursday, 20 March 2014
Political farces always start with a distinct disadvantage — the reality is so much sillier than the fictional version. Never mind, if anyone can make a stage comedy funny it is Ray Cooney, who is not only one of the most entertaining playwrights of... Read more... |
The Walshes, BBC FourFriday, 14 March 2014
Zany Dublin family comprising eccentric parents, neurotic daughter and dozy slacker son prepare to meet daughter's new boyfriend... Sound promising? No not especially, but The Walshes is written by Graham Linehan (with help from the "Diet of Worms"... Read more... |
Le docteur Miracle, Pop-up Opera, The Running HorseTuesday, 11 March 2014
An orchestral musician recently told me that only one per cent of graduates from UK music colleges go on to take up a post in an established opera company or orchestra. You’d think, given such an alarming statistic, that there would be a lot of very... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Wexford: European opera feastSunday, 03 November 2013
At the Wexford Opera Festival this autumn you could see a bicentenary performance of Verdi’s La traviata. Likewise Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore. But that’s not why Ireland’s operatic showpiece is one of the most famous, admired and respected events... Read more... |
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Duchess TheatreThursday, 26 September 2013
Arturo Ui, king of the Chicago cabbage trade, is Brecht’s Richard III. Egad, he even speaks in iambic pentameters, with a fair few nods at Shakespeare, though a certain cowlick and moustache locate him firmly at the centre of the 20th century... Read more... |
Sauce for the Goose, Orange Tree TheatreSaturday, 22 December 2012
"Doors and sardines. Getting on, getting off. Getting the sardines on, getting the sardines off. That's farce. That's the theatre. That's life." So says one of Michael Frayn's characters in Noises Off. In Sam Walters's giddy revival of Georges... Read more... |
