Hampstead Theatre
aleks.sierz
There’s only a couple of things you need to know about playwright Richard Bean: he started out as a stand-up comic, and he comes from Hull. Oh, and he wears Hawaiian shirts to press nights. So that’s three things. Oh, and that his masterpiece One Man, Two Guvnors (a populist farcical version of Carlo Goldoni’s Servant of Two Masters) was a global megahit.That’s four things – now you’re in the zone. Here’s some more: his latest, To Have and To Hold, is an acerbic take on marriage and aging, which premiers at the Hampstead Theatre, starring Alun Armstrong and Marion Bailey, and it’s co-directed Read more ...
aleks.sierz
How many hearts does an octopus have? Answer: three. This pub quiz clincher is just one of the many fascinating facts that emerge from Octopolis, Marek Horn’s engrossing 100-minute two-hander which explores the relationship between humans and cephalopods, and is currently playing in the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs space, starring Jemma Redgrave.As well as diving into the depths of a philosophical enquiry into what kind of consciousness such a creature could have, the play also shows how scientific enquiry can be seriously compromised by the personal relationships of its practitioners.Set in Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
With more than 20 plays under her belt, San-Francisco based Lauren Gunderson is one of the most produced playwrights in the US. But she’s chosen London to premier her very topical new thriller. It’s a sign of a good writer that they can touch the zeitgeist just as the geist gets seriously gusty. anthropology was conceived before Chat GBT escalated the fears about the threat of artificial intelligence usurping mankind’s own sentient endeavour – and helped to herald the current actor and writer strikes in the US. While films have tackled the subject of AI getting ahead of Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Lucky Will Young: the production of the Simon Stephens monologue Song from Far Away that he is delivering at the Hampstead Theatre is directed by Kirk Jameson, not Ivo van Hove.The modish Dutch director of the initial UK staging, seen at the Young Vic in 2015, stripped his actor naked for much of the performance. Young, though, is allowed a loose white shirt and black trousers throughout. Van Hove’s literal laying bare of Willem was presumably a visual aid to what he thought the monologue was setting out to do. Willem is a hollow man: a determinedly private individual, a hedgie and Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Much of cricket comprises waiting – you wait on the boundary to hear news of the toss, you wait your turn to bat, you heed the call of your batting partner to wait to see if a run is on, you wait for the rain to stop. A friend once told me that he played cricket in order to make the rest of his life seem more interesting. There is something in that observation that would appeal to both principals in this play for sure.Two men bicker on the boundary as they wait their turn to bat. In at five and six, one is keeping score (and "working the telegraph", as cricket’s arcane argot has it), while Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Lip-syncing has become the hobby of many a young TikToker, but only an intrepid professional would contemplate using the technique to play Hamlet. Or rather, to “play” some of the knighted thespians and stars who have portrayed him. Dickie Beau is that brave soul. He has brought his 2020 show, Re-Member Me, back to the UK after its progress abroad was rudely interrupted by the pandemic, and it has bedded in nicely. An amalgam of film, multiple recorded famous voices, some witty stagecraft and Dickie’s gifted brand of physical comedy, it has a scope beyond co-ordinating face muscles to Read more ...
Joe White
Before I knew – or realised – I wanted to write about alcoholism in my play Blackout Songs (premiered last autumn at the Hampstead Downstairs and moving this weekend to the mainstage), I wanted to write about love and memory. I'd had three very close friends lose their dads to Alzheimer's in the space of about six years – all very young – and I'd seen how the deterioration of the mind and memory was in many ways as devastating as the physical.I saw how difficult it was for loved ones to process where they belonged in that person's mind – the joy Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Is it possible to successfully challenge naturalism in British theatre today? At a time when audiences crave feelgood dramas, uplifting musicals and classic well-made plays, there is very little room for experimental writing.Still, the Downstairs studio space of the Hampstead Theatre, manages to continue to offer an opportunity to go beyond the usual naturalism of traditional storytelling, and this is exemplified by Cordelia Lynn’s new play, which is an experiment in new writing, partly a family play and partly a symbolist drama. While not entirely successful, it does have its good points.The Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Michael John O’Neill’s first full-length play, premiering at the Hampstead's studio space downstairs, is a puzzler. There’s the title, to start with, a Hebrew word that means “binding” and is a reference to the story of Abraham preparing his son Isaac, at God’s command, to be sacrificed.Spotting the reworking of this biblical theme in the text can be a challenge, even though O’Neill usefully has one of the characters treasure her toy lamb, Deadsheep, as a clue. The religion that features here, too, isn’t Judaism but a cultish kind of Pentecostalism, including speaking in tongues, led by a Read more ...
aleks.sierz
With the total loss of its Arts Council funding, Hampstead Theatre’s future as a specialist new writing venue is in doubt. But before anything drastically changes, the playwrights and plays developed by Roxanna Silbert, who was edged out as artistic director in December last year, are still coming through.One of them is Ruby Thomas, whose Either, her 2019 drama in the studio here, was thrillingly experimental. Boy, can she write! Her latest, this time on the main stage, is Linck & Mülhahn, a historical queer love story which features a gender-pioneering couple.The scene is Saxony in the Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
First came Yasmina Reza’s 1994 long-runner Art; now another French hit, The Art of Illusion, has arrived after eight years in Paris. The two pieces couldn’t be more different: the former is a chatty spat between three sophisticated male friends (would producers use gender-fluid casting these days?); the new arrival, a larky, boisterous ensemble piece that plays with the theme of illusion and how much it contributes to what we have come to call “magic”.Thematically it’s stretched a little thin at times, but as a performance it’s a tonic. Its writer, Alexis Michalik, juggles three different Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Pain is, at one and the same time, something to avoid, and also something you can use. Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese-American mystical author of the 1923 best-seller The Prophet, concludes that, despite suffering, “all is well”, but how true is that? In his award-winning play, which premiered in Boston in 2011, American playwright Stephen Karam examines the issues in a thoroughly original, brilliantly constructed and thematically compelling way.Now getting its belated European premiere at the Hampstead Theatre, Sons of the Prophet is an enthralling experience, both intellectually and Read more ...