Mrs Thatcher
Matt Wolf
Alan Hollinghurst's 2004 novel The Line of Beauty finds a distinct beauty all its own in this long-awaited Almeida Theatre premiere, the play's linearity a decided jolt after the more jagged new writing in which this venue has specialised of late.Returning to the Almeida for the first time in over 25 years, the director Michael Grandage brings a shimmering melancholy to a theatrical bildungsroman that plunges us headlong into the often terrifying hedonism of the 1980s. Jack Holden's astute adaptation keeps pace with the societal savagery of the novel, but not before reminding us that Read more ...
Gary Naylor
What a delight it is to see the director, the star, even the marketing manager these days FFS, get out of the way and let a really strong story stand on its own two feet. Like a late one at the Brixton Academy itself, this is a helluva night out.After a transgressive, life changing trip to London from school in Scotland to see Chuck Berry at The Rainbow, Simon Parkes wanted to be a rock’n’roll star. He was soon spitting out the silver spoon (but he never lost the easy charm and ironclad self-confidence that clings to the privately educated, a trait he cheerfully calls upon as and when) and Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The 2024 play at the National Theatre that put writer Beth Steel squarely centre-stage has now received a West End transfer. Its title taken from an Auden poem urging people to dance till they drop, it’s probably the most passionate show in that locale, and definitely the lewdest.It opens with the female equivalent of locker-room talk as the women of an extended family in what was once Notts and Derby pit country bicker and banter while preparing for the wedding of young Sylvia (Sinead Matthews). Topics of conversation range from the naughtiness of next door’s "sex pond”, ie hot tub, to the Read more ...
Gary Naylor
If a week is a long time in politics, what price 44 years? And 3500 miles? Turns out, not much, as Michael Healey’s sparkling play, 1979, proves that events all that time ago and all that way across the Atlantic maintain a remarkable relevance today.We open on a besieged prime minister, Joe Clark, being harangued by his finance minister, John Crosbie, who has Malcolm Tucker’s lexicon on his lips and a budget to force through a hung Parliament. Lose the vote and Clark’s fragile minority government will fall; postpone the vote and his credibility (not least in his own mind) will plummet; win Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The problem with star casting is that the viewer can’t escape what it is: a very well known face pretending to be another very well known face. So Steve Coogan’s portrayal of Jimmy Savile in The Reckoning is both a fine impersonation of the abusive DJ turned TV presenter and a distraction. He has been given a prosthetic chin and nose, a series of peroxide-blond wigs and (I’m guessing here) orthotics in his footwear that help him pull off that bandy swagger of Savile’s. His costumes are note-perfect, a hideous collection of jazzy sportswear and lurid suits, and the script conveys the mad Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Music plays a big part in the life of Dwight, an 11-year-old black lad growing up in early 80s Leeds. He doesn't fit in at school, bullied because he is "slow", and he doesn't fit in outside school, would-be friends losing patience with him.But he does fit in at home, loved unequivocally by a protective mother, somewhat enviously by a bickering sister, and rather reluctantly by a preoccupied father. Like the records he plays on the gramophone, his life is about to spin – and he'll have to hold on to the warmth of family love in a cold world.Zodwa Nyoni's new play for the Kiln Theatre packs Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Is there some tongue-in-cheek irony in BBC Two starting a five-part biographical documentary on Margaret Thatcher this Monday? Mrs Thatcher was Britain’s first female Prime Minister, Conservative to boot, and regardless of gender her years of leadership were among the most forceful and controversial ever. And it may be just days – May ends in June, as one headline put it – before the second Conservative female Prime Minister bows out amidst Brexit chaos and the potential implosion of the Conservative Party as a capable political force.In this first episode, Making Margaret, we heard from Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Here they come again – the band most adept at capturing the mood of an era in catchy, critical three-minute songs. Just at the very point we need them most, the original ska-punk popsters surface and their message is as deeply relevant as it was four decades ago. But is this a 40th anniversary or a number one album tour? Or both?In these unprecedented times, receiving political commentary from near-pensioners seems strangely apt (remaining original members frontman Terry Hall, guitarist Lynval Golding and bass player Horace Panter are 60, 67 and 65, respectively). It’s a turn of events Read more ...
Sarah Kent
A whiff of chlorine hits you as you open the door of the Whitechapel Gallery. Its the smell of public baths, and inside is a derelict swimming pool with nothing in it but dead leaves and piles of brick dust. Damp walls, peeling paint and cracked tiles make this a sorry sight. The door to the changing rooms has been sealed shut and some joker has sawn through the wall bars. Where has the pool come from, though? A wall notice explains. This was the Whitechapel Pool, opened in 1901 as an amenity for east enders. It was renovated in 1953, but in 1988, it was closed after losing its funding Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The late David Storey spoke movingly, elsewhere on The Arts Desk, of his sense of overwhelming powerlessness at the challenge of accepting his father’s death. “I was quite racked by his death, and what death had become as an abstraction - in other words, what's my death, what's death itself?” he said.The question that shapes his 1989 play, The March on Russia, is the equally overwhelming prologue to that particular state, what you might call pre-death, the purgatorial existence between the end of your working life and identity and death. In the case of two old people married 60 years, what Read more ...
Jasper Rees
"I walked into her office and started the usual small talk about what a charming room it was and what a lovely view and I do like your curtains. She didn't know me from Adam - she didn't watch Antiques Roadshow, and she wasn't interested in my small talk about furnishings. She said, 'Yes, yes, come and sit down. Now tell me, what do you know about the Franco-Prussian war?'"Hugh Scully's long years thinking on his feet in live television, first for the regional news show Points South West and then Nationwide, must have come to his aid as he muttered something about "1870 . . . major turning Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
It’s been worth the wait. There’s something about the affection Shane Meadows feels for his characters; the street action that doesn’t often (in this opener especially, though that may well change) tip into overt drama; the family elements that could, but don’t quite veer towards the soaps in style (if anything there’s a hint of parody?); and the sense of a period of time lovingly given its special details and intonations, that makes this latest instalment of This Is England feel almost like a reunion with old friends (plus a few sidekicks we haven’t quite got to know yet).The delay in the Read more ...