National Theatre
Rockets and Blue Lights, National Theatre review - strong, but inconclusiveFriday, 03 September 2021
For more than three decades, playwright Winsome Pinnock has been at the forefront of new writing, often experimenting with form as well as documenting the lives of black Britons. Her new play’s original opening at the Royal Exchange Theatre in... Read more... |
Paradise, National Theatre review - war, woe, and a glimmer of hopeFriday, 13 August 2021
Philoctetes, Odysseus, Neoptolemus: the men’s names in Sophocles’ Philoctetes are all unnecessarily long and weighed down by expectations. Poet Kae Tempest’s lyrical new adaptation for the National Theatre focuses on the chorus, spinning out the... Read more... |
Under Milk Wood, National Theatre review - Michael Sheen at his most magneticThursday, 24 June 2021
There's commanding, and then there's Michael Sheen, who sweeps on to the Olivier stage 15 minutes or so into the new National Theatre revival of Under Milk Wood and scoops up the entire production with it. Inheriting a role made to order for this... Read more... |
After Life, National Theatre review - thanks for the memoriesMonday, 14 June 2021
Limbo, in Jack Thorne’s latest play, is a room lined ceiling-high with drawers, a sort of morgue rebooted as a vast filing system. It apparently provides comfy accommodation for the souls waiting to pass over, and its activities are run in tight... Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, National Theatre online review - a triumphant hybridMonday, 05 April 2021
Shakespeare's enduring tale of star-crossed lovers is especially pertinent in a pandemic. The fatal plot twist depends on failed communication during an outbreak of pestilence, and one of the most famous lines is Mercutio's heartfelt, "A plague on... Read more... |
Dick Whittington, National Theatre at Home review - colourful and amiable entertainmentMonday, 11 January 2021
In a much-depleted and truncated pantomime season that withered on the vine, the National Theatre's debut production of Dick Whittington lasted only four performances before the show was cancelled; it has now released this recording, which will be... Read more... |
Best of 2020: TheatreSunday, 27 December 2020
"Goodbye": The single word lingered heavily in the air last March 16, as the scripted closing both of the terrific Southwark Playhouse revival of The Last Five Years and as an ancillary farewell to live theatre. Late afternoon on that same day, in... Read more... |
Death of England: Delroy, National Theatre review - a furious if fleetingly seen sequelThursday, 05 November 2020
Broadway tends to be the Darwinian environment where a show's opening night can also mark its closing. But such has been the Covid-prompted fate of the National Theatre's fiery return to the fray that Death of England: Delroy managed 11... Read more... |
An Evening with an Immigrant, Bridge Theatre review – poetic and engagingFriday, 25 September 2020
When the history of British theatre’s response to COVID-19 comes to be written, the names of two men will feature prominently: Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr. The “two Nicks” were the creative force behind the National Theatre’s pioneering NT Live... Read more... |
Amadeus, National Theatre at Home review – wild dance at the edges of sanityFriday, 17 July 2020
It is 41 years since Peter Shaffer ripped off Mozart’s respectable façade to reveal a foul-mouthed verbally incontinent child-man with no more ability to control his behaviour than his genius. Inspired by a short story by Alexander Pushkin that put... Read more... |
Theatre Unlocked 1: George Floyd remembered, a classic transformed, and a call to action re climate changeThursday, 16 July 2020
We're easing out of lockdown, haircuts are being had, and the theatre continually shape-shifts to accommodate these changing times. All credit to the 14 writers who have conjoined forces in urgency and haste to create 846, a collection of audio... Read more... |
The Deep Blue Sea, National Theatre at Home review - hauntingly elegiac portrayal of Rattigan's worldFriday, 10 July 2020
Helen McCrory is an actor who can inject a world of feeling into one syllable that many actors would struggle to muster in an entire script. Towards the end of The Deep Blue Sea, she is telling her estranged husband what it was that attracted... Read more... |
