National Theatre
Matt Wolf
Here's the genuine hard problem facing commentators confronted with Tom Stoppard's new play of the same name: how do you honour the legacy of this extraordinary writer's first play in nine years that also marks its director Nicholas Hytner's National Theatre swansong and is – truth be told – a disappointment on multiple fronts? Speaking as one who can recall as if it were yesterday the revitalising jolt to both head and heart that one felt leaving the opening night of Arcadia nearly 22 years ago, The Hard Problem doesn't sufficiently engage either, notwithstanding occasional Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The history play has roots that go deep into our culture. We love to see stories that are kitted out in fancy dress, and long to savour a past that resonates with our present. In the case of Dara, which is adapted by Tanya Ronder from an original by Shahid Nadeem first performed five years ago by Ajoka Theatre in Pakistan, we time-travel back to Mughal India in the mid-17th century to confront once again the problem of militant Islam. But is there more here than contemporary issues clothed in colourful garb?At the play’s heart is a family drama. In the 1650s, at the imperial court of India Read more ...
kate.bassett
This isn't just a piratical treasure hunt. The NT is also on a rescue mission. The master plan here is, surely, to retrieve Robert Louis Stevenson's vintage adventure story about buccaneers and buried gold from the clutches of shamelessly C-rate panto producers. Opening last night – and recommended for anyone over 10 years old – the National's new upmarket staging visually enchants, while exuding playfulness.A velvety night sky curves around director Polly Findlay's production. The Olivier auditorium is spangled with softly incandescent bulbs. These burn brighter, picking out Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The single spacious room that is the central location of Tena Štivičić’s 3 Winters has seen plenty of ghosts. It’s part of an old Zagreb mansion, and through the course of the play witnesses the diverse events of Croatian history of the last 70-odd years played out in miniature. Three overlapping time-schemes chart the full rotations of surrounding society: from the war-end move towards Communism in 1945, through 1990 eve-of-break-up Yugoslavia, and on to 2011, not long before EU accession. We may not literally see anything on either side of these three eras, but the action is implicitly Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Behind the Beautiful Forevers, David Hare's adaptation of Katherine Boo's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, works as both play and portent. Viewed on its own terms, the evening grips throughout in its embrace of the multiple contradictions of contemporary Indian life as here filtered through those existing quite literally off the scrap of that country's gathering economic power. Even more importantly is what Rufus Norris's epic staging – this director's most confident work yet at this address – may signal about the sort of National Theatre we have in store when Norris launches his Read more ...
Marianka Swain
It is no exaggeration to say that Lloyd Newson has created a new theatrical language. Verbatim drama and intricate choreography would seem, on paper, to be fatally competing elements, yet Newson’s hypnotic fusion charges both word and movement with fresh meaning. Critically, the dance element of this typically confrontational new work from his company DV8, covering such harrowing topics as domestic violence, rape, incest, addiction and criminality, prevents it from slipping into hackneyed territory. A potential sob story with sermonising framework is reborn as an extraordinarily personal Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The National Theatre's new Dorfman auditorium gets off to a kick-ass start with Here Lies Love, the Off Broadway musical transplant that does for the closing months of Nicholas Hytner's tenure as artistic director what Jerry Springer the Opera did for the early days of his regime a decade or more ago. An ongoing hit at New York's Public Theatre, David Byrne's maiden foray into the often-treacherous waters of musical theatre remains an experiential triumph, its undeniable kitsch factor wedded throughout to a witty, sometimes wounding trawl through the life and disco-intensive times of none Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Rona Munro’s trilogy of plays about Scotland’s Stuart kings premiered at the Edinburgh Festival when Scottish independence was, for many, still a cherished possibility; it transfers to London – within a clarion call of Westminster – just as the promise has been dashed. As timely as the National’s recent Great Britain, the trilogy is more than merely opportune, resonating with the anger and frustration of centuries.These boisterous, bracing, subtly thought-provoking and hugely entertaining plays are also a rarity in offering a new history cycle to accompany those of Shakespeare. While the Read more ...
Heather Neill
In his masterly essay in the programme for Enda Walsh's latest play, Colm Tóibín warns against attempting to pin his work to a particular philosophical position, but simply to read into it a metaphor for humanity's efforts to cope with life while knowing that there is no escape from death. And certainly an attempt at blow-by-blow analysis – even understanding – would be a waste of time. Ballyturk is a thing in and of itself. Having said that, it has recognisable traits of Walsh's previous pieces for the stage and he has himself said that it was inspired by his daughter, then six years Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Sofie Gråbøl as Danish royalty: it hardly stretches credulity. The face of Nordic noir has been a star in her home country ever since appearing in Bille August's Pelle the Conqueror in 1987, but is solely familiar on these shores as Sarah Lund, the jumpered Copenhagen detective from three unmissable series of The Killing. This autumn the only thing that will be recognisable about Gråbøl will be those big blue eyes as she is spirited back to the late Middle Ages, bewigged, bejewelled and billowing, to play a queen of Scotland.No, not that one. She is starring as Margaret, the very capable Read more ...
Heather Neill
We know how the story ends, but then so did Euripides' first audience in Athens in 431 BC. Medea was already a familiar character of myth, a sorceress whose ungovernable passion for Jason led her to commit horrible murders when he abandoned her for another woman. Now, as in the Golden Age of Greek drama, the chief interest is in the way the tale is told. And the National Theatre has assembled quite a team for the purpose.Ben Power, writer of this version, and Carrie Cracknell, director, have both dealt with the classics in innovative ways before. Power's A Tender Thing retold Romeo and Juliet Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Posh hotels are good settings for drama. They look cool, feel alien and can rapidly acquire a sense of claustrophobic intensity. Most importantly, in real life they feel like stage sets. Playwrights from Noël Coward (Private Lives) to Sarah Kane (Blasted) have set their work in luxury hotels, so Polly Stenham’s latest play, her first for the National Theatre (and performed in the small studio space), follows in some large footsteps. But she brings her very own in-yer-face style to the party.From the first, there’s a tense atmosphere. An upper-middle-class English family is staying at a luxury Read more ...