Orange Tree
Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act, Orange Tree Theatre review - a blast from the past with lessons for todayTuesday, 07 September 2021
Even if you miss the play’s title and do not recognise the writer’s name with the heft of reputation that comes with it, as soon as you see the black man and the white woman speaking in South African accents, you know that the tension that... Read more... |
Last Easter, Orange Tree Theatre review - over-performative and strangely off-puttingSaturday, 17 July 2021
Last Easter has become a lot more relatable since it was forced to postpone this run at the Orange Tree Theatre, originally scheduled for 2020. It’s about a group of theatre-makers – an actor, a drag performer, a prop-maker, and a lighting designer... Read more... |
Amsterdam, Orange Tree Theatre review - suffocatingly manneredSaturday, 14 September 2019
An excellent director makes a rare misstep with Amsterdam, in which a compelling if tricksy play is given an arch and mannered production that only distances the audience further. Not to be confused with either Rotterdam or Europe, two similarly... Read more... |
Humble Boy, Orange Tree Theatre review - love, death and science in Middle EnglandTuesday, 13 March 2018
Good programming is an art, and Paul Miller – artistic director of the Orange Tree Theatre – is clearly on a continuous roll with his inspired mixing of the old and the new, forgotten classics and new voices, revivals and premieres. And he loves to... Read more... |
Paines Plough Roundabout, Orange Tree Theatre review - too brief to really rockMonday, 05 February 2018
Hype is a dangerous thing. It often raises expectations beyond the reasonable, and disappointment inevitably follows. It also prioritises PR over artistic activity, putting the publicity cart before the creative horse, sucking energy away from plays... Read more... |
Misalliance, Orange Tree Theatre review - smashing Edwardian comedy is a festive treatThursday, 14 December 2017
If this play really were “A Debate in One Sitting” as its author called it in 1909, it would have sunk without trace. “Talk, talk, talk, talk”, complains Hypatia Tarleton (Marli Siu), daughter of an Edwardian underwear magnate. Sick to death of the... Read more... |
Poison, Orange Tree Theatre review - study of grief is both courageous and subtleTuesday, 14 November 2017
Should Brexit ministers need help understanding the cultural mindset of their continental counterparts, they might consider a subscription to the Orange Tree, the compact Richmond producing house that is defiantly opening its arms to Europe. This... Read more... |
The March on Russia, Orange Tree Theatre review – vividly funny amid the bleaknessWednesday, 13 September 2017
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... Read more... |
An Octoroon review - slavery reprised as melodrama in a vibrantly theatrical showSaturday, 27 May 2017
Make no mistake about it, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is a playwright to watch. London receives its first opportunity to appraise his vibrant, quizzical talent with this production of An Octoroon, for which he received an OBIE in 2014 (jointly with his... Read more... |
The Lottery of Love, Orange Tree Theatre review - the fragile charm of artificeTuesday, 04 April 2017
The social permutations of love are beguilingly explored in the 90-minute stage traffic of Marivaux’s The Lottery of Love, with Paul Miller’s production at the Orange Tree Theatre making the most of the venue’s unencumbered in-the-round space to... Read more... |
Blue Heart, Orange Tree TheatreWednesday, 19 October 2016
Q: How do you review a show that includes lines that ask “can my mouth swallow my mouth”? A: With difficulty, but I should be okay as long as I resist the temptation of being as surreal as Caryl Churchill is in this double bill of two short, but... Read more... |
Jess and Joe Forever, Orange Tree TheatreMonday, 12 September 2016
We’re living in the age of the small play. Although there are plenty of baggy epics around on our stages, they are outnumbered by the small and short two-hander, whether it's John O’Donovan’s gloriously titled If We Got Some More Cocaine I Could... Read more... |
