‘The play never quite gets into orbit’ (In my best Captain kirk voice) “Space; the final frontier”. But a frontier that theatre generally sticks clear off due to budget and practical constraints. It’s a tall task, but a task that Vinay Patel’s new reimagining of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard laughs in the face of, perhaps foolhardily. Written originally in 1904, the ...
Seven Dials Playhouse Aren’t we all a little sick of the arduously serious predictions of the earth’s future? This shattered dystopian hellscape is mirrored back at us through art’s mutinous lens. Zombies rampage, comets collide and the planet boils in its own inactivity, and is there a laugh to be found? Not a chuckle! Enter Help! We Are Still Alive! ...
Apollo Theatre Golden leaves snaked around his victorious head, Jack Holden’s creative tour de force Cruise returns to the West End. Perfectly timed, searingly funny, and geographically fitting: what more could you want? Jack Holden, an already lauded actor has decided that the world of writing deserves some of his singular attention (leave something for the rest of us please?). ...
Chichester Festival Theatre at Sadler’s Wells ‘Come and revel in the power of love’ The joint rulers of romance, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein (the second) are having a mini-revival in the capital. Oklahoma! is taking the Old Vic by storm, and now South Pacific unloads at Sadler’s Wells. Both shows are feel-good hits that have been mired in controversy. ...
Almeida “Russia has spent so long as an empire she doesn’t know herself as a country” A dire warning for our current European political woes, and a sentence synopsis of Peter Morgan’s newest masterpiece. The well-heeled collection of the “Glittering British elite” (the play’s words) shuffle in their seats, a fitting audience for a story of rampant capitalism. Like much in ...
Roman Theatre St Albans The tale of deception in the upper classes is given a roaring 1920’s overhaul. Much like the pace of the jazz age the production races around with frantic energy putting on the Ritz. In the process losing some shades of meaning. Oscar Wilde rightfully seizes the name of wit. His work is infused with the dark contradictions of the ...
London Palladium A high-intensity, full-on production that might please the kids but is definitely starting to feel dated. The acclaimed, genre-redefining 1991 animated film of Beauty and the Beast, crafted by musical greats Alan Menken, Howard Ashman and Tim Rice, subsequently spawned a less-than-positively received 1994 stage adaption. 2017 saw a middling live-action film remake. Now this current revival of the tale as old as ...
Barbican Centre The best thing to come out of Ipswich since Ralph Fiennes (I didn’t know either) Gecko’s surrealist romp The Wedding races around the Barbican. Despite some gifted theatrical magic, I had no idea what was going on….but interestingly I don’t count that as a negative. Amit Lahav (the show’s creator) describes it as “the complex idea of belonging, state, ...
Wilton’s Music Hall The UK premiere of Jake Heggie’s chamber opera with libretto by Gene Scheer, based on Terrence McNally’s original script Some Christmas Letters arrives in the peeling perfection of Wilton’s Music Hall. Despite some gusty vocals, the evening’s entertainment is far from pure perfection. Concerned with the trials and tribulations of three members of the Mitchell family. 1986, ...
Almeida Beth Steel’s kitchen sink drama weaves the incongruities of family and the reality of our two-party system into the dreams of the Websters. Heavy going, dense, and delightful in a particularly dreary blood-stained sort of way. Right up my jitty (alleyway for the southerners amongst you)! Having grown up partly in Sheffield the reverberations of Thatcherism, the loss of ...