Compulsive disorders can be hideously dramatic subjects. Think of Duncan Macmillan’s 2016 hit show People, Places and Things, set in an alcohol rehab clinic. Or of the young Noel Coward’s handling of cocaine addiction in The Vortex almost a century ago. Clear-eyed studies of such socially bleary issues tend to be hard-won through personal exposure, and Paul Westwood’s … [Read more...]
Fisher Stevens in A Beautiful Noise at the Lyric Theatre
These days, one of the most notable things about Neil Diamond’s extraordinary career is the continuing success of his 1969 hit Sweet Caroline. You hear it everywhere, not just coming from bar room wall speakers but from the throats of enormous stadium crowds at sporting events. This gives rise to the strange phenomenon of tens of thousands of men and women singing … [Read more...]
Review of Rutherford and Son at the Lyttelton Theatre
This is, in a sense, the revival of a revival. It was the National who played what must be called a central role in this great play’s life with director Katie Mitchell’s production here in 1994. Yes, it had received modern stagings, notably by the feminist theatre company Mrs. Worthington’s Daughters in 1980, but it took the Cottesloe’s stark and passionate reading … [Read more...]
Wise Children at Richmond Theatre | Review
Emma Rice, you may remember, was the short-lived artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe. Her dismissal was a contentious affair which, to the outsider, looked like a clash between modernity and the theatre’s commitment to authenticity. At the risk of crude simplification, she wanted to do things with the lighting that would have been impossible in Shakespeare’s day … [Read more...]
Fake News by Osman Baig at Theatre503 | Review
Whatever else his achievements, or lack of them, Donald Trump can take much of the credit, or blame, for the pairing of words which forms this snappy little play’s title. It was, and remains, a sarky juxtaposition, asserting that information supplied as fact is nothing more than a counterfeit product designed to steal attention from the truth and make money in the … [Read more...]
Review: Radiant Vermin by Philip Ridley | Ram Jam Records
Philip Ridley’s stage plays are so often described in such terms as other and alien that you might think he holds real estate in the city of Dystopia. As the author of such popular, challenging work as The Pitchfork Disney and The Fastest Clock in the University, he certainly knows how to feed the plain materials of daily life through a richly distorting lens. This … [Read more...]
Hobson’s Choice at the Jack Studio Theatre | Review
It may have become a fixture in our theatrical repertoire, but Hobson’s Choice can still spring surprises. This it does from the very start of Matthew Townshend's ebullient production, when we seem to be a long way from the Salford of 1880, the location in which it was placed by its author Harold Brighouse. This looks and sounds remarkably like the 1950s, complete … [Read more...]
Sketchy Nights: part of the Sketchy London Exhibition 2018 | Review
Back in the early days of British postwar satire, the sketch was a fashionable dramatic instrument, miniature in form but massive in potential. So it’s good to find it alive and well at the vibrant Stour Space, a reclaimed building among the waterways of Hackney. The address - Roach Road, Fish Island - is eloquent. But wait a minute. Sketchy Nights might well be … [Read more...]
Noël Coward’s Private Lives at Lauderdale House | Review
Just as Noel Coward was, Lauderdale House in North London has been many things in the course of its life: private residence, posh school, Quaker meeting place, hospital and, for the past forty years, an arts and education centre. When he preached here in 1782, John Wesley called it one of the most elegant boarding houses in England. A strangely apt setting … [Read more...]