As if there weren’t already enough drama in his life, off the field and on, an intriguing stage play tackles, firmly but fairly, a lost weekend at the height of the young Best’s renown and the depth of his despair. The premise is stark and true. One Saturday in 1971, instead of turning up to play for Manchester United, he is to be found - by us, at least - in the north London flat of a young woman. Not a rare event for such a Lothario, you might think, except that this particular young woman, … [Read more...]
Gustav Holst’s The Idea at Gatehouse Theatre – Irrational Theatre | Review
It would be easy, but misleading, to call Gustav Holst a dark horse. The austerity that seems to come from photo portraits was no such thing, but rather an aversion to publicity. And while he had no choice but to become famous in the years after the First War as a result of The Planets’ enormous popularity, it was not a status he had sought. He was in fact a man, and composer, of some wit, even wackiness, as Irrational Theatre’s touring production of this early and little-known work has … [Read more...]
Barb Jungr sings Dylan and Cohen at the Crazy Coqs | Review
The pairing of work by Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen in a single recital is a logical move. Though the latter died five years ago, his and his old friend’s songs go on and on. (Some of them for ten minutes and more.) It can take a bold talent to pick up some of these sublime, enigmatic things and deliver them as cabaret items. Barb Jungr does just that and the result is absorbing. Tempting to say her performance is a triumph of manner over matter since her sheer theatricality is in contrast … [Read more...]
Kunene and the King at the Ambassadors Theatre | Review
As theatrical Odd Couplings go, this one was always going to be at the dangerous edge. How could it be otherwise? Jon Kani’s bold two-hander is set in South Africa a quarter of a century on from the country’s first democratic elections after apartheid, and tackles head-on the personal implications of the supposed new equality. On the one hand, Jack Morris, a classical actor (white), stricken with liver cancer, self-medicating with alcohol and raging against the dying of his career; on the … [Read more...]
Jack And The Beanstalk at Theatre Peckham | Review
Folk tales only become old because they speak about timeless issues to successive generations of the young. If they were to lose their relevance, they would fade and die, simple as that. No wonder then that Jack and the Beanstalk is as durable as they come, with its supernatural backdrop of a giant in the sky and its social realism foreground of a boy struggling to redeem his family from the shackles of poverty. In this version by Paul Sirett, first produced at Stratford’s Theatre Royal seven … [Read more...]
INALA with the Soweto Gospel Choir and International Dancers | Review
It is more than thirty years since the South African male choral group Ladysmith Black Mambazo achieved global fame through the unorthodox route of collaboration with an American rock star. The result of that was the landmark album Graceland, made controversial by the fact that the star in question, Paul Simon, appeared to be breaking the cultural boycott imposed by the United Nations on South Africa because of that country’s apartheid policy. In the much altered political climate of the … [Read more...]
Prism starring Robert Lindsay and Tara Fitzgerald | Review
It is one thing to be a visually literate playwright; quite another to create a full-length drama which appropriates the techniques of the cinema as whole-heartedly as Terry Johnson has done in his latest play. Obeying the old principle of showing rather than telling, Johnson lays before us the life of the late and undoubtedly great cinematographer Jack Cardiff, probably best known for his work with such movie directors as Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. This he does … [Read more...]