Terence Rattigan, the gift that keeps on giving. It would be easy to begin a review of The Browning Version by rehashing common tropes associated with the play since its first production in 1948 at the Phoenix Theatre, London. However, such is the respect and compassion playwright Terence Rattigan has for the human heart - its sufferings and humiliations - that we find in The Browning Version a universal tragedy that awaits each human subject, rather than a play simply about the repressed … [Read more...]
Tempus Fugit: Troy & Us at the Union Theatre | Review
Tempus Fugit: Troy and Us is the brainchild of NMT Automatics, a theatre company that harnesses the value of classical texts, present-day interviews with military personnel and Homer's epic poem The Iliad, to weave a disjointed connection between an ancient Greek fable and the 21st-century military campaign in Afghanistan. It is an ambitious project, one which poses many questions and carries a weight of responsibility for its creators and the viewing public. Its narrative is played out … [Read more...]
Afterplay by Brian Friel at The Coronet Theatre | Review
In the 1987 cult film, Withnail and I, unemployed actor Withnail (Richard E Grant) decries: Bastard asked me to understudy Konstantin in The Seagull. I'm not going to understudy anybody. Especially that pimp. I loathe those Russian plays. Always full of women staring out of windows, whining about ducks going to Moscow. I, too, hate the languorous morbidity of Anton Chekhov's characters and his plays. But I have the utmost respect for Brian Friel, a dramatist whose oeuvre situates language as … [Read more...]
All Quiet on the Western Front by Incognito Theatre Company
'The greatest moral evil is, of course, war' (Voltaire, 1694 - 1778). The 21st Century is proving to be a global playing field of endless military conflict. Beginning with the US/UK-led invasions of Afghanistan in 2001; Iraq in 2003; and the same nations intervening in Libya, 2011; and at different times in Syria, it seems death and destruction only serve to whet the appetite of these misguided transgressors. Given it is the remit of democratic nations to start and maintain military … [Read more...]
Raskolnikova presented by Teatro Nómada at The Actors Centre | Review
The Actors Centre is presenting a Latin American Season comprised of 21 plays authored by Latin American playwrights. A particular challenging piece is Mexican playwright David Gaitán's Raskolnikova which attempts to re-work the themes present in Dostoyevsky's classic novel Crime and Punishment. It is currently a work in progress with an international cast of five talented actors grappling with the raw stages of combining physical theatre and verbose exchanges to energise the repeated … [Read more...]