All My Sons, Arthur Miller's colossal dinosaur of a play, will be revisited for centuries to come. Like the works of Shakespeare and Ibsen before him, it depicts the evil committed by ordinary men, the carnage that ensues, and the suffering of those who collude and look the other way. First performed in New York in 1947, All My Sons carries with it the fallout of … [Read more...]
Market Boy by David Eldridge at the Union Theatre – Review
No less dazzling than an open-air Souk in the middle east, is the setting for Market Boy, David Eldridge's riotous play, first presented at the National Theatre in 2006, about a 13-year-old boy with a tasty single mum who delivers him up to a medley of hardened market traders in 1985 Romford. The play opens at the height of Margaret Thatcher's powers, capitalism is … [Read more...]
Keep Watching at the New Diorama Theatre | Review
Keep Watching begins with two surveillance experts slouched in front of a CCTV screen, monitoring activity in public spaces. We can see by their death-like expressions that this is a boring job. Then suddenly it's their lucky night. Their bodies jerk with excitement as they witness a bag snatch live onscreen and, with their direct-line contact to law enforcement, … [Read more...]
Connecting at Chapel Playhouse | Review
Connecting... is an experimental piece of theatre that begins with a back to the future scenario as we travel with its sole character through two decades of crippling loneliness, a condition that is exacerbated, rather than alleviated, through advances in web-based communication technology. The play's simple setting conveys much of the isolated world its protagonist … [Read more...]
Tobacco Road presented by Incognito Theatre Company | Review
Tobacco Road is an enthralling blood-soaked tale of five petty criminals who rise to the heights of crime lords (and ladies) following the end of World War I. Incognito Theatre Company and its amazing cast use physical choreography, raucous music and fine acting to tell the tale of the seedy and dangerous side of London's underworld in the early part of the twentieth … [Read more...]
Franz Kafka – Apparatus by Ross Dinwiddy | Review
Franz Kafka is widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature so when one of his short stories is adapted for the theatre we anticipate that its themes will focus on a bizarre predicament infused with elements of bureaucratic bungling, the wretchedness of human existence, and a protagonist trapped in a web of absurdity and death. Director Ross … [Read more...]
An Evening with Patsy May at the Museum of Comedy
If one of the definitions of post-feminism is to reclaim traditional gender roles, albeit a concept embraced by some and loathed by others, then perhaps a fresh interpretation in an unconventional body is required to express the conflicts inherent in the feminine psyche. Granted, it may not have been the puppeteer's intention, but what better platform than the use of … [Read more...]
Love-Lies-Bleeding at the Print Room at the Coronet | Review
American novelist and playwright Don DeLillo's 2005 play, Love-Lies-Bleeding, concerns itself with death as an end game and the so-called significant others who surround its protagonist, Alex Macklin (Joe McGann), a 70-year-old landscape artist who, after suffering a stroke, is in the final stages of his life. But before we encounter Alex, we are already confronted … [Read more...]
Joanna Murray-Smith’s Honour at Park Theatre | Review
It is difficult to write a dispassionate review of Honour, a 1995 play by Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith. An adult drama may be buried somewhere at Honour's core but, in actuality, it is a comic parody of a 32-year marriage that dissolves when George, a distinguished literary intellectual (Henry Goodman) veering ever closer to old age, falls for the charms … [Read more...]
The Wider Earth at The Natural History Museum | Review
A young Charles Darwin and his heroic efforts to produce a theory of evolution by natural selection are brought to life in The Wider Earth, an immersive production performed at the Natural History Museum that will captivate audiences of all ages for a long time to come. The Wider Earth written, co-designed and directed by David Morton, transports its audience to … [Read more...]
The Height of the Storm at Wyndham’s Theatre | Review
Celebrated French Playwright Florian Zeller has thrown a lightning bolt onto the stage in his latest play, The Height of the Storm, one which crackles with the energy of modern day Greek tragedy. It is a beautifully crafted play wrapped inside a gossamer veil of lost memory and ghosted conversations that unravels itself as each character speaks from a perspective … [Read more...]
Review: Print Room at the Coronet Presents The Outsider (L’Étranger)
Albert Camus' most enduring novel, L'Étranger, is now enjoying its first major theatrical production in the UK. For those who are unfamiliar with the story, its central character, a French Algerian, buries his mother and a few days later kills an Arab whose sister has been brutalised by his friend. He is put on trial for the Arab's murder and condemned to … [Read more...]