Theatre

Regular reviews of new London theatre, from the West End and the National Theatre to the fringe, plus occasional dispatches from around the UK and beyond.

Monday 30 January 2012

Fixing things is Moira’s fix

Shallow Slumber, Soho Theatre, London

Shallow Slumber is no mere in-yer-face exercise. Beneath it are nuanced social points about class and the co-dependence of the care-system and its clients. Not only is Dawn aware of the injustice behind the assumption that she needs a social worker, deep down she knows that, in her case, it’s a fair one.

Friday 27 January 2012

Reading Margaret Thatcher

Why is Maggie such a current issue in the arts?

Investigating the legacy of Margaret Thatcher may seem, at first, to be a retreat from engaging with modern politics, but I believe exactly the opposite is taking place when contemporary artists turn to her. One way of understanding the present is to interrogate the past.

Watch from an angle

The Trial of Ubu, Hampstead Theatre, London

Certainly, the text is delivered with all the tonal variation of Morse code. Reported back, it is stripped of emotion and, to a certain extent, intention. Punctuation becomes garbled, replaced with a steady, but stuttering, flow of words; pauses are scrapped as they struggle to keep pace; language warps. But do we not learn more from a fingerprint than from the lines on a palm, even though the contours offer less contrast?

Thursday 26 January 2012

A good old fashioned postmodern rom-com

Constellations, Royal Court, London

Payne isn’t conclusively determinist. His characters still act freely, but their freedom is more limited than either would like to believe. Everything here is contingent: every decision, responsive; every happy ending as sweet and brittle as honeycomb.

To what end?

L’Autre, Southbank Centre, London

L’Autre is an advocation of play. Stellato defies the accepted order of things, the one that says square pegs belong in square holes. He encourages us to see with fresh – often quite disbelieving – eyes. At several points, gravity seems to stand back and gift Stellato the floor. He walks a plank that oughtn’t support his weight, until, in a hauntingly tranquil final image, he dissolves into darkness.

Tranquilised gentility

Mundo Paralelo, Southbank Centre, London

Yann Tiersen style piano music twinkles throughout. Gracious courtly bows and dainty curtsies follow each act. Eliza Doolittle at the Embassy Ball was not so mindful of her p’s and q’s.

Friday 20 January 2012

Lost in a deluge of action

Our New Girl, Bush Theatre, London

Harris throws in just enough sinister hints about this new nanny, and her oddly intimate knowledge of Hazel’s family,  to keep these early encounters fizzing nicely. But despite these Ortonesque overtones, the atmosphere gradually flattens and the over-defined characters, with little room to develop, hit a dead end.

A nice line in feigned ineptitude

Pss Pss, Southbank Centre, London

The ladder, handily placed by a stagehand at the back of the stalls, is hauled through the audience, fast-ducking as it swishes overhead. Placed upside down, apparently unwittingly, it becomes an object so unusual that it is capable of surprising us just as much as them.

A moving magic eye

Haptic and Holistic Strata, Linbury Studio, ROH, London

For long swathes, he stands stationary, but when he moves, each action chimes perfectly with its surroundings. Despite the fact that Umeda could teach Peter Crouch a thing or two about ‘the robot,’ he rejects the virtuosic for the maximum effect. Sometimes its as simple as shifting his weight from one foot to another.

Monday 16 January 2012

Young again

Love Song, Lyric Theatre, London

It isn’t only the transformation of this couple’s physical appearance that causes the breath to catch in one’s throat. This switch from sprightly to stumbling is painful enough – but it is the change in the way these two communicate that really impresses.

Saturday 14 January 2012

Naked execution

The Table, Soho Theatre, London

The world behind these frames is exhilaratingly fluid; tiny body parts flutter through the frames, heads jilt about independent of their bodies, clouds sink and feet jiggle. It’s like going to a Magritte exhibition, whilst hideously drunk, and it’s damn good fun.

Friday 13 January 2012

Snagging on a half-whistle

The Kreutzer Sonata, Gate Theatre, London

McRae doesn’t so much speak the words as dance them, tapping out syllables like expressive footfalls. His voice is a drum kit; it can rasp like a snare or clatter like cymbals or swish like a soft brushstroke. The moment he hits upon the crucial detail – ‘That was it,’ he says – his vocal chords seems to have become corroded by an upsurge of stomach acid.

An axe to the family tree

Frankland & Sons, Camden People’s Theatre, London

Like a home-made Father’s Day present, Frankland & Sons is to be prized not for itself, but for the love with which it is made. It seems held together in a tangled clot of sellotape and string, but the thought that counts is abundantly clear and worth displaying.

A Welfare State Mowgli

Fog, Finborough Theatre, London

Fog is a play with its roots to the right. Its society is rudderless; expectant of reward rather than willing to earn it. Meaning has been lost, such that estate blocks are named after Romantic poets and rosaries are empty fashion symbols.

Thursday 22 December 2011

Firmly on thin air

Murmurs, Southbank Centre, London

At one point, Thierrée brings a grey, paper-thin man to life simply by placing her own arm in his sleeve. ‘They’ talk, grope and dance together. And then, with one slip of her arm, this almost-nothing man is dead again. It’s a strange little scene and and quite frightening too; one lad was crying for his mummy, the night I watched.

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Resources


The Stage
Theatreland’s newspaper

Theatre Monkey
What theatregoers tell you that box-office staff do not

National Theatre
What’s on: plays, exhibitions, music

Royal Shakespeare Company
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet

 

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