Miriam Gillinson
Youthful, innocent and free
Judi Dench’s playfulness is systematic of the light, whimsical feel to Peter Hall’s absorbing Rose Theatre production. The show is underpinned by a desire to have fun with Shakespeare; a quality that is sometimes lost in more ‘complicated’, modern-day productions.
And she screams a lot
Perhaps aware of the potential pitfalls of his performers, Sheppeck has directed the hell out of them. It isn’t imaginative direction. Instead, Sheppeck has choreographed his actors’ every move – no doubt hoping that these props and movements will help generate what his actors cannot.
Unbelievable colours
It is a concept that draws the protagonist and stage together - whatever Barney thinks or feels, the stage reflects – and has the potential to create a volatile and revealing space in which to perform.
A real nose on a painting
Despite Filter priding itself on discovering, re-interpreting and releasing the ‘essence’ of a play – be that whilst working up an original composition or reworking an old classic - this show feels curiously unanchored, poking and hinting at ideas or new directions yet never laying down the interpretative gauntlet.
Pinter’s people
It is Davies’ combination of vivacity and frailty, pride and shame, hope and despair (clashing characteristics shared by most tragic figures but no more so than in the plays of Pinter and Beckett) that allows Pryce to let rip with this role, without ever exhausting his performance or overexposing his part.
When to stop inventing
It is when this company sticks with the puppets that their brand of theatre works best: the tangibility of puppet Lilly, the deep complexity of this wooden figure’s personality, is all down to the company’s careful, observational puppetry and sensitive accompanying performances.
Christmas cheer and darkness
The conclusion is soaring but not saccharine and suggests that good deeds, done by good people, can drip down the generations. It might sound cheesy here, but it doesn’t when meshed within Dickens cruel and dirty world.
A touch too controlled
As Pozdynyshev relates an argument he had with his wife, his outcry, ‘She turned round and called me selfish!’, is accompanied by dark, sawing violin chords. It feels unnecessary, a touch lazy and makes a subtle, complicated moment a relatively straightforward one.
Throbbing claustrophobia
Did I really just see that? Am I starting to hear things? Am I, in fact, going a little bit bonkers? These are the same questions Josef K asks himself, as endures Kafka’s baffling and battering trial.
Sardines on toast in bed
As with all good writers of farce, it is when Ayckbourn keeps things small – when he focuses on the details - that his comedy works best. Perhaps this is why the oldest couple on stage, played with pin-point accuracy by Jane Asher and Nicholas Le Prevost, are the star players here. Theirs’ is a life so entrenched in routine that Ayckbourn only has to whisper disorder and their comedy is set spiralling into motion.
Little and large
It is the development of this central relationship that is the real joy here. Theirs is an unusual dynamic – characters this age don’t take centre stage much - but rather than mine this situation for ‘profound’ gems, Payne lets his carefully selected scenes and spot-on banter do the talking.
This ranting man
Despite Gardi’s graceful and persuasive authority, there is something hardened and inaccessible to his performance. He is angry – and I mean really angry – for almost the entire piece, and it starts to wear the audience down.
Oppressive melodrama
Put simply, Williams has given himself too much plot to handle. What starts as a promising, feisty observational piece, casting light on a prison system kept largely in the dark, quickly descends into melodrama with more twists than an episode of The Bill.
Musical misadventures
The actors who stand out are those playing the stalwarts of the nightclub scene: the embittered night-club manager, the slightly loony magician assistant and the shady compere. These characters drip with clichés, but this is when Wood writes best – when she has a solid, familiar base to work from and spark off.
In loco parentis
It might be slightly manipulative, but who cares when it’s this much fun? Furthermore, this familial dynamic – this heightened bond between audience and actors - takes on a much deeper significance half-way through the show when the children remember a tragedy.
Fawlty Towers on meltdown
The set pieces are slick fun, but the further you poke around and the bolder you get, the bigger the rewards. At one point, I opened a tiny storage cupboard to find two people squeezed inside, methodically folding down the ends of a huge batch of loo-roll.
Black comedy with shades of grey
It is thug Eddie, played with verve and volatility by Phil Nichol, who dictates the tone, and as his impatience escalates, the threat of violence sinks in and spreads. In fact is Eddie’s gun that dictates the tone - when it is hidden, we laugh easily at Burke’s razor sharp quips, but when the gun is brandished, the comedy collapses and the auditorium tingles with fear.
Barking out facts
Judith Thompson’s monologues depict three unwitting victims of the Iraq war, and each is as painstakingly long and mystifyingly ‘undramatic’ as the next, unaided by Greg Hersov’s uninspired and fairly inconspicuous directing.
Not flying the nest
This is an undoubtedly overcomplicated show and at times, one wishes this company wouldn’t keep everything so close to their chest. Perhaps if Wood’s performance had been slightly firmer this show would’ve coalesced, but without this solid central force, the show frays around the edges.
Rhyming couplets out of place
Fry is a sound actor but not a sensational one – it feels like he is always hovering above his character, commenting on his life rather than really recreating it. He is not helped by the static script, which captures him in a constant state of innocence.
Blurred focus
This company’s desire to display their technological range has only further disrupted the script’s shaky sense of purpose. Increasingly, continuity and realism are subverted in the name of innovation.
Fate’s cruel inconsistencies
Stephens is careful not to let his script sink beneath the tragedy and maintains a nice balance between profundity and inanity. This is a harrowing piece, unlocking an unexpected and heart-breaking event, but it isn’t hard to watch.
Clashing sensibilities
The story from Joey’s perspective is a much more practical affair – it turns out the impromptu sonata was actually the result of a hidden iPod – and her cynical observations bring Sam’s romantic embellishments crashing down to earth.
Stuttering, simmering discontent
Churchill and Steinbeis find increasingly imaginative ways to express the play’s political concerns. Sometime after the initial violence, Churchill (aided by Steinbeis’ atmospheric direction) conjures up a startling dream sequence, which slams home the guilt experienced by those who failed to back the revolution.
A little knife in the wrong hands
By the time we get to the pre-interval revelation – that the bride has fled her wedding with lover Leonardo – the audience is so buoyed up by the singing, snacks and general merriment that they seem more concerned with the finding the bar than helping the groom track down his missing bride.
Consumerist dreams and broken egos
The other monologues follow a similar pattern – all sweetness and light initially, only to descend into something sadder and deeper as the stories progress. Some of the monologues stretch too far and the language starts to feel overplayed, the dramatic devices over-used. Hickson’s extensive use of metaphor is both her strength and undoing.
En route to England
Chris Spyrides is excellent as the Turkish agent from the ‘outside world’, whose job it is to ensure the immigrants’ safe passage. His is the one performance shot through with fear, and it is only when Spyrides’ edgy, angry, throbbing character appears that we start to understand the real danger these characters face and the risks they’re willing to take to reach England.
A fake budgie in a new cage
If only it could have stayed like this – all eerie restraint, insinuation and confusion. But the show can’t stay still forever and the director and his new directions start to take over. Tighe opens up his box of tricks and scatters them everywhere – we get elaborate vignettes, prolonged silences, miming, moaning, birdsong, babies crying, manic laughter, the constant ping of a microwave.
Gulped down gratefully
We are swept along by a carnival of lust, action, poetry and music: entertained by two sparring lovers, entranced by a shepherd’s philosophising and unexpectedly stopped in our tracks by a painful and delicate song.
A zest for knowledge
One leaves the show reeling - the brain buzzing even if the heart isn’t quite soaring – determined to question everything we once held true, to examine life anew and revel in all its certain uncertainties.
Singing isn’t enough
Walker has talent but it was never going to be unearthed in this type of show. The actors have charm but they belong in straight musicals and not this musical play. And although The Young Vic’s programming shows guts, it needs to make sure its shows have the goods to back these gutsy choices.
‘It’s not gonna end like this!’
There are some striking ideas here about the nature of home and the latent need for family – in whatever guise that might come – but they are drowned out by the screaming, weeping and gun-fire. Hunter has confused exposing his characters with exploring them.
A touch too neat
Despite the technical prowess, there is something missing here. The writing is too flashy for its own good and as the metaphors pile up and the recurring motifs keep on recurring, Bovel’s style starts to overtake his content. The dialogue becomes forced, the characters a touch too neat and the plot-twists a tad convenient.
A gluttony of riches
Agboluaje refuses to patronise his audience with an easy way into this foreign world, and chooses to let life loose on-stage rather than merely represent it. The result is a show that might confuse at moments, but is also engaging, tangible and real.
Bloody great swaying
Yes, Mussorgsky (played by a sternly dramatic Edward Hogg) dedicated this composition to a man, but what exactly does the flashing of male arses and waving of huge dildos tell us of the composer’s life in 19th century Russia?
Watery drama
As funny as lots of this is, I’m still not that fussed about climate change. Let Steve Waters write what he knows and write it better - but find a different way of bringing science to life on-stage.
Delicate material
The play works best when Radstrom keeps things simple – when he lets Bulger’s murderers account for their own actions in their own words – but he repeatedly interrupts the action, steps outside his play and starts to deconstruct it.
Relinquish the real!
The best scenes hover between life and death – all mystery, loneliness and despair. If only True Fiction had confined their play to this eerie twilight, but some heavy-handed comedy and clunky modern-day references (terrorism anyone?), cut through the gloom and let the audience off lightly.
Stamping, beaming tragedy
Is the best the Globe can do – simply stretch out the text, mine it for jokes and to hell with the consequences? All of Shakespeare’s tragedies are cloaked in comedy, but the jokes are surely not an end in themselves. The laughs are there to open the audience up, break down their guard so the drama can pierce them in the heart when they least expect it
Isolated patches
With the couple’s demise forecast from the start where have we got left to go? Nowhere – instead we circle slowly, repetitively (but not in the teasing, crushing manner of Beckett) and somewhat pretentiously around the inevitable implosion of their relationship.
Idle hands
The overall effect is one of quiet mayhem and missed moments. The delivery is all over the place and the actors gesticulate to the point that they mime the script, rather than just act it. None of the relationships click into place.
Delicate narrative on a big stage
The sisters are so removed from society, that although they live in constant fear of the disapproval their actions might provoke, it is hard for the audience to really feel this; we never see society, so how are we supposed to fear it?
Neither farcical nor absurd
Alison Steadman is the show’s victim. It is a plucky performance and she does what she can, but this is not the role that she or the casting director expected. It just isn’t that funny.
Veering into farce
Perhaps I’m looking for too much: can a play this bombastic still hold onto reality? Should it even want to? All I know is that despite the thrill of this production, it ultimately feels like a game, an experiment of sorts.
Too-exciting therapy
There needs to be more boring time: long, horrible stretches of silence, when the patience’s resistance and doctor’s reticence cancel each other out.
A surprisingly charming affair
Put simply, the piece is not dark enough. So, rather than fear the mob that will eventually put Father Anderton in jail, we laugh at it.
The unifying potential of dance
The only Greek tradition borrowed directly is the chorus, represented here by the neglected and abused Afro-Brazillian masses. The parallel just about holds up, but I wish this company had gone for broke – told their own story, in their own words, with what they believe to be the ultimate form of expression – capoeria.
Between support and destruction
The fact Letts’ characters are a whisker away from cliché – you know who they are before they speak – makes for some forceful but truthful performances. Their eccentricities fuel the comedy, but Letts never lets his characters slip away from him: they might be larger than life, but they are never outside it.
Verse and murder-mystery
TS Eliot’s verse here is not nearly as impenetrable as the previews suggest, and though it might feel indulgent in parts, he paints a vivid picture with his poetry. However, it is Eliot’s talent for tension that stands out; director Jeremy Herrin recognises this quality and exploits it skilfully and sparingly. Even if the dialogue loses its way sometimes, the scenes are tight and the atmosphere tense.
An issue-ridden childhood
Ultimately this feels like a prolonged form of therapy - one that remains bizarrely indifferent to its patient. It is restricted by the opening scene at rehab, which establishes a predilection for psychobabble that is never shaken off.
Skipping across the decades
It is easy to see what attracted Zegerman to this idea: the tight format provides a neat way to explore the consistencies in a person’s character, the tics that persist over the years and the unique pressure of life in the public eye.
Inhabiting Piaf
It is the songs that come closest to capturing Piaf and thankfully there are lots of them here; Pam Gems’ play really serves the songs, with the plot twisting and turning to accommodate the soundtrack.
Gloriously immoral
These awkward death scenes have the potential to genuinely disturb, but unfortunately this production is neither assured nor subtle enough to do them justice.
‘The higher building and the smaller me’
There is a frightening symmetry to this production, which cleverly and quietly traps the audience in the same way Dinny traps his sons. As the play darkens and the farce falters, the audience longs for the play-within-the-play to return
Thinking inside the symmetrical shape
Adam Godley has a far more daunting task than Josh Hartnett, and the commitment and detail contained in his performance is impressive. It is his role that lends this production substance and without it, this wafer-thin adaptation would have crashed and burned.
Desolate drama and flippant comedy
There are some good lines nestled in here, but the dialogue is too static and considered to convince; Upton deals exclusively in throwaway banter and runaway monologues, whereas characters are really found in the spaces in between.
Acrobatic evil spirits
Watching the public tussle for their gold pieces, the key theme of greed is immediately and effortlessly established. This subtle touch is one of many carefully thought through devices, which implicitly suggest the audience’s innately selfish impulses and the obvious parallels with Timon’s gruesome but recognisable friends.
Terrifying flashes of loneliness
After doggedly walking the deserted 7/7 London streets, Reid’s exhausted widow stumbles across a barbeque. Stephens is able to lend real magnitude to tiny moments and the kindness this old-lady encounters at a stranger’s doorstep creates a powerful and lasting impression.
London sketches
There are a few strong and appealing characters that the talented cast latch onto and it is their committed performances that carry this piece. Ultimately it feels like director Matthew Dunster is mostly concerned with holding the audience’s attention; as a result we get a lot of action and sparkle, but nothing more substantial to take away from this ambitious piece.
Don’t stand so close to me
There are lot of easy stereotypes to exploit in this setting and Weigh writes them well. Many of the incidental scenes with small-town folk saying small-town things are well-observed and entertaining, if slightly superficial. What we are missing is the claustrophobia and panic that this anti-paedophile legislation has undoubtedly unleashed.
Inquisitive and spontaneous
Most scenes feel like mini-plays in their own right and it makes one wonder why so few plays include genuinely random chat. Freed from back-story, expectation or routine, conversations between strangers reap surprising rewards. It helps that Stephens has created an ideal central character in Harper Regan – a woman so inquisitive and spontaneous, that those she meets give themselves away without realising it.
Fun in the sports shop
Oxford Street is a sharp and witty look at a cosmopolitan London, which never takes itself too seriously. The characters are painted with broad strokes, the plot is slightly contrived but the observation is spot-on.
Vague, tricksy and surprisingly dull
Everyone is so desperate for theatre to say something meaningful about Global Warming that as long as the box is ticked little else matters. It left me feeling manipulated and disappointed – a poor reflection of both Harrison’s talents and Nansen’s achievements and a sign that Nicholas Hytner isn’t immune to political pressure after all.
Love, loyalty and religion
Whilst Fugard’s dialogue is crackling and funny, his monologues can sometimes run away from him: the writing loosens up and though he comes across some profound and strong images, he over-indulges along the way. It begins to feel like too much of a good thing and there’s nothing Reeves or Spall can do to keep us hooked.
Aeschylus does Apartheid
Unfortunately Klytemnestra’s trial is used only as a framework here, rather than being fully integrated into the play itself. So whilst a lot of the separate elements are strong – the trial testimonies, the African chorus, the chemistry and clashes between mother and child – they never quite come together, leaving us with an ambitious but confused production.
Minimal sensitivity, maximum fuss
It is encouraging to see how keen the audience was for this piece to work, despite its obvious failings. Though there was plenty of grumbling after the show, people were still unwilling to remove their headphones once the piece was over. Off the back of PunchDrunk’s hugely successful ventures, there’s a real thirst for the audience to be taken out of their comfort zone.
Citizen mouthpiece
The play’s opening is a lot darker and more urgent than scenes that follow it: we watch young Mahmood incarcerated and ordered to pray. Edgar teases out our prejudices here: he urges us to believe this is some sort of extremist training, and it is only later we learn that Mahmood has been locked away to break his drug addiction.
Living Unknown Soldier
Living Unknown Soldier starts with a warning: this play will tell ‘a truth – or a version of the truth – or someone’s memory of the truth’. The memory in question is that of a WW1 soldier, who has forgotten both his identity and the war that stole it from him.
Happy Now?
Lucinda Coxon’s Happy Now? makes a strong attempt to scratch beneath the surface of middle-class contentment. Though the foundations are laid for an uncomfortable exploration, this play shies away from the scarier stuff in favour of entertainment. Entertain it does, but pushed further Happy Now? could be important, liberating stuff.
Angry Young Man
It is Woolf’s careful observations and sharp, restrained wit which set this piece apart. He also has a keen sense for the stage’s potential and never misses a theatrical trick. Woolf’s directing is powerful yet never overbearing; the mimed sequences are slick to the point that the four actors sometimes feel like one.
