Layers of Mess
✮✮✮ Ella Hickson's Boys LOST Theatre | London directed by James Thacker The party is over and the flat is a mess – a bigger mess than usual, thanks to a refuse strike in the city, which means the rubbish is left stagnating in the flat. The boys all have a different attitude to this. Benny (Alex Bird), worrier and complainer who spends a good deal of his time sat on the top of the fridge, finds it extremely unfair. He wants to phone the council, the landlord, anyone – and get
Age and Responsibility
✮✮✮✮ Lucy Kirkwood's The Children The Royal Court Theatre | London directed by James Macdonald The first line of award-winning playwright Lucy Kirkwood’s new play sets the tone for what is to come: slightly ominous, slightly accusatory, tension hidden under a blanket of small talk. The question is for Hazel (Deborah Findlay), a fussy, yoga-practising retired nuclear scientist who lives in an isolated cottage on the coast with her husband (Ron Cook) in the aftermath of a power
The Best Lear in Town
✮✮✮✮ Shakespeare's King Lear Barbican Theatre | London directed by Gregory Doran Glenda Jackson's must-see Lear at the Old Vic may be getting all the headlines right now, but Greg Doran's Stratford-to-London RSC transfer is the better production. I'd rank Doran's husband Antony Sher above even my two favourite Lears of recent years: Jonathan Pryce at the Almeida and Derek Jacobi at the Donmar. Also, I've never seen the play's complicated sub-plots staged with such compelling
The Dirty Art of Business
✮✮✮ 1/2 David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow Sydney Theatre Company | Sydney directed by Andrew Upton It is the simple story of a man caught between good and evil, one that never seems to get old. It is the eternal experience of us all, no matter where or when in the annals of history we find ourselves. Bob is a Hollywood executive who has to choose between art and commerce, and in David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow, that relationship is a strictly dichotomous one. Art is good, commerce is
No People Like Show People
✮✮✮ David Mamet's A Life in the Theatre Darlinghurst Theatre Company | Sydney directed by Helen Dallimore John and Robert work on a lot of plays together and have become more than familiar, but their closeness does not extend beyond the theatre. John is considerably younger, and although respectful of Robert, the generational gap that exists between the two is incontrovertible. The theatre that they practise is an ancient art form, passed down through the years from old to yo
A Sultry Mirage Amid the Harsh Backdrop of Francoist Spain
✮✮✮ 1/2 Don Quixote Aaron S. Watkin Staatsballet | Dresden This reworking of Marius Petipa’s much-loved Don Quixote, helmed by Aaron S. Watkin of Dresden’s Semperoper Ballet, both reinstates and revises crucial components of the Cervantes picaresque it’s based on. Among the restorations is the layered characterisation of the eponymous hero, a civilian in reality (Alonso Quixano) and knight in his fantasies (Don Quixote). This time around, however, Alonso is not an aging hidal
Who Is It That Can Tell Me Who I Am?
✮✮✮ Shakespeare's King Lear The Old Vic Theatre | London directed by Deborah Warner Glenda Jackson is King Lear! Two-time Oscar winning actress turned politician returns to the stage after 25 years to play King Lear. However, the worrying feeling is that maybe the rest wasn’t so well thought out. In a nutshell King Lear is to split his kingdom between his three daughters, the parts will be divided up based on how much they love their father. Goneril and Regan (Celia Imrie a
You Can Laugh All You Want
✮✮✮ 1/2 Andrew Upton's A Flea in Her Ear Sydney Theatre Company | Sydney directed by Simon Phillips Raymonde Chandebise has doubts of her husband’s fidelity, as Victor Emmanuel is suddenly unable to perform in bed (he blames a disappointing night at the theatre). Putting his devotion to the test, Raymonde sends a letter from an anonymous admirer requesting Victor Emmanuel meet for a tryst at a sleazy hotel, thereby initiating a series of humorous mishaps and high jinks in Geo
A Big Hug
✮✮✮✮ James McDermott's Rubber Ring The Pleasance | London directed by Siobhan James-Elliott Sixteen-year-old Jimmy is sulking in the safe (yet smelly) confines of his bedroom in Sheringham, Norfolk. He is desperate to escape his mundane, small-town existence. He wants to experience the thrill of city life – he wants to go to London. But more importantly, he wants to see Morrissey at the O2. After unsuccessfully trying to steal the money he needs, Jimmy decides to ‘choose adve
