AUDITORIUM

✮✮ 1/2 Ivo van Hove's Obsession English language version by Simon Stephens Barbican Theatre | London directed by Ivo van Hove “Everybody wants passion, and to live a passionate life…[but] passion is a devouring force. Though passion is unliveable, we crave it.” So says Ivo van Hove in the programme for his stage adaptation of Luchino Visconti’s 1943 film, Obsession. Passion is indeed is the force to be reckoned with here in the director-of-the-moment’s latest production – the

✮✮✮✮ Shakespeare's Roman Tragedies Barbican Theatre | London directed by Ivo van Hove Politics can be murder. In the current climate of Brexit and Trump, we’ve seen first hand the effects of politics on the ‘people’, two camps, two sides, two stories and no real winners. Placards in hands, petitions, riots, uprisings we have a voice and we want it heard (even if we don’t get what we want). The Toneelgroep’s spectacular 6-hour epic, Roman Tragedies, is about neither but oh doe

✮✮✮✮ 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

✮✮✮✮ Ben Jonson's The Alchemist Barbican Theatre | London directed by Polly Findlay This London transfer from Stratford is pure gold, with all the hallmarks of a glittering summer run that's played to appreciative audiences night after night. The cast of money-hungry villains positively glows with wicked energy without taking itself too seriously - crucial in a play that in the wrong hands can come across as overly moralistic and tediously silly. A high carat RSC production g

✮✮✮✮ Robert Lepage's Needles and Opium Barbican Theatre | London directed by Robert Lepage Needles and Opium centres on three different men: Miles Davis, Jean Cocteau and ‘Robert’, an actor who has recently gone through a painful breakup – three artists who have lost a love. The men are significantly different, separated by time, place, background and so on. Yet they are united by love, addiction and creativity. The parallels between which are powerfully presented in three in

✮✮✮✮ Phaedra(s) after Sarah Kane, Wajdi Mouawad and J. M. Coetzee Barbican Theatre | London directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski In the run-up to the EU referendum, the presence of such a quintessentially French cultural institution as the Odéon-Théatre de l'Europe brought a special resonance to the Barbican, offering a timely reminder of the languages, cultures and collective history that the UK is currently considering divorcing. Indeed, three and a half hours later, the even

✮✮✮✮ 1/2 Christopher Sergel's To Kill A Mockingbird Barbican Theatre | London directed by Timothy Sheader You’d be forgiven for approaching an adaptation of a book published fifty years ago and set in the 1930s’ deep south with a dim sense of déjà vu. Period pieces, especially those based on novels of such cultural heft, are always interesting. But beyond that? What could such a thing possibly have to do with the here and now of today? In a word, everything. Timothy Sheader’s

✮✮✮✮ 1/2 Ibsen's The Wild Duck in a version by Simon Stone & Chris Ryan Barbican Theatre | London directed by Simon Stone At the heart of Ibsen’s Wild Duck is the killer concept of the ‘life-lie’ – the big fib that we all rely on, consciously or not, in order to get by. It’s cognitive dissonance at its most benevolent. The question is what happens when a well-meaning Samaritan comes along to kick the psychological crutches away. It’s testament to both the self-sufficiency and