In our continuing series, editor Lisa Martland picks out some of her Top Picks from the last week of theatre (to 9 February 2020), ranging from Ian Foster seeing Rafe Spall give a career-defining performance in the National Theatre’s production of Death of England to Liz Dyer’s thoughts on Arrows & Traps’ fascinating, entertaining & surprisingly poignant show about the life and career of Chaplin at the Brockley Jack Studio Theatre.
Plus find out what the Mates think of Endgame, The Jury and The Gift.
Death of England – National Theatre
Ian Foster: “When the Dorfman gets it right, it really is something special. The combination of our National Theatre’s calibre and the intimacy of its smallest theatre means that when a play dares to do something different in there, the results can be extraordinary.”
Endgame/Rough for Theatre II – Old Vic Theatre
Maryam Philpott: “As Hamm, Cumming offers a quite fascinating performance, a character playing a one-sided game of chess in which he will be both the ultimate winner and its loser as he undergoes various changes in mood across the period of the play.”
maryamphilpottblog.wo…
Chaplin: Birth of a Tramp –Brockley Jack Studio Theatre
Liz Dyer: “The play is – as ever – incredibly well written, skilfully weaving timelines and plot threads together, but in Chaplin: Birth of a Tramp, fittingly, it’s not so much the words as the performances that lift the show to a whole new level.”
The Jury – Upstairs at the Gatehouse ★★★★
Sadie: “I cannot think of a single aspect of necessary improvement. None of the songs are too long either and they are all well written and never bore – this is a strong new musical and I hope it won’t vanish from our stages too soon.”
The Gift – Theatre Royal Stratford East
Aleks Sierz: “Marketed as “an outrageous play about imperialism, cross-racial adoption, cultural appropriation – and tea”, it certainly features one of the most powerful and complex discussions of race on the current British stage.”
An editor, writer and critic, Lisa Martland is the founder of Vuelio top-ranked website Musical Theatre Review which she set up in 2013. She has largely single-handedly developed it into one of the UK’s must-read sites for professionals and expert followers of the sector. In 2018, Lisa also joined the Terri Paddock Group, taking on the role of editor for both MyTheatreMates and our sister musical theatre site Stage Faves. Formerly, she was deputy editor at The Stage Newspaper.
