A transfer from the Globe, Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s play about the 17th century poet Emilia Bassano Lanier is already receiving highly positive acclaim as it rouses audiences to their feet night after night
‘Is there anything on the London stage more gracefully eloquent?’: EMILIA – West End
It’s a rare moment of beautiful subtlety in a play that is more often considerably bolder in its sentiment, but it’s also a mark of just how nuanced Nicole Charles’ production and Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s writing is.
‘Becomes a metaphor for womankind’: EMILIA – West End ★★★★★
I’ve read reviews of Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s play Emilia that describe its feminist message as ‘unsubtle’ and the titular character’s suffering as overblown. It’s comments like that, which reinforce the need for plays like this and why, perhaps, the time for subtlety is over.
‘Shamelessly rousing & disappointingly crude’: EMILIA – West End
Triumphant, if crude, the West End transfer of Emilia is a heartfelt account of a Renaissance woman who has been hidden from history.
NEWS: Further casting is announced for West End transfer of Shakespeare Globe’s Emilia
Further casting has been announced for Emilia, written by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm and directed by Nicole Charles at the Vaudeville Theatre from 8 March to 15 June 2019, following its run at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2018.
‘Played out near-perfectly by Lucian Msamati & Adam Gillen’: AMADEUS – National Theatre
That this is Michael Longhurst’s debut in this theatre makes it all the more impressive and I wouldn’t be surprised if his name doesn’t soon become one of the ones bandied around the round of musical chairs that is London artistic directorships.
FosterIAN Awards for Best Actress
How to split these three? Why would you even want to. Their effortless grace, their ferociously detailed complexity, their heart-breaking connectivity, all three will live long in my mind.
For & against AGAINST at the Almeida Theatre
Reviewing in list form: for and against Christopher Shinn’s new play AGAINST, starring Ben Whishaw and Amanda Hale, at the Almeida Theatre.
AGAINST – Almeida Theatre
New American drama about God and violence is a bit baggy, but it is also often brilliantly perceptive.
ANATOMY OF A SUICIDE – Royal Court
Love her or hate her, Katie Mitchell is surely our most bravely iconoclastic theatre director working in Britain today. If Robert Lepage is the magician who smoothes the cracks between technology and stagecraft, Katie Mitchell is the one who adds tough edginess.
ANATOMY OF A SUICIDE – Royal Court
And what an excruciating, yet devastatingly brilliant, two hours they are. The play shows episodes from the life of the women of one family spread over three time periods: one starts in the 1970s, the next in the 1990s and the third in the 2030s.
TORN – Royal Court Theatre
Experimental family drama is very powerful, but its theatrical form is too complicated for its own good.