Race, rage and relevance: sensitive revival of American writer Alice Childress’ 1955 anti-racist play shines bright.
‘The writing has a comic crackle & pop that sizzles & screeches’: IS GOD IS – Royal Court Theatre
American playwright Aleshea Harris’ dazzlingly satirical 2018 extravaganza is about two women seeking justice and getting even, and it comes to the Royal Court from New York, trailing shouts of enthusiasm.
‘It’s a masterpiece’: A GUIDE FOR THE HOMESICK – Trafalgar Studios
Ken Urban’s intense and revelatory two-hander is powerfully performed by Clifford Samuel and Douglas Booth. Whatever you compare it with, A Guide for the Homesick thrills both the nerve ends and the grey cells. It’s a masterpiece.
GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS – West End
From its haunting title, to its moments of explosive dialogue, this is a modern classic, which when it was first staged won Mamet the Pulitzer Prize. Set in Chicago, it shows a group of slick hustlers who have to sell tracts of indifferent Florida real estate.
Text of the Day: Oslo
Random and topical thoughts and quotes gathered by My Theatre Mates contributor Aleks Sierz, first published on www.sierz.co.uk.
OSLO – National Theatre & West End
Award-heavy American play about the Oslo Accords is informative, moving and highly entertaining.
AGAINST – Almeida Theatre
New American drama about God and violence is a bit baggy, but it is also often brilliantly perceptive.
Text of the Day: Gloria
Random and topical thoughts and quotes gathered by My Theatre Mates contributor Aleks Sierz, first published on www.sierz.co.uk.
GLORIA – Hampstead
This play’s subject is alienation, at work and in the home. (But mainly at work.) In contemporary society, office work seems to symbolize a life of modern drudgery.
HIR – Bush Theatre
Hir is set in a settlement somewhere in California’s Central Valley, where plywood houses have been built on landfill sites, and dozens lie empty, abandoned during an economic downturn. All is not well in the Connors’ cheap abode: fiftysomething Arnold is a plumber who lost his job to a Chinese-American.
GUARDS AT THE TAJ – Bush Theatre
For its reopening, Younis has looked across the pond for a new play. He has chosen Rajiv Joseph’s Guards at the Taj, which was first staged at the Atlantic Theatre, New York, in 2015, picking up an Obie Award along with other plaudits.
CHINGLISH – Park Theatre
Chinglish was first staged in on Broadway in 2011, and is set in Guiyang (pop four million). Daniel Cavanaugh, an American who heads a firm of Ohio sign-makers, wants to secure a deal with a local cultural centre, whose public signage has been rendered ridiculous by gross mistranslations into English: “Deformed Man’s Restroom” instead of Disabled Toilet.
UGLY LIES THE BONE – National
Theatre increasingly uses digital delights to enhance audience enjoyment. And you can easily see why.
Text of the Day: Sex with Strangers
Random and topical thoughts and quotes gathered by My Theatre Mates contributor Aleks Sierz, first published on www.sierz.co.uk.
SEX WITH STRANGERS – Hampstead Theatre
New American drama about literary ambition is neat, but not nearly disturbing enough.
THE ROYALE – The Tabernacle
Welcome return of last year’s American hit boxing drama, which is thrilling if a bit hard to follow.
On Eric Bogosian’s 100 Monologues
Award-winning American actor and playwright Eric Bogosian has gone mammoth.
EVENING AT THE TALK HOUSE – National Theatre
Latest play by Wallace Shawn stars the playwright and is brilliantly satirical, but not much fun as an experience
YOU FOR ME FOR YOU – Royal Court
North Korea is the kind of place that haunts the imagination of the West – and not in a good way. One of the last hardline Communist dictatorships, it is also a country of immense sadness, a landscape of food shortages and human-rights abuses. Yet its regime calls this dismal place the “Best Nation in the World”. To us, it’s a secret world, a strange culture difficult to comprehend, easy to fear. Small wonder that, in American playwright Mia Chung’s 2012 play, two hungry sisters fantasise about leaving it for good.
A WOLF IN SNAKESKIN SHOES – Tricycle Theatre
It’s a question of faithfulness. Should an adaptation be faithful to its original source, or can it just take off and roam around like a free spirit? I must say that new versions of classics that stick closely to the original bore me rigid. I mean, if you’re not going to make big changes, why bother? I much prefer adaptations which are imaginative offshoots rather than those which remain slavish growths.