Florian Zeller’s superbly anti-naturalistic play is a philosophical puzzle that dissects our existential solitude.
‘An extraordinary piece about infidelity, guilt & distorted reality’: THE FOREST – Hampstead Theatre
It has been an extraordinarily fruitful partnership between writer Florian Zeller and translator-playwright Christopher Hampton over the past few years with adaptations of Zeller’s disconnected family saga The Father, The Mother and The Son.
NEWS: Lily Allen will make her West End debut in the world premiere of a new play by Danny Robins
Lily Allen is to make her West End debut in the world premiere of Danny Robins’ new play 2:22 – A Ghost Story at London’s Noël Coward Theatre from 3 August to 16 October 2021 (press night is 11 August). The production will feature Julia Chan, Hadley Fraser and Jake Wood and will be directed by Matthew Dunster.
NEWS: Special installations & live theatre feature in Young Vic’s 50th birthday celebrations
Kwame Kwei-Armah, artistic director of the Young Vic, has announced the start of the Young Vic’s 50th birthday with a year-long programme of work entitled We are the New Tide, dedicated to the theatre’s milestone birthday.
‘You are left aching for more’: A KIND OF PEOPLE – Royal Court Theatre
The family tragedy at the heart of A Kind Of People is emotionally powerful but also oddly incomplete and unsatisfying.
‘A crazy delight’: TWO LADIES – Bridge Theatre
There’s excellent acting in Two Ladies, a play that tickles the senses and the intellect by playfully morphing from one genre to another.
‘Sufficient scares to get the blood pumping’: THE EXORCIST – Touring
The Exorcist is a little flabby, even at a short 100 minute running time, and it never matches the nerve-shredding tension of the movie version, but there are sufficient scares to get the blood pumping.
‘Impressive, even dynamic evening’: DEATH OF A SALESMAN – Young Vic ★★★★
For Death of a Salesman, one of Arthur Miller’s greatest plays about the hollowness of the American Dream, Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell and their cast make it an impressive, even dynamic evening that lacks some subtleties but is never less than gripping.
‘It’s more than enough that this eye-opening production exists at all’: DEATH OF A SALESMAN – Young Vic
It’s Marianne Elliott’s impressionistic approach that yields considerable insight into the themes of Death of a Salesman, the characters’ attachment to material possessions as indicators of success, and most especially to the physical home that contains their family history, which they have spent decades slowly paying-off.
‘Without doubt, this is the theatre event of the year’: A GERMAN LIFE – Bridge Theatre
Maggie Smith is absolutely triumphant in this memoir of a Berlin secretary in the Nazi era, A German Life at the Bridge Theatre.
REVIEW ROUND-UP: Home, I’m Darling at Duke of York’s Theatre
Love London Love Culture rounds up the reviews for Laura Wade’s play Home, I’m Darling which has transferred to the West End.
‘Less twisted & funny than simply tiresome and tedious’: A VERY VERY VERY DARK MATTER – Bridge Theatre
Very very very feeble: Martin McDonagh’s latest play, A Very Very Very Dark Matter at the Bridge Theatre, is poorly written, self-plagiarising and lacks imagination.
‘A fine mixture of interesting ideas & emotional desolation’: HOME, I’M DARLING – National Theatre
Laura Wades’s return to the stage is a bright satire about marriage and nostalgic fantasy
The post Home, I’m Darling, National Theatre appeared first on Aleks Sierz.
‘Brilliantly acted production’: THE WRITER – Almeida Theatre
The Writer makes a strong case for theatre as a place to debate the most urgent issues of the day and prove that, for some women, experimenting with form is not an option, but a necessity.
‘A superlative production’: THE WAY OF THE WORLD – Donmar Warehouse
This is a stylish, yet thoroughly accessible, production that is full of energy and a joyous satirical thrust that never obscures the real human emotions at the story’s core. Let’s hope that this production is the first of many Restoration revivals.
‘Plenty of potential here’: THE WAY OF THE WORLD – Donmar Warehouse
The Donmar’s new version of William Congreve’s play has plenty of musings on marriage and the role of women which still feel extremely pertinent; it just needs to even out the tone to make this restoration comedy really fizz.
NEWS: Stage version of The Exorcist transfers to West End in time for Halloween TICKETS ONSALE
Forty-five years after William Peter Blatty’s best-selling novel terrified an entire generation, The Exorcist will be unleashed onto the West End stage for the very first time, opening at the Phoenix Theatre in October.
TERROR – Lyric Hammersmith
Can the theatre be a courtroom? A good public place to debate morality and to arrive at profound decisions? You could answer this with a history lesson that ranges from the ancient Greeks to more recent tribunal plays in the 1960s and 1990s.
DON JUAN IN SOHO – West End
Updating the classics is not without its pitfalls. How can a modern audience, which has a completely different set of religious beliefs, relate to a 17th-century morality tale in which the lead character behaves badly, and I mean really badly, but gets his comeuppance by being roasted in hell fire?
THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE – Royal Court
The beauty of fiction is that its stories have both compelling shape and deep meaning — they are dramas in which things feel right and true and real. The trouble with real life is that it’s the opposite: it is messy, frequently shapeless and often meaningless.
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