This week the London theatre bloggers discuss David Hare’s new play The Red Barn, starring Mark Strong at the National, the Donmar’s all-female Shakespeare trilogy at King’s Cross and Lyric Hammersmith’s recent anniversary revival of Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping & F**king.
THE RED BARN – National Theatre
David Hare’s latest is a superb adaptation of a Simenon thriller that is set in the United States.
THE RED BARN – National Theatre
Which is a roundabout way of saying that Robert Icke’s production of The Red Barn was not the play I thought it would be. And that my initial slightly cool reaction was as much a response to that as it was to the material itself.
THE RED BARN – National Theatre
The much-awarded star director Robert Icke rashly gave an interview last week saying how a lot of other people’s theatre is “boring” , so he often leaves at the interval. Ironic that he promptly socks us an underpowered 110-minute gloomfest with no interval at all.
NEWS: Ruth Wilson opens in Hedda in Dec, Elizabeth Debicki joins Red Barn, New NT season
The National Theatre has announced full dates and further details for its new booking period, running from September 2016 to February 2017. Headline highlights for the period include: dates for Ruth Wilson taking the title role in HEDDA GABLER in a new version by Patrick Marber, directed by Ivo van Hove, and The Night Manager’s Elizabeth Debicki joining Mark Strong and Hope Davis in the cast of David Hare’s THE RED BARN, directed by Robert Icke.