Seeing Northampton’s Royal & Derngate production almost at the end of its tour in the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre – such a lovely theatre now, clearly well cherished locally and a perfect space for a play that is intimate and epic – you have to applaud a cast whose early days must have been testing in the extreme.
DEATH OF A SALESMAN – Touring
Miller’s 1949 depiction of the ageing, failing salesman Willy Loman as he struggles to comes to terms with the death of his dreams – and perhaps of The American Dream itself – has only gained in stature over the years. What some regarded as a merely a Marxist- derived critique of the US way of life has come to seem as much like high tragedy as anything English-speaking theatre has produced in the last century.
CLEANSED – National Theatre
Katie Mitchell’s revival of Sarah Kane’s 1998 play sees it as a ghastly nightmare, but overburdens the text with too many additions.
THE MODERATE SOPRANO – Hampstead Theatre
David Hare’s charming new play is a very English account of a very English institution – Glyndebourne. The Moderate Soprano tells the story of John Christie, an eccentric English businessman who in the 1930s decided to build an opera house next to his house and garden in Sussex, thus creating Glyndebourne. But he didn’t do it alone.