First female friendship is the focus of Roy Williams’ latest play The Fellowship, premiering at the Hampstead Theatre as class, race and past activism haunts this family saga.
‘Good to hear new voices’: LOTUS BEAUTY – Hampstead Theatre
Satinder Chohan’s Lotus Beauty at the Hampstead Theatre, a loving portrait of a Punjabi family-run beauty parlour in west London’s Southall, is an uneasy mix of comedy and tragedy.
‘So elegantly tense’: THE BREACH – Hampstead Theatre ★★★★
The central theme in The Breach at the Hampstead Theatre remains perennial, terrifying, universal and sorrowful: the fragile tipping into disaster of teenage children unnoticed by adults.
‘A slow burn’: THE BREACH – Hampstead Theatre ★★★
There is a stillness that descends over a theatre audience when they are gripped and fidgeting when they aren’t. In the first half of The Breach at Hampstead Theatre, the audience was fidgeting.
‘Modern families, money & the morals of genetics’: THE FEVER SYNDROME – Hampstead Theatre ★★★
The family at the centre of the story is that of Richard Myers (Robert Lindsay), an eminent geneticist who now has Parkinson’s Disease.
‘Throughout the play, I felt personally caught up in this family battlefield’: THE FEVER SYNDROME – Hampstead Theatre ★★★★
The first thing you notice upon entering the auditorium is the impressive dominating cross-section of the Myers’ family’s four-storey, ageing townhouse based in Manhattan.
Screen fame may be a major driver of ticket prices, but the breadth of British acting talent is vast
Television and big screen fame is a major driver for West End producers. Opened last week are Taron Egerton and Jonathan Bailey in a new production of Mike Bartlett’s COCK, and the lowest ticket price is £65, with the bulk at £100 or more, so it also translates to big prices.
‘Like visitors at a zoo, we watch intently as the family’s background is forensically examined’: THE ANIMAL KINGDOM – Hampstead Theatre
Animal behaviour but within a human framework. This is a powerful new play from Ruby Thomas at Hampstead Theatre.
‘An interesting piece of theatre that holds its meaning just out of reach’: THE FOREST – Hampstead Theatre
Florian Zeller’s puzzles of the mind (The Father, The Mother, The Son, The Height of the Storm) continue to baffle audiences in his new play, The Forest, now in residence at Hampstead’s main house.
‘Undoubtedly stylish but seriously underwhelming’: THE FOREST – Hampstead Theatre
Like being given a jigsaw with no corner pieces, the challenges of putting together what is happening in Florian Zeller’s The Forest means it is hardly worth the trip to the Hampstead Theatre.
‘A brilliant example of a post-dramatic play’: THE FOREST – Hampstead Theatre
Florian Zeller’s superbly anti-naturalistic play is a philosophical puzzle that dissects our existential solitude.
REVIEW ROUND-UP: The Forest at Hampstead Theatre
On LoveLondonLoveCulture, Emma Clarendon rounds up the reviews for the world premiere of Florian Zeller’s new play The Forest, directed by Jonathan Kent and starring Toby Stephens at London’s Hampstead Theatre.
‘Like looking at broken mirror pieces’: THE FOREST – Hampstead Theatre ★★★★
The play follows Pierre, a successful surgeon who’s married and the father of a grown-up daughter, as he juggles his professional and family life with having a mistress.
‘Zeller is like a more humane early Stoppard’: THE FOREST – Hampstead Theatre ★★★★
The French novelist-turned-playwright Florian Zeller hit the British theatre scene a few years ago with two comedies: The Lie and The Truth, which at the time I described as “a punch-in-the-guts, cruelly affectionate, whip-smart ninety-minute treat”.
‘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.
‘Tamsin Greig is exceptionally funny, candid & cutting in equal measure’: PEGGY FOR YOU – Hampstead Theatre
What is a play? A message to the future, a fart in your face or a pain in the arse?
What is a play? A message to the future, a fart in your face or a pain in the arse? Just a few of the suggestions that the writer clients of agent Peggy Ramsay offer up when a young ingenue asks that fatal question in her office one otherwise ordi…
‘There’s a truthful dramatic core to the whole venture’: FOLK – Hampstead Theatre ★★★★
There’s a lovely serendipity. The main theatre is running Peggy for You while the little downstairs space has Nell Leyshon’s rather lovely new play imagining Cecil Sharp collecting folk-songs in Somerset.
‘A smart story about composition & the appropriation of music’: FOLK – Hampstead Theatre
With its interest in identity, ownership, tradition and the ‘rules’ applied to written rather than oral forms, Nell Leyshon’s play, which aired on Radio 3 in 2021, now earns a fully-staged run.
‘Laugh-out-loud funny & highly entertaining’: PEGGY FOR YOU – Hampstead Theatre ★★★★
Peggy Ramsay is a play agent, but she is more famous than the playwrights and the work that she represents.
‘If you love plays, this is an invitation not to miss’: PEGGY FOR YOU – Hampstead Theatre ★★★★
Lounging in the small hours on her office couch, under a wall of posters for her many clients’ shows – both famous and forgotten – Peggy is fresh back from bailing out a client.