Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending may not be his greatest play but Tamara Harvey’s production for the Menier Chocolate Factory proves most affecting in the end.
REVIEW ROUND-UP: Orpheus Descending at Menier Chocolate Factory
The Menier Chocolate Factory and Theatr Clwyd co-production of Orpheus Descending has officially opened in London. Love London Love Culture rounds up the reviews…
‘Riveting, disturbing & memorable evening’: ORPHEUS DESCENDING – Menier Chocolate Factory ★★★★
Savagely observed absurdity, blinding flashes of insight, profound yearning, sudden poetry singing clear notes from the cruel swamp of humanity. Orpheus Descending isn’t one of Tennessee Williams’ more familiar plays, but it has all the troubled master’s marks, glories and challenges.
‘Consistently interesting & valuable experience’: ORPHEUS DESCENDING – Menier Chocolate Factory
Even a middling Tennessee Williams play – Orpheus Descending – is better than most, and this one still has plenty to say about sacrifice and suffocation in small-town America
‘It is a play that requires you to feel rather than to understand’: GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS – Barbican Theatre
Grief on stage and in popular culture is rarely considered as a psychological state of its own but as a means or driver for other behaviour.
‘Combines bravura acting with a battery of visual effects’: GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS – Barbican Theatre
Enda Walsh’s adaptation of Max Porter’s contemporary classic gets the big-stage treatment, starring Cillian Murphy. With mixed results.
FosterIAN Awards for Best Actress
How to split these three? Why would you even want to. Their effortless grace, their ferociously detailed complexity, their heart-breaking connectivity, all three will live long in my mind.
ANATOMY OF A SUICIDE – Royal Court
Love her or hate her, Katie Mitchell is surely our most bravely iconoclastic theatre director working in Britain today. If Robert Lepage is the magician who smoothes the cracks between technology and stagecraft, Katie Mitchell is the one who adds tough edginess.
ANATOMY OF A SUICIDE – Royal Court
And what an excruciating, yet devastatingly brilliant, two hours they are. The play shows episodes from the life of the women of one family spread over three time periods: one starts in the 1970s, the next in the 1990s and the third in the 2030s.
NEWS: Brian Cox, Ian McDiarmid, Janet Suzman amongst 60-strong cast for Iliad reading
A company of more than 60 artists will bring The Iliad to life in a durational reading on Friday 14 August 2015. The reading will begin at the British Museum and culminate on the Almeida Theatre stage. The marathon reading is the latest event in the theatre’s Almeida Greeks Festival, which has so far seen Robert Icke’s critically acclaimed production …
My theatre diary: Dramas Taken at Midnight, The Changeling, Out of the Cage and The Separation
The infinite variety of theatre in London means you can be laughing at the theatre one night, crying the next night. Or, when it’s really powerful, alternating between both on the same night. In my companion Theatre Diary piece, I shared some of the comedies I’ve enjoyed recently. Now I turn to the top-notch drama […]