Peter Gynt, a new adaptation of Ibsen’s apparently unstageable Peer Gynt by David Hare, is a great success as a piece of writing and so much fun.
‘Somehow, I’m not quite buying it’: MACBETH – National Theatre ★★★
Yet somehow, I’m not quite buying it. We are used to gore and nasty things hung on trees and lots beheadings, ever since the technology for reproducing actors’ heads improved. Fine. But unlike the Hytner Othello – set in a modern army camp – or his Hamlet in a recognizable police-state, the misery-world evoked here gives no sense that there ever were nobilities to be breached by the Macbeths. It’s just chaos, and you expect no better.
SALOME – National Theatre
Really, the kindest thing to do about Yaël Farber’s Salomé is quietly to draw a veil over it. There is bad theatre and then there is very bad acting. Sadly, Farber’s Salomé falls into the latter category.
AMADEUS – National Theatre
If you can’t take a joke, you really shouldn’t have joined. Some critics are up in arms that the 1979 ‘classic’ piece Amadeus has been deconstructed and, they say, dumbed down in the National Theatre’s new staging by Michael Longhurst.
EVERYMAN Olivier, SE1
THIS VERY NIGHT SHALL THY SOUL BE REQUIRED OF THEE… God is sweeping the big blank stage. We won’t know for a minute or two that Kate Duchene IS God, given she’s a weary grey-haired cleaner in a tabard. But … Continue reading →