Mike Bartlett is very prolific, but this Restoration-style satire on society at London’s Lyric Hammersmith is sadly timid and predictable.
VIDEO SERIES: Meet the Brutes & their fellow revellers in The Provoked Wife
Marooned Theatre’s contemporary reimagining of John Vanbrugh’s 1697 Restoration comedy, The Provoked Wife, moves into Islington’s Hope Theatre next month after a sell-out season at the White Bear Theatre earlier this summer. In this morning’s blog, director Hannah Bolland Moore explained how and why she youthened the characters and reset the action at a modern music festival. Now it’s time to meet the …
Text of the Day: Nell Gwynn
Random and topical thoughts and quotes gathered by My Theatre Mates contributor Aleks Sierz, first published on www.sierz.co.uk.
THE BEAUX’ STRATAGEM – National Theatre
Towering staircases and sliding panels transform the big stage from tavern to genteel house, with a pleasingly inexplicable intermittent folk-band lurking on the top landing. Here for two and a half frenzied hours Simon Godwin zingily interprets George Farquar’s Restoration comedy with a cast of 21, not one part a dud. It is farce bordering on panto, edged with songs, enlivened with scuffles, glorified with random absurdities and containing a hard nugget of feminist polemic.