It’s an architectural moment. Within the stark brutalist NT is a set in homage to a brutalist landmark: the early 1960s Park Hill Flats in Sheffield, the largest listed building in the world. In Standing At The Sky’s Edge at the National Theatre three generations of tenants interweave in the clean-lined kitchen and living room, ghosts in one another’s lives, telling in their very existence a universal story of postwar British cities.
‘Deep wells of emotional resonance roll out into the audience’: STANDING AT THE SKY’S EDGE – National Theatre
It is still a relatively rare experience to see a working class drama that invests its characters with a profound and complex, even a poetic interior, life, but from the first moments of Richard Hawley and Chris Bush’s Standing At the Sky’s Edge when a workman stops to greet the beauty of the dawn and the sound of birdsong, it is clear that this is no ordinary representation of
‘It feels unique & so important’: Robert Lonsdale on his latest role in Standing at the Sky’s Edge at the Crucible Sheffield
Robert Lonsdale spoke to Love London Love Culture’s Emma Clarendon about his latest role in Standing at the Sky’s Edge at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield.
‘The life of an everyday woman is at its heart’: UTILITY – Orange Tree Theatre
Such a bleak, unexciting play is high risk, for sure. But if women’s lives are to be represented truthfully, then this is the risk that must be taken, and I applaud Emily Schwend for her bravery.
A LIE OF THE MIND – Southwark Playhouse
Despite being blown away by True West, something about Sam Shepard makes me a little wary. I liked rather than loved Fool For Love and ultimately steered clear of the recent Buried Child and it was with a little trepidation that I allowed myself to make my way into A Lie of the Mind, produced here at the Southwark Playhouse by the folks at Defibrillator Theatre.
PLAQUES AND TANGLES – Royal Court
Once upon a time, quite recently, you couldn’t move for plays about youth. Now, there’s been an avalanche of dramas about ageing, usually in the context of dementia and family life. Maybe all of our main playwrights have suddenly grown up, or maybe the endless quest for novelty has deposited us on the shores of the current trend-setting idea. Nicola Wilson’s Royal Court debut is yet another play about Alzheimer’s, ageing and memory, but is it any different from Florian Zeller’s The Father, April de Angelis’ After Electra or Emma Adams’s Animals?