High Fidelity stomps along unmemorably with great goodwill and a three-piece band overhead, and moments of soul or hare-krishna pastiche are wittily done
‘Feels repetitive & frustrating’: A MUSEUM IN BAGHDAD – Swan Theatre, Stratford upon Avon ★★★
There is nothing wrong with having two periods onstage at once, and the fine cast does its best with the infuriatingly threadbare drawing of relationships, but The RSC’s A Museum in Baghdad feel like a bit of a mess.
‘Roars along’: GROAN UPS – West End
Groan Ups has hamster substitutions, unexpected subtler laughs and a moment of real pathos before it swizzles into something more poignant.
‘It’s worth its revivals’: FOR SERVICES RENDERED – Jermyn Street Theatre ★★★
Somerset Maughan’s 1930s play For Services Rendered surfaced last at Chichester, in the heart of the WW1 anniversary years, and reminded me how much theatre taught me about that war and, not least, its aftermath.
‘Desperate determination to be fun makes it less than gripping’: KING JOHN – Swan Theatre, Stratford upon Avon ★★★
The RSC’s King John could work, and in the shorter, darker, more medieval part after the interval it begins to, with the actors at last allowed to stop yelling and clowning.
‘Haydn Gwynne in full snarling Hedda mode is something to see’: HEDDA TESMAN – Chichester ★★★
But more and more, there’s a sense in Hedda Tesman at the Minerva that what you are seeing is some damn fine acting in a rather ho-hum play.
‘It’s cleverly done, if sour-tasting’: THE ENTERTAINER – Touring ★★★
John Osborne’s disgusted play The Entertainer about a washed-up, alcoholic comedian whose son is at war dates from 1957 – Suez and Macmillan – but Sean O’Connor has hauled it forwards to the 1980s
‘Unearthing something of great promise’: HOTSPUR & PIERROT LUNAIRE – Arcola Theatre ★★★
The double bill of Gillian Whitehead’s Hotspur with Schoenberg’s great Modernist Pierrot Lunaire is the first outing for innovative opera company formidAbility, which seeks to bring disabled and non-disabled professional artists together on (and off) the opera stage.
‘Comes from a good and worthy place’: THE WEATHERMAN – Park Theatre ★★★
The trafficking of human beings – 7,000 identified in the UK in 2018 – is a disgusting blight on our country. The fledgling playwright Eugene O’Hare is among many earnest contemporary writers (working in theatre, film and stage) seeking to shine a light on the problem.
‘Handsomely staged production’: PICTURES OF DORIAN GRAY – Jermyn Street Theatre ★★★
This production of Pictures of Dorian Gray at Jermyn Street Theatre is intriguing, and offers chances to see the parts played differently, but there are inevitable losses.
‘It’s hard not to love Broderick’s performance’: THE STARRY MESSENGER – West End ★★★
When I left I thought I was disappointed in The Starry Messenger, but this morning I can’t help thinking about Matthew Broderick’s character Mark, and his wife, and the sadness of all our middle years as they shade towards nightfall..
‘Sometimes it works’: THE LAST TEMPTATION OF BORIS JOHNSON – Park Theatre ★★★
Hopes for The Last Temptation of Boris Johnson couldn’t be higher: it is again built around truth – a 2016 dinner party where Boris and Marina Johnson entertained the Goves and Yevgeny Lebedev, starstruck owner of the London Standard.
‘Strong & serious but Rosmer got in the way’: ROSMERSHOLM – West End ★★★
I wanted to be more engaged with the fierce fin-de siecle political play that is Ibsen’s Rosmersholm, but Rosmer got in the way.
‘It could be any Hampstead media power-couple falling out today’: CREDITORS – Jermyn Street Theatre ★★★
The artistic love affair between August Strindberg’s ghost, playwright Howard Brenton and director Tom Littler continues to bear strange fruit in Creditors at the Jermyn Street Theatre.
‘It is almost a fable’: OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY – Southwark Playhouse
So how nicely appropriate of Katharine Farmer and Blue Touch Paper Productions to open this 1989 play, Other People’s Money by Jerry Sterner, on the very day we learned that President Trump gets a State Visit this summer.
‘The play finally starts to crackle – after the interval’: THREE SISTERS – Almeida Theatre ★★★
After the interval, The Three Sisters, mercifully, in mood and pace, could be a different play. I left happy enough. But goodness, the first scenes badly need more vigour. And a trim.
‘You can’t fault the atmosphere’: THE TIDE JETTY – Touring ★★★
You can’t fault the atmosphere: Jasmine Swan’s set takes you straight to the wide skies and muddy, reedy mystery of Breydon Water, where the Norfolk and Suffolk Broadland rivers meet and strange old structures rot quietly into history.
‘A cosy nightmare legacy of the 1930s’: MARY’S BABIES – Jermyn Street Theatre
Mary Barton and her husband Berthold Wiesner ran a pioneering fertility clinic: they were among the first to offer, with full anonymity, artificial insemination by donor for couples they thought were “good stock”.
‘More of a novel than a play’: THE REMAINS OF THE DAY – Touring ★★★
So what we have here in Remains of the Day is a masterclass in acting, deft in direction and a rightful meditation on an England that so nearly went into the dark. But still, for all that, more of a novel than a play.
‘You can hardly breathe for tension & pity’: THE RUBENSTEIN KISS – Southwark Playhouse
Ideological hostilities across the world, fake news and paranoia, a resurgent deep left, uneasy relations with Russia, antisemites questioning the patriotism of Jews: no bad time to revive James Phillips’ powerful play The Rubenstein Kiss.