Mind the Blog has a fairly wide-ranging wish list of things I hope to see, including major shows such as Sunday in the Park with George, Evita, Magic Goes Wrong, Uncle Vanya and the Jamie Lloyd Company residency at the Playhouse Theatre.
Decade Round-Up: The Plays
This isn’t a ‘best of’ list it’s my best-of list, these are the plays that shaped me this decade and will stay with me well into the next.
Theatre review of the 2019 & what to see in 2020
With a new year fast approaching, it is an interesting time to reflect on small changes across the theatre landscape in 2019 that will continue to shape how UK theatre will look as it moves into a new decade.
10 plays from the past 10 years that stand out
Here is a snapshot of my favourite theatre from the past 10 years, the plays that stand out most in my memory, the ones I talk about if people ask.
From Come From Away to The Antipodes: Top 10 Shows of 2019
Here’s our Top 10 list for 2019 with three musicals – Come From Away, Curve’s West Side Story and the touring production of Amelie dominating the top spots.
View From The Circle’s Top Ten Shows of the Year
It’s that time of year again… here’s View From the Circle’s Top Ten shows of 2019.
NEWS: The Stage Awards 2020 shortlist is announced
The production team that ensured the show could go on after part of a West End theatre ceiling collapsed and the revival of much-loved pop magazine Smash Hits are among the nominees for The Stage Awards 2020.
‘Engaging & atmospheric adaptation’: BLOOD WEDDING – Young Vic Theatre
Marina Carr’s coherent vision for Blood Wedding delivers a production that is unforgiving, creating a portentous world in which notions of love and freedom will always be trampled by the stronger inheritance of history, violence and family legacy
‘A spectacle that only the most hard-nosed sceptic would be unable to completely resist’: TREE – Young Vic Theatre ★★★★
To the credit of Kwame Kwei-Armah and Idris Elba – and maybe Tori Allen-Martin and Sarah Henley – you can feel the urge to find a healing of all sides in a conflict between black and white South Africans that persists to this day.
‘A strong & generously immersive piece that wraps around you’: TREE – Young Vic Theatre ★★★★
If a student disco is your personal nightmare, look away now. Tree starts and ends with a throbbing onstage party to wish the audience is persuasively invited. The last time this many Waitrose customers grooved awkwardly to African beats was on Paul Simon’s Graceland tour.
‘The start of something really powerful’: TREE – Young Vic Theatre
There is much to applaud in Tree but it feels like a play that is more about the spectacle and experience than a substantial exploration of meaty issues which is fine to a point.
NEWS: Young Vic’s highly acclaimed production of Death of a Salesman will transfer to the West End
The highly acclaimed, sold-out Young Vic production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman will transfer to the Piccadilly Theatre from 24 October 2019 to 4 January 2020, with a press night on 4 November 2019.
How the Mates Rate: Death Of A Salesman at the Young Vic Theatre
Directors Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell have brought their unique vision to one of the greatest plays of the 20th century by Arthur Miller, seen through the eyes of an African American family. So what did the Mates think of this Young Vic production of the American drama classic?
NEWS: Cush Jumbo makes her Young Vic debut as Hamlet in Kwame Kwei-Armah’s 2020 Young Vic season
Highlights of Young Vic artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah’s programme for 2020 include Cush Jumbo making her Young Vic debut as Hamlet and Academy Award-nominee Ruth Negga as Portia in Marina Carr’s haunting play Portia Coughlan.
Best of the Blogs: Death of a Salesman, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Orpheus Descending & more
As part of a new series, our editor Lisa Martland picks out seven of her Top Picks from the last week of theatre (29 April-6 May 2019). Amidst her choices are two more West End productions of classic American drama: Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman at the Young Vic (Emily Garside) and Tennessee Williams’ Orpheus Descending at the Menier Chocolate Factory (Libby Purves).
‘Once more shaking the bones of theatreland’: DEATH OF A SALESMAN – Young Vic
This production of Death of a Salesman will become the stuff of legend, hopefully setting a precedent for future ‘classic’ revivals.
NEWS: Cast announced for Idris Elba and Kwame Kwei-Armah’s show Tree at MIF & Young Vic
Manchester International Festival (MIF), the Young Vic and Green Door Pictures have announced the full cast for Idris Elba and Kwame Kwei-Armah’s collaboration, Tree, which will receive its world premiere at Manchester International Festival, before transferring to London’s Young Vic.
‘It’s more than enough that this eye-opening production exists at all’: DEATH OF A SALESMAN – Young Vic
It’s Marianne Elliott’s impressionistic approach that yields considerable insight into the themes of Death of a Salesman, the characters’ attachment to material possessions as indicators of success, and most especially to the physical home that contains their family history, which they have spent decades slowly paying-off.
‘The joy is in meeting the characters’: JESUS HOPPED THE ‘A’ TRAIN – Young Vic Theatre
The joy of Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train is in meeting his characters: watching them perform to each other; hearing their patois and verbal brio; exude a charisma which they know gives them power.
‘Small but hugely powerful’: THE JUMPER FACTORY – Young Vic
For 45 minutes the audience may be gripped, stimulated and entertained in The Jumper Factory but this remains the everyday experience of all the men who contributed to the show, and it slightly changes our mindset to have this made clear at the start.