Reviews
Express.co.uk
24/05/2013
First night review: To Kill A Mockingbird
SOME productions have the power effortlessly to win you over and this enchanting, heartfelt adaptation of Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize--winning novel is one.
Dealing with racial prejudice in the Depression-era Deep South and the attempts of principled lawyer Atticus Finch to defend a black man wrongly accused of…
Express.co.uk
17/05/2013
Theatre review: The Tempest, Globe Theatre, London
THE Globe's season has kicked off this year with Shakespeare's magical but somewhat tricky last play, with Roger Allam playing Prospero.
Allam won an Olivier for his rumbustious portrayal of Falstaff here two years ago and proves more than up to the challenge of…
Express.co.uk
22/03/2013
Theatre Review: The Book Of Mormon
SURELY The Book Of Mormon can’t live up to the hype? Coming from Broadway where it has scooped nine Tony awards the mega-hit musical is the brainchild of South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and Avenue Q originator Robert Lopez and has enticed with its promise of wicked irreverence and shocking bad taste. Ticket sales here have gone through the roof…
Express.co.uk
28/02/2013
Theatre review: Macbeth
BOLD and bloody would be an accurate summing-up of Jamie Lloyd’s new viscerally thrilling production of Shakespeare’s tragedy where sound and fury, fear and paranoia are never far away. That it is set in a kind of postapocalyptic dystopia makes it rather voguish but means it has a modern resonance without sacrificing the primitive barbarism demanded by the text.
As lights fizz on and off over Soutra Gilmour's near-derelict set, we are in a world depleted of resources that has regressed to the...
Express.co.uk
25/04/2013
First night review: Othello, National Theatre, London
ADRIAN Lester - best known for playing charismatic conman Mickey in the BBC series Hustle - has waited a long time to play Othello. Originally asked to play the proud, passionate Moor more than 15 year ago, it's only now he's got round to tackling Shakespeare's volcanic tragedy of love, envy, jealousy and murder.
I rather think it was worth the wait…
Express.co.uk
26/03/2013
First night review: Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw dazzle in Peter And Alice at the Noel Coward Theatre
THE Peter and Alice in question here are Peter Pan and Alice In Wonderland, or rather the real–life people who inspired the famous fictional characters.
It turns out that the pair – Alice Liddell Hargreaves and Peter Llewelyn Davies – once met as adults at the opening of a Lewis Carroll exhibition in 1932. She was 80, he was 35. Playwright John Logan has taken this historic encounter and imagined the results in a new work that feels strangely contrived in parts and yet movingly heart–wrenching in others….
Express.co.uk
19/04/2013
Theatre review: Children Of The Sun, National Theatre, London
Russian playwright Maxim Gorky wrote this 1905 black comedy while he was imprisoned by the Tsarist government and it seethes with the social volatility that was eventually to lead to revolution.
Here, though, the peasant class (encapsulated by Matthew Flynn's loomingly threatening blacksmith Yegor) has yet to adopt any ideology and is instead roused by…
Express.co.uk
06/01/2011
First night review: Much Ado About Nothing, Wyndham's, London
When it comes to West End excitement, there has already been much ado about the theatrical pairing of David Tennant and Catherine Tate in this Shakespearian comedy. The duo have sparred across the centuries as Dr Who and his most argumentative sidekick Donna so expectations are high for their respective turns as Benedick and Beatrice, the Bard's most quick-witted and combative couple who trade insults like table-tennis...
Express.co.uk
22/03/2013
Theatre Review: The Winslow Boy
TERENCE RATTIGAN'S centenary in 2011 saw a host of the playwright’s works produced in the West End and made the once unfashionable writer all the rage again.
His celebrated 1946 play The Winslow Boy somehow slipped through the net then but has now been given a worthy revival. There’s something about the work that always…
Express.co.uk
15/03/2013
The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-Time: Theatre review
SIMON STEPHENS' stage adaptation of Mark Haddon's best–selling book was hailed a hit last year and sold out its National Theatre run. Now transferred to the West End, Marianne Elliott's already–acclaimed production strikes me as an imaginative, fitting homage to Haddon's much–loved novel and enjoys a startling, stand–out central performance by Luke Treadaway as the difficult yet fragile protagonist…
Express.co.uk
01/02/2013
See it twice...the Pinter revival with role swaps
IF Pinter was easy to fathom then it probably wouldn’t be Pinter but this 1971 play is more enigmatic than most. When I first encountered it, I was convinced that the two female characters, Kate and Anna, were facets of the same personality, perhaps a…
Express.co.uk
20/11/2012
First night review: Twelfth Night, Apollo Theatre, London
AFTER a brief run at the Globe Theatre (no critics invited) this all-male production of Shakespeare’s comedy has landed in the West End where it’s playing in rep with Richard III.
The main draws? Stephen Fry as the pompous steward, Malvolio, and Mark Rylance reprising the role as his mourning mistress, Olivia. Both more than live up to expectation but then every component of…
Express.co.uk
19/04/2012
First Night Review: Misterman
YOU would be hard-pressed to find a more breathlessly intense performance than the one being enacted here by Cillian Murphy. The actor, best known for such films as 28 Days Later and Batman Begins, has teamed up with Irish playwright Enda Walsh, the man who gave him his first acting break in the 1996 play, Disco Pigs.. The result is an emotionally disturbing, riveting one man show…
Express.co.uk
07/12/2011
First Night Review - Richard II, Donmar Warehouse
MID rehearsals for his role as Richard II, Eddie Redmayne - the fast-rising star of My Week With Marilyn - said he couldn't help thinking about Colonel Gaddafi. But while Shakespeare's history play depicts the ousting of an extravagant, narcissistic ruler who has abused his power, this fluid, fast-paced and handsome production doesn't look for modern parallels. Rather, Michael Grandage…
Express.co.uk
11/11/2011
Hamlet theatre review
SOON after Michael Sheen was unveiled as the latest actor to take on Shakespeare’s great Dane he confided that he thought the play had become too “safe”. “What I want is to make it difficult and jagged again, unsettling and uncomfortable and disorienting for the audience.”
This gripping production, directed by Ian Rickson in his first ever Shakespearean outing, succeeds on many of these counts. Elsinore is no castle but a psychiatric hospital…
Express.co.uk
27/05/2011
Theatre review: Much ado about nothing
FANS of Much Ado, one of Shakespeare’s wittiest and most entertaining plays, are somewhat spoiled for choice this summer. Over in the West End, former Doctor Who David Tennant and his intergalactic sidekick Catherine Tate are about to open in an eagerly anticipated production, while here at the Globe Jeremy Herrin’s sparkling period piece has got there first. On a stage littered with ponds and orange trees, it proves a treat…
Express.co.uk
08/06/2009
Arcadia: Duke of York’s Theatre, London
THERE'S a very good reason why Arcadia is considered Tom Stoppard's best play. It's quite simply a wonderful, beautiful piece of theatre, astonishing in its breadth and as intellectually stimulating as it is emotionally engaging. The 1993 work is a meshing of thought and feeling that spans everything from Lord Byron to chaos theory to having a quickie in the gazebo…
Express.co.uk
08/02/2013
Theatre review: Great Expectations, Vaudeville Theatre, London
DESPITE the countless film adaptations this is the first time Charles Dickens’s classic has been staged in the West End, here starring Paula Wilcox from TV’s Man About The House as the spooky relic Miss Havisham, jilted on her wedding day and forever festering in her moth-eaten bridal dress…
Express.co.uk
30/11/2012
Theatre review: Kiss Me Kate, The Old Vic, London
THIS vintage 1948 Broadway musical is brimming over with Cole Porter classics such as Too Darn Hot and Brush Up Your Shakespeare which immediately make it a draw in my book and in Trevor Nunn’s old-school revival it’s the musical numbers that really shine and draw you into this slick and often sizzling production…
Express.co.uk
15/06/2012
Stage Review: Henry V, Globe Theatre, London
JUST as Henry V is known for its rousing and quotable rhetoric (“Once more unto the breach, dear friends!”; “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers”) so too is it recognised for presenting something of a problem.
Is Shakespeare’s rallying history play a celebration of national glory as the young Lancastrian King Henry V invades France and wins an against-the-odds victory at Agincourt? Or is it conversely an anti-war satire which undermines some of the grand ideals expounded and shows up the harsh realities of warfare?
Express.co.uk
15/02/2012
First Night Review: The Recruiting Officer, Donmar Warehouse
IT'S all change at the Donmar Warehouse where Josie Rourke has now taken over as Artistic Director and the first offering under her new reign is this lusty Restoration comedy from the Irish playwright George Farquhar. So far, so good.
Originally performed in London in 1706, the bawdy work concerns itself with the priapic Captain Plume's attempts to recruit the menfolk of Shrewsbury into the army and to lure the ladies into bed. Other conquests…
Express.co.uk
25/11/2011
Theatre review - Matilda The Musical, Cambridge Theatre, London
THIS musical version of Roald Dahl’s children’s book became a runaway hit when it premiered in Stratford-upon-Avon last year and no wonder. Having just transferred to the West End it proves an absolute cracker of a show, bursting with dynamism, fizzing with verve and packed full of slightly naughty children swung around by their pigtails played by incredible child actors who perform their socks off…
Express.co.uk
27/07/2011
Theatre review: Journey’s End, Duke of York’s Theatre, London
WHEN I first saw this gripping production of RC Sherriff’s First World War masterpiece in 2004, I remember being left emotionally floored. Directed by David Grindley, it has since been on two national tours with different casts and has now returned to London’s West End for 55 performances.
It remains a brilliant, sobering, devastating experience that leaves you feeling deep admiration and pity for all those who were faced with the hell of the trenches..
Express.co.uk
20/06/2012
Theatre review: Timon of Athens, National Theatre, London
FEW people would cite Timon Of Athens as their favourite work of Shakespeare – unless they’re Karl Marx. The anti-capitalist liked the play’s suggestion that money is “the universal whore” but for most of us its bitter ranting and nihilism suggests the Bard was having a bad day at the office. There’s even a theory that Shakespeare had a mental breakdown after writing King Lear and this is the result.
Express.co.uk
12/02/2010
Review: Jerusalem, Apollo Theatre, London
WHEN Jez Butterworth’s extraordinary new play premiered at the Royal Court it became the must-see event of last summer with star Mark Rylance garnering deserved awards. Now transferred to the West End this boisterous work – a kind of pastoral Shameless set in Wiltshire on St George’s Day – is just as gloriously funny, shocking, and, in the end, savage. Blake’s hymn Jerusalem might be sung sweetly at
Express.co.uk
20/01/2009
Theatre review: Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
THIS NEW revival of a 1977 collaboration between playwright Tom Stoppard and composer Andre Previn is a play which makes an impression. In fact it is more than a play, fusing music and theatre in one clever idea. Set in a Soviet psychiatric hospital, it concerns two cellmates. One, Alexander, is a political dissident incarcerated for questioning the state while the other, Ivanov, is a genuine madman who believes he is conducting, and playing in, his own private orchestra.
Express.co.uk
14/12/2012
Theatre review: Privates on Parade, Noël Coward Theatre, London
SIMON Russell Beale may be the crème de la crème of our theatrical talent but you have probably not seen him drowning in orange frills, dressed up like Carmen Miranda with an entire fruit basket on his head. Well, now’s your chance…
Express.co.uk
16/11/2012
Theatre review: The Effect, National Theatre, London
THERE have been great expectations for this, Lucy Prebble’s first play since the acclaimed Enron where she pulled off the considerable feat of turning a financial scandal into fascinating theatre.
I’m not sure The Effect will fly as high but it’s still a stimulating piece that explores love, depression and the chemical workings of the brain with humanity, wry wit and clinical precision. A four hander, it…
Express.co.uk
13/04/2012
Review: Long Journey into Night, Apollo Theatre
EUGENE O'Neill described his Pulitzer Prize-winning epic as a “play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood”. But what makes Anthony Page's taut revival so affecting is how it makes you sympathise with the four flawed main characters, chiming with O'Neill's belief that he wrote the work “with deep pity and understanding and forgiveness”. It's a point forcibly made by the tremendous…
Express.co.uk
16/12/2011
Theatre review - Noises off
MANY claims have been made for Michael Frayn’s award-winning noises Off, including that it’s the funniest play ever written. I certainly hadn’t laughed so hard for ages watching this wonderfully acted revival by Lindsay Posner, especially during the gloriously side-splitting finale.
It’s not so much a-play-within-a- play as a farce-within-a-farce in which we witness the unravelling of a touring production of a second- rate sex comedy called nothing On…
Express.co.uk
10/08/2011
First night review: Anna Christie, Donmar Warehouse, London
THE celebrated 1930 film of Eugene O'Neill's 1921 Pulitzer Prize-winning play was a brooding affair and Greta Garbo's first non-silent film ("Garbo Talks!" was the strapline).
The 1993 Broadway version proved so intense that actors Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson fell in love during the play's run. Anticipation, then, has been high for this new revival starring Jude Law - last seen on stage playing Hamlet - and Ruth Wilson, who won an Olivier award last time she trod the boards here….
Express.co.uk
07/09/2010
Review: A Disappearing Number, Novello Theatre, London
CAN maths be beautiful? Do numbers have the ability to help us better understand relationships? Simon McBurney and his inventive company Complicite suggest so in this extraordinary, moving and beautiful play, which is as much about love and loss as it is about primary numbers (and requires no previous knowledge of the latter). If you think maths and mortality don’t add up to…
Express.co.uk
08/06/2009
First night review: Hamlet, Wyndham's Theatre, London
IT HAS been just months since Dr Who star David Tennant whipped up a frenzy of excitement by playing the Prince of Denmark on stage. Now it’s the turn of Jude Law, a Hollywood A-lister who can ensure a sell-out run. Director Michael Grandage had promised a “very different take” on Shakespeare’s most revered play and described Law as a “muscular, visceral actor who has a very direct connection with raw emotion”. And raw he is. Law’s portrayal of Hamlet is startling in its intensity and he wrestles with Hamlet’s anguish with a furious, vigorous physicality..