“People, People who need people”… Barbara Streisand’s famous song wasn’t the inspiration for Alan Bennett’s latest play for the National Theatre. In fact if Bennett’s theme is understood it’s more a case of people who don’t want people. In a large, crumbling Georgian pile Lady Dorothy Stacpole is confined to one room, the leaking roof,…
It’s not often you get the opportunity to revisit a production, a year apart. Last year on press night for London Road in the Cottesloe theatre, the atmosphere was electric; a sense that we were witnessing a new direction for musical theatre. A year on and the production has transferred to the larger, neighbouring Olivier…
Are you aged 25 – 65? Do you go to the theatre? If so, why? A cursory glance as some marketing strategies could easily make you think that you are not the target audience for some theatres. With a huge focus on gaining a young audience and then a further focus on the senior citizen…
Skiffle bands and slapstick are not usual partners for classic 18th Century Commedia dell’arte; however, they are perfect for Richard Bean’s hilarious update of Carlo Goldoni’s 1746 classic The Servant of Two Masters – ingeniously transposed to 1960s Brighton and renamed One Man, Two Guvnors. The plot itself is pure farce and, as such, doesn’t…
National Theatre. Its very name implies it should reflect life in communities all across the nation. It also has a remit to challenge and provoke thought. In its latest production, London Road, a verbatim play with music based on interviews with Suffolk residents coming to terms with their road becoming infamous for the home of…
One of the joys of theatre is that it can give you a wider understanding of other cultures apart from your own. Even if you don’t belong to that community, good theatre can immerse you, even if for only a couple of hours, into that community and give you a greater knowledge of their hopes,…
What does it take to be human? Is it the ability to love or to lie? That’s the central question posed in Nick Dear’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s gothic novel, Frankenstein. In what has become one of the years most sought after tickets, director Danny Boyle returns to the theatre but in doing so pulls…
How many playwrights does it take to draft a piece on global warming? According to the National Theatre it takes four but sadly Greenland, the end result, is not something any of the quartet will be listing on their greatest achievement lists. There is so much potential here, an emotive topic, first class writers, the…
Sir Peter Hall’s 80th birthday present from the National Theatre was the opportunity to direct his Daughter Rebecca in Twelfth Night. It’s a piece Hall has visited four times in his long career but in this production more than ever he focuses on the text over staging. Staged on an almost bare stage in the…
As the country struggles with financial hardships it’s a timely revival for the National Theatre of Ena Lamont Stewart’s look at the 1930s depression. Set in a rundown Glasgow tenement, life is tough for the Morrison family. Eleven family members are crammed in the tiny, dank, dark kitchen and bedroom set up. Dad is out…
After the epic War Horse, Handspring Puppet Company return to the National Theatre with a much more intimate, and deeply personal offering. Or You Could Kiss Me turns from the equine to the human, following the story of how two of the founder members of the company met and fell in love. Alongside the autobiographical…
Is Hamlet overload syndrome a recognised theatrical disease? Tennant. Law, Simms, Kinnear and soon to be Sheen all taking on the great Dane. David Tennant may have garned the most column inches, despite missing a large chunk of his London transfer but Rory Kinnear now stakes his claim as one of our leading stage actors….
A three hour plus play spanning the 1960s to the 2520s is never going to be easy work, and while Earthquakes in London is not perfect it gets pretty darn close. It ia brave, epic and full of theatrical invention. Mike Bartlett has crafted a grand saga that sweeps across the years but also manages…
At once both classical and immediate, Moira Buffini’s new play, Welcome To Thebes, is a shining example of what the National Theatre does best. The fact that this epic play, with a large cast and impressive staging features as part of the £10 Travelex season, also show what can be done with an imaginative take…
Danton’s Death has a reputation for being long, wordy, and not easily accessible unless you are up-to-speed on the political backdrop of the French Revolution. Yet it seems to be a perennial favourite with the National Theatre, now staging their third production of Georg Büchner epic. With the Donmar’s Michael Grandage making his NT directorial…
Unplanned trips to free performances can be a hit and miss affair but in this case proves worth taking a chance. As part of the National Theatre’s Watch This Space Festival, acrobatic dance company Mimbre have taken up a week’s residence in the outdoor Theatre Square. Sprung is one of a number of pieces the…
Having already been awed by Laurie Sansom’s production of Spring Storm, it’s pair, Beyond The Horizon, had high expectations to live up to. This early Eugene O’Neill however more than comfortably steps up to the mark, although comfortable viewing it is not. O’Neill was never one to cast a rosy tint over life and Beyond…
Sitting in the lofty height of the back of the Olivier Circle for London Assurance a Sondheim song kept running though my head. ‘A weekend in the country’ could have easily been written about this period romp. In its first major revival for many a year, Nick Hytner has called on some of the National…
Sitting in the lofty height of the back of the Olivier Circle for London Assurance a Sondheim song kept running though my head. ‘A weekend in the country’ could have easily been written about this period romp. In its first major revival for many a year, Nick Hytner has called on some of the National…
If you think you’ve seen all of Tennessee Williams’ work think again. 27 years after the author’s death the National Theatre stages the London transfer of Northampton Royal & Derngate’s European Premiere of Spring Storm. The play, written in 1937 lay forgotten in papers until its rediscovery in the 1990s but this is the first…
If you think you’ve seen all of Tennessee Williams’ work think again. 27 years after the author’s death the National Theatre stages the London transfer of Northampton Royal & Derngate’s European Premiere of Spring Storm. The play, written in 1937 lay forgotten in papers until its rediscovery in the 1990s but this is the first…