Tag Archives: Matthew Dunster

The Secret Theatre

Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare’s Globe, London
****

© Marc Brenner, Aidan McArdle as Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's Secretary of State and creator of national security with a web of spies and double agents.

© Marc Brenner, Aidan McArdle as Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s Secretary of State and creator of national security with a web of spies and double agents.

What with the BBC’s Gunpowder Plot and now Anders Lustgarten’s spymaster drama, we really seem unable to quite slough off our fascination with those grisly times when terrorism came in Catholic terms and we were once again at daggers drawn with our European neighbours. Continue reading

Hangmen

Royal Court Jerwood Theatre, Downstairs, London (***)

© Simon Annand

© Simon Annand

 

Appropriately for a writer whose stock in trade is the darkest of gallows humours, Martin McDonagh, playwright and screen-writer/director (In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths) has returned to the London stage after a decade’s absence with a play about hangmen. Continue reading