Tag Archives: Natalie Abrahami

Swive

Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare’s Globe, London ****
Review of perf seen Dec 30, 2019. Runs 1hr 30 mins without interval 

© Johan Persson, Nina Cassells as the young Princess Elizabeth, calling on God to protect her, surrounded on all sides by insecurity…

My goodness, that Ella Hickson doesn’t let the grass grow under her feet for long.

Having circled the globe in time and space with Oil (2016) and the history of fossil fuel, taken on creativity with The Writer (2018), here she is again in winning form playfully, even mischievously with serious intent, re-examining the legacy of that role model to end all female role models, Elizabeth I. Continue reading

The Meeting

Minerva, Chichester Theatre, East Sussex ****

© Helen Maybanks, Lydia Leonard (Rachel), Gerald Kyd (Adam)

© Helen Maybanks, Lydia Leonard (Rachel), Gerald Kyd (Adam)

It opens at a Quaker meeting, a circle of people, being silent, waiting for the spirit to move in them to speak. At the end, there is a catalystic moment when one of their number does indeed speak.  Continue reading

Machinal

Almeida Theatre, London ****

© Johan Persson, Jonathan Livinstone (Jones, the boss), Emily Berrington (young woman) and cast beating out a rhythm at the office...

© Johan Persson, Jonathan Livinstone (Jones, the boss), Emily Berrington (young woman) and cast beating out a rhythm at the office…

Rupert Goold’s tenure hardly puts a foot wrong these days.

True I’ve missed a couple of events the past few months – including Ella Hickson’s The Writer which divided everyone apparently. But here’s another cracker from the Goold stable. And nobody could accuse Goold of ignoring 50% of the population in his choices. After Mike Bartlett’s Albion last year with its central female protagonist, and Hickson’s feminist oriented writer, here is Natalie Abrahami’s terrific revival of Sophie Treadwell’s 1928 humdinger of a `masterpiece’ (is there another word?!).  Continue reading

Wings

Young Vic Theatre, London (****)

© Johan Persson, Juliet Stevenson, in mid-air, metaphorically, neurologically...

© Johan Persson, Juliet Stevenson, in mid-air, metaphorically, neurologically…

Forty one years ago, US playwright Arthur Kopit’s father had a catastrophic stroke that rendered him speechless.

Out of that family disaster, Kopit (who wrote books for the hit musicals Phantom, Nine and High Society as well as the memorably crazed Ah Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung you in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad) wrote Wings. Continue reading

Queen Anne

Swan Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

© Manuel Harlan

© Manuel Harlan

Why don’t we know more about Queen Anne (1665-1714)? Squashed between William and Mary and the first of the Hanoverians, George I, Anne seems to have been completely overlooked by history or, at least, our agreed cultural narrative that favours Elizabeth and Victoria over the stout, rather solemn figure who stares out from royal portraiture. Continue reading