Tag Archives: Southwark Playhouse

Shook

Southwark Playhouse, London ****
Runs: 90 mins with no interval.
TICKETS: Box Office: 020 7407 0234
www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk

Review: of perf seen Nov 1, 2019:

© The Other Richard, Josh Finan as Cain, Ivan Oyik as Riyad - Cain would get under anybody's skin but it's all show...

© The Other Richard, Josh Finan as Cain, Ivan Oyik as Riyad – Cain would get under anybody’s skin but it’s all show…

About ten years ago, the late, much loved and admired Philip Osment wrote a play called Inside. Developed with young male offenders in Rochester prison with Jim Pope’s Playing On company, Osment took the workshops and turned the accounts of the young men, all of them fathers, into a piercingly humane commentary on parenting and fatherhood. Continue reading

The Rubenstein Kiss

Southwark Playhouse, London ****
Runs: 2hrs 45 mins with one 20min interval.
TICKETS: Box Office: 020 7407 0234

Review: by Carole Woddis of performance seen Mar 21, 2019:

© Scott Rylander, Ruby Bentall (Esther Rubenstein) & Henry Proffit (Jakob Rubenstein) - political fire and passion, shared belief in a better world...

© Scott Rylander, Ruby Bentall (Esther Rubenstein) & Henry Proffit (Jakob Rubenstein) – political fire and passion, shared belief in a better world…

Public and private lives intertwine in James Phillips’s The Rubenstein Kiss, first seen at Hampstead Theatre in 2005. Continue reading

The war has not yet started

Southwark Playhouse, London (****)

© Steve Tanner, (l-r) Sarah Hadland, Hannah Britland, Mark Quartly - awaiting escape or maybe not, over the border, past custom control...

© Steve Tanner, (l-r) Sarah Hadland, Hannah Britland, Mark Quartly – awaiting escape or maybe not, over the border, past custom control…

Well, here’s a thing now, a season of plays up from Plymouth – but no ordinary season when steered by Simon Stokes and Jenny Topper. Continue reading

A Day By The Sea

Southwark Playhouse, London (***)

© Phil Gammon, Susan Tracy as Laura Anson and David Whitworth as David Anson, Laura's brother-in-law

© Phil Gammon, Susan Tracy as Laura Anson and David Whitworth as David Anson, Laura’s brother-in-law

You win some, you lose some. Sometimes `forgotten gems’ are cast aside for good reason. Fashion, sensibilities, history – always changing. N C Hunter was once a darling of the West End in the 1950s, along with Rattigan and Coward. Then along came the era of the baldly and badly named working-class ` kitchen-sink’ dramas and such quiet, middle class fare completely lost its hold. Or attraction. Continue reading

Doubt

Southwark Playhouse, London (****)

© Paul Nicholas Dyke, Stella Gonet as Sister Aloysius

© Paul Nicholas Dyke, Stella Gonet as Sister Aloysius

What price certainty? Christ’s `it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven’ could perhaps be replaced in John Patrick Shanley’s Tony award and Pulitzer prize winner with `it is easier for a doubter to enter the kingdom than the man – or woman – of certainty.’ Continue reading

The Life

Southwark Playhouse (*****)

© Conrad Blakemore, T'Shan Williams as Queen, heart broken but dreaming dreams of freedom in 1980s New York's Times Square.

© Conrad Blakemore, T’Shan Williams as Queen, heart broken but dreaming dreams of freedom in 1980s New York’s Times Square.

Even if you’re not a musical aficionado, Michael Blakemore’s production and the way the young cast headed by Sharon D Clarke get hold of and deliver Cy Coleman’s music with Ira Gasman’s lyrics will just blow you away. Continue reading