St James Theatre, London (*****)
© Hershey Felder
As we approach International Holocaust Remembrance Day, tales by survivors may have been told many times but I can’t remember it ever being told with such bravura, imagination and skill. Continue reading
St James Theatre, London (****)
© Simon Annand
Just in time for Christmas, writer Laura Eason and Lucy Bailey have served up a phantasmagoric bon bouffe of festive delight. How on earth do you put on stage Jules Verne’s global adventure that in the famous movies had all the technical resources at their disposal but certainly not at the St James’ Theatre’s! Continue reading
McQueen, St James Theatre, London
NB NOW RUNNING AT THEATRE ROYAL HAYMARKET, LONDON TO NOV 7, 2015
****
© Specular
Alexander McQueen, enfant terrible and one of the most revered fashion designers of his generation, committed suicide on February 11th, 2010. Currently, the V&A is holding a voluptuous retrospective of his work. Simultaneously, we now have McQueen the play running at St James Theatre. Continue reading
The Studio, St James Theatre, London
Carol Grimes, who is she? goes the subtitle to this wholly unique one-woman show.
St James Theatre, London
© Robert Workman
Some title. Nobody not of the persuasion could possibly have come up with such a barbed description. Nobody else could have got away with writing such a withering – and yes, shocking – account of Jewish family dynamics than someone deeply embedded in its layers of acrimony yet still have the chutzpah to call it `a comedy’.
St James’ Theatre, London
© Mark Douet
Take a spot of Rattigan (middle class English repression), add a spoonful of Coward (secret lives) and Priestley (outsider who overturns the apple cart) then a decisive twist of Welsh bohemian a la Dylan Thomas and what do you have? A rediscovered 1950s domestic drama that rings all sorts of contemporary bells, Emlyn Williams’s Accolade. Continue reading