Category Archives: 2020

Rendezvous with Marlene

Rendezvous with Marlene *****

Review of performance via YouTube: Nov 23, 2020

© Russ Rowland

UTE LEMPER channelling Dietrich!
Marlene, forever the enigma, hated in her home country, Germany, later restored to favour. Wooed in Hollywood, loved by audiences round the world, pinned into frocks – I remember that sequined dress that made her shuffle to the front of the stage like a geisha when I saw her London – dying a recluse in Paris at 94. Continue reading

The Apologists

Omnibus Theatre, London ****
Runs: 65 mins without interval
Box Office: phone: 0207 498 4699

Review of perf seen March 3, 2020:

© Steve Gregson, Gabrielle Scawthorn in Lucinda Burnett’s New Universe, pondering whatever happened to a personal report about her rape that disappeared as so many others in an international aid charity’s files…

Marie McCarthy’s Clapham Omnibus just seems to go from strength to strength.

Starting with a barely transformed library, and on the slenderest of resources, McCarthy has turned the venue into a positive mini power-house – a sort of BAC in miniature – now sporting a new café and running two shows a night. Continue reading

The Incident Room

New Diorama, London ****
Runs: 2hrs 25 mins with 20 min interval.
TICKETS : 0207 383 9034
Review of perf seen Feb 26, 2020:

© The Other Richard, Charlotte Melia, as Megan Winterburn, modest, hard-working, cigarette smoking police Sergeant, a witness to five harrowing years…

The Yorkshire Ripper. Leeds 1975. Anyone reading those words might be forgiven for feeling a shiver down the spine. Notoriety comes in multifarious ways. For some it comes through misdeeds. For Peter Sutcliffe it certainly brought a particular form of `celebrity’. Continue reading

I Cinna [the Poet]

Unicorn Theatre, London *****
Runs: 1hr 10 mins without interval
TICKETS: Box Office: 020 7645 0560
Child guidance: 11-14yrs
Review of perf seen Feb 19, 2020:

© Helen Murray, Tim Crouch/Cinna the poet, he waits for us, his audience, to start writing words. What would we die for, what would we kill for…Julius Caesar’s murder setting the context, politics and morality at stake.

Cinna, the poet, happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. He is the unhappy victim of a moment of mob mentality, when a ruler has been displaced – assassinated – when the crowd are thirsting for revenge having had their heads and heart turned by the words of Marc Antony over Caesar’s body at his funeral. Continue reading

Far Away

Donmar Warehouse,
41 Earlham Street,
Seven Dials, London WC2H 9LX

Runs: 40 mins without interval
Review of perf seen Feb 13, 2020:

© Johan Persson, Abbiegail Mills as young Joan surveying Lizzie Clachan’s apparently comforting arcadian scene until she sees what really lies inside…

By now, Caryl Churchill has become synonymous with startling experimentation. Continue reading

Nora: A Doll’s House

Young Vic Theatre,
66 The Cut,
London SE1 8LZ
TICKETS: 020 7922 2922.
Runs: 1hr 45 mins without interval
Review of perf seen Feb 12, 2020:

© Marc Brenner, Anna Russell-Martin, Amaka Okafor, Natalie Klamar – the three Noras, walking into their house…

To those who know Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Stef Smith and Glasgow Citz/Young Vic radical reworking will come as something of a shock. Continue reading