Almeida Theatre, London *****
© Marc Brenner, Victoria Hamilton as Audrey battling to save a piece of old England – superb
They do produce some crackers at Rupert Goold’s Almeida. Say what you like about the plays – and they’re mostly four/five stars in any case – they, the productions, nearly always pack a hefty punch. Continue reading
Hampstead Theatre, London (****)
© Stephen Cummiskey, Jack Farthing as Andrew
Wild by name and wild in execution. The prolific Mike Bartlett (credits and awards piling up, most recently for the clever, futuristic King Charles III, currently in film production and on tv, Doctor Foster), has done it again. Continue reading
Almeida Theatre, London
© Keith Pattison
In our surveillance, sex obsessed world, there’s a new kind of `big-game’ hunting now available. `Just a bit of fun’ is how one club owner describes the practise of installing two-way mirrors so that male customers can pay to watch their female equivalents in the toilet and changing areas, unbeknown to the women. Continue reading
The Maria, Young Vic, London
© Simon Annand
Mike Bartlett has a habit of showing human behaviour as people pitted against each others as though in a boxing or bull ring (Cock, My Child). It makes for shuddering if compulsive theatre. He can also pen the expansive such as the sprawling Earthquakes in London or the hilarious fantasy on a theme of our next and future monarch, King Charles III. Continue reading