Trafalgar Studios, London (***)
© Marc Brenner, Stockard Channing as a famous art historian, Kristine. Chickens coming home to roost…
I remember Apologia from its first time around, at the Bush Theatre. Then it seemed an extraordinarily acute if honest rebuke to those women of the 1960s and ‘70s, whose allegiance to making their mark and being part of those passionate political times may have blinded them to longer-term repercussions and their `maternal’ duties. Continue reading
Bush Theatre, London (****)
© Marc Brenner, Darren Kuppan (Babur) and Danny Ashok (Humayun) – the two guards, on guard…
Revamped to the tune of £4.3million by those troubadours of theatre architecture, Haworth Tompkins (the Young Vic, the Royal Court, the Donmar and the Almeida are just some of their recent judicious face-lifting credits), the Bush Theatre kicks off its new life with a design befitting its new enlarged status. Continue reading
Olivier, National Theatre, London (*****)
© Johan Persson,
Danny Sapani (Tshembe Matoseh) and Matriarch singers
A landmark production in a National Theatre repertoire increasingly spreading its wings, Lorraine Hansberry’s rarely seen Les Blancs is more incendiary even than her A Raisin in the Sun, now regarded as an American classic, but radically breaking the mould despite its Broadway success. Continue reading
Hampstead Theatre, London (****)
© Manuel Harlan,
Lauren O’Neil (Steph), Tom Burke (Greg)
At the end of David Lindsay-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole, the last play at Hampstead, I wrote: `Not a great play…but observationally, sharp, sensitive, comforting and true.’ That almost sums up the American rom-com that is Neil LaBute’s Reasons to be Happy. Continue reading
Trafalgar Studios, London (****)
© Oliver Rosser, James Cartwright (Shane)
As of old, Jim Cartwright’s Raz packs a punch. `Out on the raz’, `getting hammered’, `Friday night is binge night’, they certainly know how to do it `up North’ if Cartwright’s racey homage to an end-of-week night out is anything to go by. Continue reading