Theatre
Robert Tanitch reviews These Shining Lives at Park Theatre, London N4
- Friday, 17 May 2013
A brand new 2.5 million theatre has just opened in North London. The unsubsidized Park Theatre has two auditoriums. One has a thrust stage, seats 200 and looks like a smaller Donmar. The other is a flexible 90 seat space and looks like Trafalgar Studio 2 but with a much higher ceiling. There is a large café-bar. The theatre is only a one minute walk from Finsbury Park station.
Artistic director Jez Bond promises a mixture of classic and new plays and opens with an American play by Melanie Marnich, which premiered in Baltimore in 2008 and tells a true and scandalous story about the exploitation of women in the workplace in Chicago during the 1920s.
Robert Tanitch reviews Public Enemy at Young Vic
- Wednesday, 15 May 2013
Henrik Ibsen's play is a classic confrontation: one man against authority, fighting the lies, the hypocrisy and intolerance of vested interest. Written in anger in 1882, it was based on a true incident and is still pertinent. Richard Jones’ updated and abbreviated production is not helped by the exceptionally wide and ugly set.
Thomas Stockmann (Nick Fletcher), chief medical officer of a small provincial town, a popular spa, discovers that the Baths (on which the livelihood of the community depends) are built on a sewer. He mistakenly thinks the community will be grateful to him for alerting them to the health risk.
The mayor (Darrell D’Silva), who happens to be his brother, refuses to take any action. So do the local business people when they learn that the Baths will be closed for two whole years and that they will have to foot the bill with higher taxes.
Eileen Caiger Gray reviews Noises Off
- Tuesday, 14 May 2013
NOISES OFF
SHEFFIELD LYCEUM
MAY 13th 2013
What a farce! And a terrific one, too! Michael Frayn's multi-award-winning blockbuster, Noises Off, first staged in 1982 and doing the rounds again today, is still bringing audiences the joy of uncontrollable laughter.
The piece was inspired when Frayn witnessed the crazy, real life goings-on backstage during a performance of his play, The Two Of Us, with Lynn Redgrave and Richard Briers, which he found even more hilarious than the onstage antics.
Robert Tanitch reviews ENO’s Wozzeck at London Coliseum
- Tuesday, 14 May 2013
Alban Berg’s 1925 opera, a milestone in opera, is based on Georg Buchner’s play and is a demanding and shattering experience, which is definitely not for everybody.
Buchner’s play was written just before he died of typhoid in 1837, aged 24. It is often thought of as the first modern play, forerunner of the social dramas of the 19th century. There is no definitive text. The script was found in fragments among his papers and not published until 1879 and not acted until 1913.
Robert Tanitch reviews Sons without Fathers at Arcola Studio 1
- Tuesday, 14 May 2013
Sons without Fathers, billed as a tale of sex, vodka and shattered dreams, is a new version of Anton Chekhov’s first play, which is probably better known to British theatregoers as Platonov. Helena Kaut-Howson translates and updates it to modern times and directs a fine ensemble.
Chekhov wrote it in 1881 when he was a 21-year-old university student studying medicine. It was not discovered until 1920 and not performed in Russia until 1960. The rough draft lasts six hours. Cut now to three hours, it is still too long, a crude, sprawling and unwieldy cross-section of Russian provincial society in the 1880s, uncertain whether it is comic or tragic.
Robert Tanitch reviews The Hothouse at Trafalgar Studios
- Monday, 13 May 2013
Harold Pinter said that his play offered a mixture of laughter and chill. There is more laughter than chill in Jamie Lloyd’s revival. A Kafkaesque nightmare about psychiatric abuse has been turned into a farce and the farce is never as dark as it should be.
Written in 1958 (when his first play, The Birthday Party, had flopped and before his big success with The Caretaker) it was not produced until 1980 when Pinter himself directed it; and by then what had been written in fantasy had become reality. Political torture, detention and incarceration were all too familiar.
Robert Tanitch reviews Passion Play at Duke of York’s Theatre
- Friday, 10 May 2013
“I don’t think of myself as a particularly serious playwright,” says Peter Nichols. “I’m an entertainer.” Passion Play, premiered in 1981, might possibly be a modern classic. Adultery has always been a popular subject in theatre from time immemorial. What makes it different this time is the play’s construction.
Nichols gives the married couple alter egos, who appear on the stage with them. Thus we are able to hear what they say out loud and what they are thinking at the same time; and it is the contrast between the two which gives the dialogue its highly-strung impact.
Eileen Caiger-Gray reviews The Taming of the Shrew
- Friday, 10 May 2013
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW by PROPELLER
MAY 8th 2013
SHEFFIELD LYCEUM
With a stage full of bubbling fun and skilfully crafted innovation, even those who prefer their Shakespeare straight might appreciate some ofPropeller’s quirky add-ons and adaptations of costume, set, props, music, visual humour and script.
The set, with tiered wedding cake, funky chandelier, organ, dark clouds, fleshy artwork, low level mirror and smoky billows has elements that might suit a Miss Haversham or a Phantom of the Opera, while the multiple doors of Tardis-like wheelie-cabinets provide great scope for busy silliness. Music, well performed, features large, both live and mimed, in short, comedic bursts or in harmonised narrative that takes the story forward.
Robert Tanitch reviews Larisa and the Merchants at Arcola Theatre
- Thursday, 09 May 2013
Alexander Ostrovsky (1823-1886), one of Russia’s most popular and prolific playwrights has not had the exposure in Britain that Chekhov, Gorky, Gogol and Turgenev have had. Hopefully, Jacqui Honess-Martin’s highly enjoyable production will encourage revivals of Ostrovsky’s other works.
The play’s Russian title is Without a Dowry and it premiered in Moscow in 1878. The gypsy-born Larisa (Jennifer Kidd) has no money. It’s hard for a woman in that period to land a husband if she hasn’t got a dowry. Deserted without a word of explanation by Paratov (Sam Phillips), an aristocrat and shipowner she loved deeply, she has decided to marry Karandyshev (Ben Addis), a silly, vain, petty, jumped-up government official and live a dull bourgeois life in a remote town.
More Articles...
- Get your grandchildren into theatre with these top tips
- Robert Tanitch reviews Merrily We Roll Along at Harold Pinter Theatre
- Robert Tanitch reviews The Tempest at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre
- Robert Tanitch reviews Bare at Union Theatre, London SE1
- Robert Tanitch reviews Othello at National Theatre/Olivier
- Eileen Caiger-Gray reviews Yes, Prime Minister
- Robert Tanitch at The Duke in Darkness at Tabard Theatre, Chiswick, London
- Robert Tanitch reviews The Weir at Donmar Theatre
- Robert Tanitch reviews Ballo at King’s Head, Islington, London.
