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Yearly Archives: 2011

The Veil, National Theatre

Written and directed by Conor McPherson ★★★★ Courtesy of National Theatre Well, we have just entered the first few days of October, which means that the grueling period of Hallowe’en is upon us. Yes, entire aisles of supermarkets dedicated to low-grade costumes, children banging on your door, asking for the sweets which you inevitably have forgotten to buy (they never seem satisfied with apples or stale digestive biscuits), and, perhaps worst of all, the incessant playing of “Monster Mash” by ...

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Double Feature 1, National Theatre

Edgar and Annabel  Sam Holcroft Directed by Lyndsey Turner ★★★★ The Swan  DC Moore Directed by Polly Findlay ★★★★ The Swan, courtesy of the Evening Standard As you will know from my review of Double Feature 2, I miserably failed to attend Double Feature 1 in late July due to an incident in the Solent. However, last weekend I made it back to the National’s pop-up performance space in the Paintframe to watch the second (well, technically the first…) batch ...

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Double Feature 2, National Theatre

Nightwatchman  Prasanna Puwanarajah Directed by Polly Findlay ★★★★★ There is a War Tom Basden Directed by Lyndsey Turner ★★★★ Courtesy of the National Theatre In an ideal world, I would review Double Feature 1 first, and Double Feature 2 second – I’m sure you’ll agree with my exemplary logic. This was the original intention, as I was booked to see Double Feature 1 in mid-July, and I only saw Double Feature 2 last week. Our plan was to then release ...

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Spotlight: David Tennant

David Tennant as Hamlet, Courtesy of The Guardian David Tennant. Well, let’s just get this out of the way: yes, he played the tenth Doctor. And not only that, but he was also voted ‘the best Doctor’ by readers of Doctor Who Magazine, and (time)Lord knows they must know best! He was also one of the longest serving Doctors, ranking 2nd on TV and 3rd overall if we include the Doctor Who radio broadcasts. And let’s not forget that he himself ...

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Avignon Off Festival, France

www.avignonleoff.com While most UK readers will have heard of, and probably indeed attended the Edinburgh Fringe, I imagine that only few will know about the Avignon Off festival. The similarities between the two are striking: they were both founded in 1947, they both attract hundreds of companies and thousands of tourists, they each last for three weeks every summer and, ironically, they both tout themselves as the largest theatre festival in the world. Sometimes it seems like the organisers of ...

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Journey’s End, Duke of York’s Theatre

R.C. Sherriff  Directed by David Grindley ★★★★★ Courtesy of TimeOut Ordinarily, we reserve the elusive five stars for productions which have broken the boundaries in some way. Frankenstein was unlike anything I’d seen before, and One Man, Two Guvnors was the single funniest production I have ever had the pleasure of watching. David Grindley’s production of Sherriff’s Journey’s End doesn’t deliver anything ground-breaking – in many ways it doesn’t allow for much artistic license since it is in essence a ...

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A Woman Killed with Kindness, National Theatre

Thomas Heywood Directed by Katie Mitchell ★★ Courtesy of the National Theatre The National’s recent productions have been so good that I suppose it was only a matter of time before they produced one that didn’t live up to the high standards we now expect. Despite being classed as Heywood’s masterpiece, I cannot profess to having heard of A Woman Killed with Kindness before the National’s revival. Some basic research reveals that it is a critically acclaimed piece, regarded as ...

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Theatre Royal Haymarket, London

Theatre Royal Haymarket OUR OPINION  Before I wrote this, I knew very little about the Theatre Royal Haymarket, but I have always appreciated its luxurious interior, and it has provided me with some of the most memorable nights of theatre in my life (for instance, Waiting for Godot and Flare Path). Despite this, I had never really thought about its history. The research that I have done for this piece however has completely changed my perspective. So much so in ...

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Spotlight: Andrew Scott

Andrew Scott as Julian the Apostate Emperor and Galilean, Henrik Ibsen’s ‘lost masterpiece’, has just opened for the first time in English at London’s National Theatre. The three-hour-long epic Drama deals with the rise and subsequent fall of Emperor Julian the Apostate in the 4th Century AD. The play relies heavily on the actor playing the role of Julian to carry it through: indeed, a flat performance would make the entire experience totally unpalatable. But Andrew Scott, who plays this ...

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