Clik here to view.
London Theater Review: ‘Uncle Vanya’ at the Almeida Theatre
Director Robert Icke has become the great hope of British theater. The 29-year-old has a rare talent for tapping into a text’s driving forces. He staged “1984” not as a possible future, but as a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
London Theater Review: Uzo Aduba in ‘The Maids’
Jamie Lloyd is not the first director to cast black actors as Jean Genet’s murderous maids. In doing so, he directly contravenes the playwright’s advice. Genet warned against flattening a slippery...
View ArticleClik here to view.
London Theater Review: ‘Miss Atomic Bomb’ with Catherine Tate
Can a musical have a half-life? “Miss Atomic Bomb” does, and it’s not quite long enough. Set against Nevada’s nuclear tests of the 1950s — specifically, the beauty pageants set up in their honor – the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
West End Review: Kenneth Branagh in ‘The Painkiller’
Kenneth Branagh proves a born farceur in Sean Foley’s adaptation of Francis Veber’s classic French farce “The Painkiller.” As an anonymous hitman who holes up in a hotel room only to find himself...
View ArticleClik here to view.
London Theater Review: Lorraine Hansberry’s ‘Les Blancs’
Lorraine Hansberry’s death at age 34, half a century ago, left her play “Les Blancs” unfinished. Compiled by her ex-husband, it’s an extraordinary piece — more didactic than dramatic, perhaps, but a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
London Theater Review: Glenn Close in ‘Sunset Boulevard’
“Sunset Boulevard” made Glenn Close an icon of musical theater. Twenty-three years later, at age 69, she returns to a part that, she claims, has “haunted” her ever since — former screen icon Norma...
View ArticleClik here to view.
London Theater Review: Ivo van Hove Directs Shakespeare in ‘Kings of War’
If Ivo van Hove’s “Roman Tragedies” was a surprising medley of Shakespeare plays, his “Kings of War” history cycle, now running at London’s Barbican Center, is altogether more familiar, much like the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
London Theater Review: Kit Harington in ‘Doctor Faustus’
Must theater sell its soul for new audiences? Director Jamie Lloyd has made it his mission to bring a new generation into theater, but at what price? Canny casting pulls in a young crowd; flashy...
View ArticleClik here to view.
London Theater Review: ‘Elegy’ by Nick Payne
“Elegy” might be described as a memory play — not because it recalls the past but because it is a play that remembers. As in his earlier play “Constellations” (seen on Broadway last season with Jake...
View ArticleClik here to view.
London Theater Review: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ Directed by Emma Rice
Television turned Technicolor. Dylan went electric. Now, the Kneehigh theater company’s Emma Rice (“Brief Encounter”) has taken over the leadership of Shakespeare’s Globe, and “cultural shift” doesn’t...
View ArticleClik here to view.
West End Review: Kenneth Branagh’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ With Richard Madden,...
Neither love nor hate make this “Romeo and Juliet” — the best so far of Kenneth Branagh’s ongoing season of West End plays — but haste. The actor-manager and his co-director Rob Ashford can’t quite get...
View ArticleClik here to view.
London Theater Review: ‘The Threepenny Opera’ with Rory Kinnear
Born out of Germany’s economic meltdown in the 1920s, “The Threepenny Opera” puts the destitute and desperate onstage — a remarkable thing at the time. Rather than refresh its reality for our own...
View ArticleClik here to view.
London Theater Review: Alexi Kaye Campbell’s ‘Sunset at the Villa Thalia’
A Greek holiday home becomes a symbol of a diplomatic powerplay in Alexi Kaye Campbell’s two-act time-hop, “Sunset at the Villa Thalia,” at the National Theater. The playwright of transatlantic success...
View ArticleClik here to view.
London Theater Review: Isabelle Huppert in ‘Phaedra(s)’
Isabelle Huppert’s return to the London stage is welcome, but it comes in an impenetrable indulgence by Polish director Krystof Warlikowski. First seen at the Odéon Théàtre de l’Europe in Paris, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
London Theater Review: ‘Richard III’ with Ralph Fiennes, Vanessa Redgrave
With a domineering Ralph Fiennes at its black heart, Rupert Goold’s “Richard III” is a difficult piece for difficult times. Now starring at the Almeida Theater with a cast that includes Vanessa...
View ArticleClik here to view.
London Theater Review: Mike Bartlett’s Snowden-Inspired ‘Wild’
A twist on the Edward Snowden story, Mike Bartlett’s new play “Wild” is really an examination of rampant rational skepticism. If ours is a world in which nothing is what it seems and nobody can be...
View ArticleClik here to view.
London Theater Review: ‘The Stripper,’ A New Musical by The Creator of ‘Rocky...
Horribly misogynistic or fatally misjudged? Turns out “The Stripper,” the pulp fiction pastiche by “The Rocky Horror Show” creator Richard O’Brien, is both. Adapted from a Carter Brown whodunit that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
West End Review: ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’
It is, quite simply, spellbinding: The Show That Lived Up to Expectations — and Then Some. Three years after J. K. Rowling announced her boy wizard would hit the stage, “Harry Potter and the Cursed...
View ArticleClik here to view.
London Theater Review: ‘Groundhog Day,’ the Musical
This one will run and run. And run. And run… Reuniting the Tony Award-winning team behind “Matilda,” “Groundhog Day” cracks open Danny Rubin’s story for the 1993 Harold Ramis film to reveal the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
London Theater Review: ‘946: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips’
Even war has its blue-sky days. Opening with Brecht’s question — “In the dark times, will there also be singing?” — Kneehigh, the company behind Broadway’s “Brief Encounter,” respond with a resounding...
View Article