There is nothing like the Iris Theatre’s outdoor season in London. It is usually the summer, you have been working all day and you venture to Covent Garden; no, not to see the buskers, although there is some similarity to the Iris and what goes on only metres away. You gather around the performers, starting […]
As part of their eclectic ‘Summer Season’ week, Sedos has put on a series of scenes from six American plays, each with distinctive moods and dynamics. I say dynamics because that it was most apparent in the selection we were given by the director Alex Magliaro. Despite the almost century-wide gap between the plays’ various […]
Robert Icke wants to do something with his adaptation of The Oresteia. He wants to smooth out the contrivances of Aeschylus’ original tragedy while increasing the emotional intensity. While I applaud that effort—recontextualisation is crucial for modern theatre—the funny thing is that for all its clever techniques, Oresteia leaves me wanting more formality in these […]
Steve Waters’ new play Temple is invigorating, and that is a surprise considering its subject matter. Temple reveals the trials of the administration of St. Paul’s Cathedral during the 2011 Occupy Movement. It is set on the day the building reopened following a two week closure. It also tells of the drama surrounding the resignation […]
This 2015 Revival of The Elephant Man is an average production of a bland play with competent actors. It tells the story John Merrick (played by Bradley Cooper), a disfigured Victorian who is saved from the life of a circus sideshow by surgeon Frederick Treves (Alessandro Nivola). Treves teaches John the ways of the upper […]
Mad world, mad kings, mad composition, mad play. King John, as a text, is a mess. The plot casually advances from war to marriage to war and then to death in a literary frenzy. The king is barely a character for most of it (Falconbridge seems to be given the most to say) and we […]
It was not surprising that the National would put on a play post-election about the origins of Parliament. Fortunately, it is not the dry, dour production that one might expect it to be. Carol Churchill’s 1976 work takes on the struggle of the factions of Parliamentarians, Levellers and Diggers during the English Civil War in […]
What a turnaround. It is not often that a show can improve so much between its Acts. From the first Act’s close, it seemed like High Society was an extremely middling production, which is not at all expected from the Old Vic. However, the change is unexpected and grand. It is not clear whether the […]