The opening monologue, performed off-stage and possibly prerecorded, brews the promise of a ‘neo-noir fever dream’ into a disgustingly tactical succession of phrase. Its programme says the show ‘changed from a fiction wrapped in a concert to a concert sprinkled with words.’ That’s true. There are now only two worded segments among a relentless soundscape, […]
In one sense, it’s the ultimate indulgence to a craving no-one asked for. I don’t mean “ban experiment; bring on the potboilers”, I mean that this production feels irrelevant, and that irrelevance is compounded by the awkward pose of its prose. No’s Knife is an adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s obscure mini-tales, Texts for Nothing, and […]
There are, or at least have currently been presented, two ways of tackling autism on a London stage, and this probably goes for other mental illnesses as well: a subjective and an objective approach. The subjective integrates symptoms into a play’s form; the objective doesn’t. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is […]
It’s a grind to attend three hours of theatre. But grinds aren’t always bad. Sometimes, the alienation that accompanies “why I am watching this?” can induce some valuable critical distance. There are good questions to be raised about Suzan-Lori Parks’ Father Comes Home from the Wars. In the process of watching it: “why three parts?”, […]
A lot of Royal Court’s Upstairs programming is too dry for its own good. Not this. Nathaniel Martello-White’s Torn wears complexity on its sleeve. Angel arranges a circle of seats and then her family into a room, like an AA meeting, and wants to tackle the wrongs in her life. We don’t know her problem, […]
Stringberg’s 1901 work A Dream Play is historically important: its lack of structure, condensing of characters to social roles and narrative current that winds along by way of thin associations between people and places mean it was a herald of dramatic surrealism and expressionism. A dream-like tapestry that eschewed the trappings of realism that Ibsen […]
I have to write this review with an extra level of care. Not a fear of offence; I want get across the show’s provocative manner, after all. But I’m extra-conscious that what I’ll write will uphold some very unconscionable standards. And please don’t think I’m indulging with artificial difficulty, either. I could write in a […]
‘The Pussy Riot performances cannot be reduced just to subversive provocations. Beneath the dynamics of their acts, there is the inner stability of a firm ethico-political attitude. In some deeper sense, it is today’s society that is caught in a crazy capitalist dynamic with no inner sense and measure, and it is Pussy Riot that […]