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LLL = LOL
Love’s Labour’s Lost is apparently one of Shakespeare’s least-performed comedies, probably because the plot is surprisingly thin, it contains an extraordinary amount of wordplay, and its refusal to offer immediate gratification makes for a somewhat frustrating ending. As such, I had never seen it before and, despite strong reservations when I read that this production…
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No FOMO
Laurence and Beverly, a solidly middle-class couple, have invited the neighbours over for drinks and a little cheesy pineapple. Their guests consist of a younger couple anxiously feeling their way into suburban respectability and Sue, a divorcée who has fled her daughter Abigail’s birthday party next door. Not being from the UK, the cultural significance…
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Canned laughter
I’m not sure I’ve ever laughed as much in a theatre. Alan Ayckbourn wrote in The Crafty Art of Playmaking that the “superimposed composite set” in How The Other Half Loves “contributes enormously to the storytelling and, incidentally, brings about fifty per cent of the laughs”. Sitting in the middle of this production, as the…
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No food for thought
The Guilty at the Donmar sits somewhere between immersive theatre and watching an episode of a real crime drama on TV. It absolutely keeps you captivated for the very brief 60 minutes over which it plays out. Russell Tovey is compelling throughout, carrying the emotion and grounding the escalating tension in something believable. The set…
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More-al-less
I have no objection to Simon Stone taking liberties with Aeschylus. Any worthwhile adaptation should. And this, according to the publicity materials, is “after Aeschylus and others”. My objection is that he keeps adding to the play while quietly taking away what matters. In the process, the adaptation loses both focus and direction. The Oresteia…
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Bad Romance
In 2012 Shabir Ahmed, the ringleader of the Rochdale grooming gang operating in Greater Manchester, was sentenced to 22 years for multiple child sexual offences and rape. Phil Davies wrote Firebird three years later and it debuted at the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs in September 2015, transferring to Trafalgar Studios in February 2016. Shabir Ahmed was…
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Ceci n’est plus un misanthrope
In my country, Molière’s canonical trio of comedies, Tartuffe, The Misanthrope and The Miser, occupy a special place in the repertoire. For years, I’ve wondered why London theatres seem so reluctant to revisit them. This season, however, I’m being spoiled: both Tartuffe and The Misanthrope have returned in modernised forms. I still have Tartuffe to…
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Kathryn the Defiant
I need to be careful about what I write. White Rabbit Red Rabbit is as live as theatre gets, and an important part of what it seeks to achieve is inviting each person in the audience to examine their willingness to participate in theatre’s make-believe. Knowing anything in advance could diminish that experience. Besides, if…
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Making a meal of it
The Young Vic is generally known as the edgier, younger sibling—home to innovative productions of both classics and new writing. It follows that anything staged in the smaller spaces (The Maria, 150 seats; The Clare, 70 seats) may err on the less polished side. But this felt like rough-around-the-edges taken to a new level. The…
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Expensive cosplay
Despite being an avid theatre-goer, I hadn’t really given much thought to the calibre of female roles until recently, when I attended an event with Harriet Walter. She was promoting She Speaks: What Shakespeare’s Women Might Have Said, in which she gives voice to a range of women in Shakespeare’s plays. As part of her…
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