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Who was Oscar Levant?
It has been a long time since I went to the theatre and did not feel at all inspired to write down my thoughts afterwards. Frankly, I had very few thoughts on the way home, and even fewer when I got there. I am not exactly sure why this was the case, but the play…
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Missed opportunity
Robert Bolt wrote an early form of this play for BBC Radio over 70 years ago, 55 years before Hilary Mantel wrote Wolf Hall. It is a very traditional, historical play. The stage is beautiful, as are the costumes, but the somewhat dragging script and lack of engaging on-stage interactions between the characters is a…
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Losing sight
Undoubtedly, Inter Alia – where the main character, a high-powered judge, presides over numerous cases of men abusing women – is very much the sister play to Prima Facie. However, I experienced it less as a story about rape and the legal system, and more as one about the invisible labour and mental load borne…
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Too Much and Not Enough
A good play does not have to have a singular focus. In fact, one of my firm favourites, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, excels at intertwining storylines of the lovers’ tale, the fairy court, and the royal wedding, supplemented by the Mechanicals’ play. And it does not just work—it works brilliantly. But Shaan Sahota is a…
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Sinister therapy
This is a short, but powerful play. It has similarities to Ireland’s Ulster American, in that it opens with quick, cuttingly funny dialogue, that is both smart and thought provoking and then morphs into something more menacing. But unlike Ulster, the Fifth Step does not descend into a pointless farce and ends with something close…
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How theatre is meant to be
I saw this production when it first came to the Bridge in 2019, sat in the audience and absolutely loved it. My only regret was having chosen not to be in the pit, where everyone seemed to be having even more fun than I was. I then watched the recording with my kids, who were…
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Modern morals and motherhood
This performance felt strikingly contemporary. Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed Pygmalion at the Old Vic, its present-day relevance took a while for me to uncover. In this play, the dialogue seemed to reflect many aspects of the conversations I am having with my children right now. It cuts to the core of the rhetoric surrounding the…
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Master of puppet
I am fairly sure I just funded a very expensive drama lesson for an already accomplished actor (Arthur Darvill in this performance). What I am not so sure about, is why I did it. Maybe this makes me a philistine, but I go to the theatre to see actors deliver their trade – gripping interpretations…
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Who is the troll?
Booking the tickets, I had clocked the reference to ‘Ibsen’ – but not being an Ibsen aficionado, I had no expectations regarding the storyline. Now that I have skimmed a summary of the original plot, “inspired by Ibsen” seems a bit of a stretch. Maybe an “echo” or “impression” of Ibsen’s fictionalised attempt at exonerating…
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Not every story needs a moral
Of the 22 plays I saw last year, Player Kings and Oedipus were at the very top of the list. You can imagine how excited I was to not only see the first Robert Icke original, but at the same time to go to the Royal Court where I had never been before. With every…
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