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The Activist Salome
I have loved Oscar Wilde for as long as I can remember. I had a blue, hardback copy of his fairy tales that I read over and over as a child. I have adored his plays, and no matter how many times I go to the theatre, they never fail to make me laugh and…
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Lady from the Swimming Pool
Modernisations, what can I say. I love a good modernisation. Nothing illustrates the universality of the greatest plays quite like one—nor their enduring themes, nor the fact that life repeats itself in endless iterations. I am such a big fan. But modernisations need to be done well. It is no small feat to take the…
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Radical authenticity
I knew little about this play, having seen neither of the films, but I anticipated a fast-paced two-hander between interviewer and interviewee, filled with sharp dialogue, quick-witted quips, and moments of gotcha and counter-gotcha. As the performance unfolded, I was drawn to the premise: seasoned political journalist Pierre (Robert Sean Leonard), on the eve of…
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What you will not
The Fool, in Harlequin’s attire as the central figure of this production of Twelfth Night, probably tells you all you need to know about Belfield’s direction for this staging – vibrant japery and frivolity lacking nuance or subtlety. It’s all colour, exciting visuals, dance, costumes, revelry and clowning about – something between the Venetian Carnival…
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Elizabethan Besties
Who cares if this late-sixteenth-century love farce isn’t the Bard’s finest or most original play when you can simply enjoy pure, unadulterated fun on a pleasant evening at the Globe? Climbing the tower with cushions and a bag of blankets and scarves just in case, I felt as if I was heading to a picnic…
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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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