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The cool of tiffany turquoise instead of the heat of stifling sinopia
The outlines of dark shadows sit fanning themselves in what looks like a lego house that has been opened down the middle to allow for child’s play. They are fanning themselves and yet the whole set has a chill factor to it. So, in the audience, I am not feeling the heat even though I…
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Women’s spaces
This play is probably too high school. What do I mean? It is the perfect play to analyse in the classroom: please set out the similarities and differences between Kate’s and Elaine’s narrative; please explain how the play reflects and differs from the #meetoo sentiment of the 2020ies, provide your interpretation of the play’s title…
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A Lear too sprightly
There is a fundamental problem with this production – Kenneth Branagh is, well, how shall I put it – too sprightly? Just the other day, I watched the 1993 film Much ado about nothing. I want to know how Branagh does it, but there is no way that the 30 years that have passed since…
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Is it the best of parallels?
I really wanted to love this play. Who wouldn’t, if only for the current context of October the 7th. But additionally, this is a play written by Dmitry Glukhovsky – a Jewish Russian in exile – sentenced to eight years in prison in absentia; and directed by Maxim Didenko, a fellow dissident. Both choosing to…
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Never too late
When I mentioned to a work colleague I was going to see “Frank and Percy” that evening, they asked what the play was about. “I don’t quite know,” I responded, “but I could watch Sir Ian McKellen drink tea for two hours, and it would make me happy.” And in a way, it turned out…
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Does science exonerate?
This play is set in Farm Hall and the events take place from July 1945 to January 1946. As a reminder, Nazi Germany capitulated in May 1945; Japan in September. The play tells the story of ten German physicists sequestered by the British, who monitored their conversations with the aim of figuring out how close…
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What or how you say it?
Pygmalion is a classic. So what can I write? I went to the theatre knowing what I would see. And it was all well executed – the later version with the scene at the ball written in. Some scenes felt a bit overplayed, almost farcical; others maybe a little underplayed – leaving me asking –…
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Does it take a madman to care about women?
This performance is all movement and music. My affair with the Pinter almost ended after going to see the Seagull, poorly acted out in a pinewood box with a couple of plastic chairs for props. But this re-ignited my love. The actors used the entire stage, including the audience boxes to either side; the balcony…
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A comic strip about history
I remember reading Midnight’s Children; I was very young and hell-bent on reading a book by the great Rushdie. So I did – but to the very end I felt that, whilst I might be understanding all the words, I am most certainly missing the plot. I was educated in Poland – India’s partition or…
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Where did the Patriots lose their why?
The scenography is superb (although at the Noel Coward theatre Miriam Buether’s crimson, cruciform set is probably best enjoyed from the circle where you can actually see its form, which you do not really get in the stalls), the acting really quite enthralling, but the play itself – mediocre to say the least. Watching it,…
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