Reviews
Doctor Faustus/ A Yorkshire Tragedy, Stratford Circus, London/ White Bear, London (Rated 4/ 5 )
A devilishly good take on Marlowe
Inside Reviews
Nic Green's Trilogy, Battersea Arts Centre, London (Rated 4/ 5 )
Monday, 18 January 2010
Get ready for a nude awakening
Legally Blonde, The Musical, Savoy, London
Trilogy, BAC, London
Greta Garbo Came to Donegal, Tricycle, London
Sunday, 17 January 2010
Adolescent girls are lapping up the latest Hollywood-to-West End hit, but is their bimbo heroine such a great role model?
Oper Opis, Barbican Theatre, London
The Snow Queen, Coliseum, London
Sunday, 17 January 2010
After an opening that is, literally, well balanced, a Swiss collaboration descends into a free-for-all
First Night: This blonde is definitely more fun (Rated 4/ 5 )
Thursday, 14 January 2010
"What I'd give to be one of those dogs!" I remarked to the young woman sitting next to me at this wonderful new musical version of Legally Blonde.
Greta Garbo Came to Donegal, Tricycle Theatre, London (Rated 4/ 5 )
Thursday, 14 January 2010
Frank McGuinness's emotionally rich and highly enjoyable new play has a Chekhovian structure. As in Uncle Vanya, an outsider descends on a provincial community, throws the proverbial cat amongst the pigeons and then departs, having caused changes for good and ill. McGuinness is not the first Irish writer to work humane and tragicomic variations on this formula. The unique selling point of his new play, which is premiered in Nicolas Kent's atmospheric and beautifully acted and designed production at the Tricycle, is a fresh sexual and cultural twist.
Romeo and Juliet, Royal Opera House, London (Rated 3/ 5 )
Thursday, 14 January 2010
Casting, casting. The Royal Ballet's revival of Romeo and Juliet opened with a switch of leading dancers. With Carlos Acosta injured, Tamara Rojo's ardent Juliet was partnered by Rupert Pennefather. They don't quite make a pair. Juliet is one of Rojo's best roles, but on this evidence, Romeo isn't Pennefather's.
Innocence, Arcola Theatre, London (Rated 3/ 5 )
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
An African, illegally in Germany, finds a fortune which he spends on an operation for a blind pole dancer. A man takes his work so seriously he brings it home – from the mortuary. A woman visits the parents of a murderer's victims, saying she is the killer's mother. She lies. These are some of the sketches in Dea Loher's Innocence, which Helena Kaut-Howson, director of this splendid production, says cannot be pigeonholed as absurdism or social drama, though it might be called "an ironic 'philosophical fable', designed not so much to frustrate the audience as to compel it to look beyond [sic] the surface". But whether we look beneath or beyond, what do we find?
The Snow Queen, The Coliseum, London (Rated 2/ 5 )
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Michael Corder's The Snow Queen is glittering but bland. Adapting Hans Christian Andersen's tale for English National Ballet, he has chosen sparkling Prokofiev music with traditional designs and classical steps. He gives the dancers plenty of technical challenges, but not much to get their teeth into.
Resolution!, The Place, London (Rated 3/ 5 )
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Resolution! is an an annual festival of new choreography. Over seven weeks, the Place presents 102 companies, most at the very start of their careers.
Miracle, Leicester Square Theatre, London (Rated 2/ 5 )
Monday, 11 January 2010
Not much to wonder at here
|
|
Most popular in Arts & Entertainment
Read
1 Life begins at 45: Bullock wins best actress award at Golden Globes
2 Copy cats! The claws are out
3 Geoffrey Macnab: Golden Globes underline absurdity of the gong season
4 Daniel Craig to replace Robert Downey Jr. in sci-fi western
5 Girl power versus older men on the Brit awards shortlist
6 100 Best Films: The final countdown, 20-1
7 Weekly US music releases: Golden Globe winner ‘Crazy Heart’ with Jeff Bridges
8 Magnum exhibition has a taste for life
9 Best albums of 2009 – chosen by the stars
10 The ten best: Bollywood movies
11 The real Van Gogh: The artist and his letters
12 Patti Smith memoir 'Just Kids' a eulogy for photographer Mapplethorpe
13 Golden Globe music highlights: 'Glee,' 'Up,' 'Crazy Heart'
Emailed
1 Life begins at 45: Bullock wins best actress award at Golden Globes
3 The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart, By M Glenn Taylor
4 Doctor Faustus/ A Yorkshire Tragedy, Stratford Circus, London/ White Bear, London
5 Gilding Lily: Gillian Wearing on her latest muse
6 Boyarde Messenger, Business Design Centre, London
7 Spider-Man 4 movie canceled and musical caught in a web
8 Ellie Goulding - This one's glitter is gold
9 Film: A short history of the cinema redhead
10 Quantum theory via 40-tonne trucks: How science writing became popular
11 Girl power versus older men on the Brit awards shortlist
Commented
1Twitter joke led to Terror Act arrest and airport life ban
2US waves white flag in disastrous 'war on drugs'
3Isabel Hilton: Don't blame the Haitians for doubting US promises
4Israel attempts to heal rift with Turkey
5Can India find true liberation?
6'Only for elite' fear over Tory teaching deal
7Gulf between rich and poor cities widens
8Leading article: America must fulfil its responsibilities to Haiti
|
|
FIVE BEST PLAYS
Greta Garbo Came to Donegal
(Tricycle Theatre, London)
Nicolas Kent’s atmospheric and beautifully acted and designed production of Frank McGuinness’s emotionally rich new play stars Caroline Lagerfelt as the Swedish actress Greta Garbo.
(020 7328 1000) to 20 Feb
Legally Blonde
(Savoy Theatre, London)
Sheridan Smith is brilliantly warm, winning, witty and all-round adorable as Elle, who proves not to be the airhead she is taken for when she goes to Harvard law schoolin this is ridiculously enjoyable musical.
(0870 871 7687) to 23 Oct
The Misanthrope
(Comedy Theatre, London)
Keira Knightley turns in a performance that is not only strikingly convincing but, at times, rather thrilling in its satiric aplomb, in an excellent revival of Martin Crimp’s take on Molière’s great courtly satire.
(0844 871 7627) to 13 Mar
Red
(Donmar Warehouse, London)
Alfred Molina stars as Mark Rothko in Michael Grandage’s brilliantly acted production of John Logan’s new two-hander, set in the Abstract Expressionist’s Manhattan studio in 1959, after he had been commissioned to provide a piece for the Four Seasons Restaurant in the iconic new Seagram Building.
(0870 060 6624) to 6 Feb
The Habit of Art
(NT: Lyttelton, London)
Alan Bennett’s multi-layered, hilariously provocative new play stars Richard Griffiths as the poet W H Auden and Alex Jennings as Benjamin Britten.
(020 7452 3000) to 6 Apr