The first thing we see is Anna Fleischle’s Fifties-tastic giant doll’s-house set: each period-perfect room bathed in a different twinkling hue, flowers painted onto the brick wall, and jaunty music setting the tone. But Katherine Parkinson’s Judy is able to open the … Continue reading
“It just seems to be a thing that we do, this incomprehensible violence thing.” So says the narrator of Dennis Kelly’s new one-woman play, performed in a staggering tour-de-force from Carey Mulligan. She’s been reflecting on an American mass shooting … Continue reading
Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr’s enterprise is certainly an historic one: The Bridge is London’s first new wholly commercial theatre in 80 years. If its opening play isn’t the same landmark work, it’s nevertheless an auspicious start to a promising … Continue reading
Dominic Dromgoole’s new company Classic Spring kicks off its year-long celebration of Oscar Wilde with lesser-known 1893 work A Woman of No Importance. A starry cast, led by the incandescent Eve Best, makes a strong case for the play, though Dromgoole’s reclaiming of Wilde … Continue reading
A year after premiering acclaimed French playwright Florian Zeller’s The Truth, London’s Menier Chocolate Factory now hosts The Lie – which, as the name suggests, acts as a companion piece of sorts. Once again, we’re in a slippery Pinteresque realm, the seemingly conventional domestic set-up teasingly deconstructed … Continue reading
In 1944, Terence Rattigan substantially revised Less Than Kind at the behest of star theatrical couple the Lunts; the result was the less political, more overtly comic play Love in Idleness. Now, Trevor Nunn, inspired by Dan Rebellato’s introduction in … Continue reading
Gender deconstruction, fraught feminism and the perils of hook-up culture: George Bernard Shaw’s comedy of manners, penned in 1893, shows we haven’t come as far as we might think. It’s a point rammed home by Paul Miller’s choice of modern … Continue reading
