The Rest of March

MUSIC & OPERA
Only two operas and an oratorio in a musically lean two months! Dr Atomic at ENO would have been a much better opera if he’d cut it by 30 mins (especially in the more static first half). I liked the design and staging, the music is accessible and there are some very good [...]

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The Overcoat

There’s some lovely stage imagery, with excellent design and lighting, and for 15 or 20 mins you are intrigued.
I’m afraid that from then on it seemed to me like an imaginative, original but repetitive and utterly pointless adaptation of a Gogol play.
After 75 minutes, it felt longer but less rewarding than King Lear……and the director, [...]

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Stovepipe

This is a play about private security employees in post-war Iraq which takes place in a vast space underneath a shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush. It’s a promenade performance and you move from the Re-building Iraq conference & exhibition to a convoy from Baghdad airport to a hotel bedroom to the hotel dining room to a [...]

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Twelfth Night – Shochiku Grand Kabuki

It was an extraordinary meeting of cultures at the Barbican last week; even the audience was almost exactly 50-50 British-Japanese. 
The occasion was another visit by Yukio Ninagawa, one of the world’s great theatre directors, who has proved particularly adept directing Shakespeare in Japan and has brought so much of it to the UK. On this occasion though, he [...]

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The Convicts Opera

This is a bit of a hit-and-miss affair, I’m afraid. It’s John Gay’s 18th century Beggars Opera being rehearsed by convicts on a ship en route to Australia. Unfortunately, alternating between the journey and the play makes it bitty, confusing and irritating.
 
The musical standards, however, are exceptional and the addition of contemporary songs really works. The [...]

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The Tempest

This co-production between the RSC and South Africa’s Baxter Theatre sets the play in colonial Africa. It works really well, looking rather like The Lion King – very colourful – with an atmospheric musical soundscape.
I can’t say Anthony Sher’s Prospero is his finest moment, but it’s wonderful to see him on stage with John Kani, whose Caliban [...]

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Over There

It’s a terrific idea – German re-unification told through twins brought up on either side of the wall after being split between their parents at age 2 – and it gets off to a great start; intriguing and captivating.
 The trouble is it runs out of steam ever so quickly and smothers the idea with ‘look [...]

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King Lear

Well, this much maligned production may not be a classic one, but it is very good.
 
It seems that many of the ‘gimmicks’ the critics complained about at its Liverpool opening have been lost and what’s left is a very clear reading of the play with some fine performances.
 
I liked Pete Postlethwaite’s Lear, but [...]

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Austentatious

This show, about an accident-prone theatre company mounting a new adaptation of Pride & Prejudice, is more of a musical farce than a musical comedy and it’s a whole lot of fun.
The book, music and lyrics are all very good, but what makes the evening is a faultless ensemble of young professionals with impeccable [...]

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Plague Over England

This first play by the Evening Standard’s vitriolic theatre critic is deeply old-fashioned, riddled with caricatures, cliches and stale jokes.
Though the event at it’s core – John Geilgud’s arrest in a gents toilet – may not have been, the historical territory and the issues have been well covered before. This play doesn’t add or illuminate anything and cramming 28 [...]

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