The hot dog summit Springwood, which has just opened at Hampstead Theatre, is a historical drama that tells the story of the 1939 meeting at Franklin (Robert Lindsay) and Eleanor (Jemma Redgrave) Roosevelt’s New York estate, Hyde Park, with King George VI (Andrew Havill) and Queen Elizabeth (Rebecca Night). The King hopes to garner American […]
Stage Kiss at Hampstead Theatre
An eccentric romcom about theatre itself From Casablanca to Titanic, kisses are the crown jewels of the most memorable sequences in entertainment history. Yet, behind the scenes, in gloomy rehearsal rooms, intimacy between performers is often without electricity. Kissing strangers is an actor’s bread and butter, and Sarah Ruhl’s Stage Kiss runs with the weirdness […]
Copenhagen – Hampstead Theatre
A lesson in quantum mechanics, ethics and human connection With wars breaking out around the globe and the geopolitics unsteady, the reprisal of Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen at Hampstead Theatre feels uncomfortably prescient. As bombings of nuclear facilities are shown on our news programmes, a play reflecting on the 1930s race to understand nuclear fission and […]
Bird Grove – Hampstead Theatre
Finding a voice amidst societal expectations Bird Grove is the story of a young woman, fascinated by books and ideas, who breaks free of societal expectations to pursue a career as a writer. That writer was George Eliot, but she does not yet assume that identity in the course of the play. Written by Alexi […]
Indian Ink – Hampstead Theatre
Hampstead Theatre reprises Tom Stoppard’s play. It seems especially poignant that Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink opens at Hampstead Theatre soon after the playwright’s death a few weeks ago. First premiered in London in 1995, Indian Ink returns to London with one of the original actors, Felicity Kendal, for whom Stoppard wrote the original radio play […]
Fatherland at Hampstead Theatre
An unrelenting road trip through family dysfunction ‘My name is Winston Smith and only good things happen to me’ incants the protagonist of Fatherland. It’s a prophecy, a mantra and a delusion – the meanings of which fuel a father-daughter drama that resists easy reconciliations. Road journeys are hard to accomplish in theatre. Chloé Zhao’s […]
The Assembled Parties – Hampstead Theatre
The Assembled Parties follows the travails of a Jewish family living in New York’s Upper West Side over a twenty-year arc from 1980 to 2000. Written by Richard Greenberg, it premiered on Broadway in 2013 and is now having its UK premiere at Hampstead Theatre.
The Billionaire Inside Your Head, Hampstead Theatre
The Hampstead Downstairs is an incubator of new writers where I have seen some terrific new plays over the years. The Billionaire Inside Our Head is one such. The play is well written – both comedic and downright scary, with strong performances and the most accurate depiction of the internal workings of OCD that I have seen on stage.
Review: Titus Andronicus at Hampstead Theatre – Shakespeare’s Darkest Play Revisited
This blood-soaked production squeezes the guts out of Shakespeare’s vengeful maniacs. There is so much blood and gore in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus that, at some points, the audience cannot help but laugh. By the time his sons’ severed heads are brought to him in plastic bags, even Titus himself begins to laugh. “Why,” he says, […]
Showmanism
I have never seen a production quite like Showmanism. Throughout this electrifying one-man show, creator and performer Dickie Beau explores the history of theatre, transforming himself into an array of dramatis personae.