Cancel culture meets Molière’s comedy of manners The National’s Lyttelton Theatre is currently home to a new contemporary version of Molière’s The Misanthrope directed by National Theatre Director Indhu Rubasingham (The Father and the Assassin). This is not the first time that playwright Martin Crimp has rewritten Molière’s classic. His 1996 version premiered at the […]
The Authenticator
In The Authenticator, the act of proving what is real becomes inseparable from uncovering what has been deliberately hidden Some years ago, I travelled to Antigua to cover Sailing Week, an extravagant festival held every year at the end of the Caribbean sailing season with exclusive champagne parties, mega-yachts with professional crew and massive events […]
Man and Boy at the Dorfman Theatre
Rattigan Redux We are in the throes of something approaching a Terence Rattigan revival. Last year, The Deep Blue Sea came to London from Bath with Tamsin Greig in the lead role and received flattering reviews, and In Praise of Love ran for a month at the Orange Tree in Richmond. There has even been […]
The Playboy of the Western World at the Lyttelton Theatre
A Trip into the Heart of Rural Ireland There’s been a big buzz about the new National production of J.M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World. It has a starry cast led by Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton), who is reuniting on stage with her Derry Girls colleague Siobhán McSweeney. With fellow Irish actor Éanna Hardwicke (The […]
Ballet Shoes at the National Theatre
Ballet Shoes Shines Bright on the Olivier Stage This Christmas Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes has always carried a glow of nostalgia, not least for me, as my mother adored the novel and the Fossil sisters helped spark my early love of theatre. This festive season, the story returns for a second run at the National […]
End at The Dorfman Theatre
Last Night a DJ Saved My Life Last night I was in the recently refurbished Dorfman Theatre at the National for End, the final part of David Eldridge’s trilogy of plays about love in the context of relationships. Beginning, the first of the three plays, was set in November 2015, Middle in February 2016 and […]
Hamlet at National Theatre
A charming production of Hamlet surprisingly lacking in tragedy Hamlet can be fun. But can it be tragic at the same time? While this latest production at the National Theatre proves the former, it fails to prove the latter. There are laughs throughout and the audience is charmed by the actors’ frequent engagement with it, […]
The Land of the Living – National Theatre
Juliet Stephenson stars in new play by David Lan ‘Were they measuring the children?’ a UN worker asks, as she lifts a heavy metal tool out of a trunk. Unfamiliar to her, but all too familiar for the audience, the instruments passed around by the cast are callipers and anthropometers, all tools associated with Nazi […]
Nye at the Olivier Theatre
In this polished, surreal production spanning decades, Nye looks back at his life, from his childhood as the son of a coal miner father growing up in Tredegar, South Wales, to his rise as a politician who changed the health service for us all. Nye was an enigmatic powerhouse, but interestingly, we first meet him at his most vulnerable: in a hospital bed in pyjamas, being wheeled back onto a ward after having an operation. It is 1960, and while Nye is dying, his beloved NHS is flourishing.
The Estate – Dorfman, National Theatre
The clues are all there in the cast list. Each character is presented with their alma mater and professional title, a precise and telling shorthand. From the elegant and composed Sangeeta (Dinita Gohil), a product of St Paul’s Girls’ and Jesus College, Oxford, to the razor-sharp Isaac (Fode Simbo), ostensibly from the “Diversity Access Scheme” but later revealed to have been a day boy at Westminster, the details are meticulously drawn.