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Review: Pinter Five, Harold Pinter Theatre

Jane Horrocks and Rupert Graves shine in Pinter Five, featuring The Room, Victoria Station and Family Voices at the Harold Pinter Theatre

“You know where you are here”

Pinter Five sees Patrick Marber, someone who could call Harold Pinter a friend and colleague, take the directorial wheel as he presents a triple-bill of The Room, Victoria Station and Family Voices, delving further into the wealth of short plays left behind by the playwright.

The first half is taken up by Pinter’s first play, 1957’s The Room, a prototype for so much of what was to come as he settled into his distinctive voice. The air of menacing strangeness looming over seemingly everyday situations, visitors who disrupt and disturb, relationships that can never be quite pinned down… Continue reading “Review: Pinter Five, Harold Pinter Theatre”

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The Jamie Lloyd Company announces cast for charity gala to celebrate Harold Pinter’s birthday

– Tom Hiddleston, Kristin Scott Thomas, Kit Harington, Simon Russell Beale, Indira Varma, Zawe Ashton and many more announced

–   Happy Birthday, Harold will take place on what would have been the Nobel Prize winning playwright’s 88th birthday on October 10th

–   Charity event will raise money for Amnesty International and Chance to Shine

–   Tickets are on sale now

Continue reading “The Jamie Lloyd Company announces cast for charity gala to celebrate Harold Pinter’s birthday”

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Review: Exit the King, National Theatre

Undeniably challenging but ultimately thought-provoking and impeccably designed, Exit the King plays at the National Theatre this summer

“You are going to die at the end of the play”

There’s something intriguing about the fact that Eugène Ionesco has never been programmed at the National Theatre before, perhaps a long-present euroscepticism guarding against a writer at the vanguard of the French avant garde scene (give how much Beckett gets staged, it’s clearly not anti-absurdism). But Rufus Norris has looked to rectify this by commissioning a new version of Le Roi se meurt from Patrick Marber, who also directs here.

And as an absurdist drama, Exit the King suggests a bit of different thinking. On the face of it, it’s a simple enough tale – a man is told he only has a day left to live and struggles to deal with it. But that man is a king – King Bérenger – and he’s over 400 years old. And his kingdom is dying around him, with him, stone walls cracking and crumbling away, its people disappearing into the ether, the darkness swallowing everything up whole.   Continue reading “Review: Exit the King, National Theatre”

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TV Review: A Very English Scandal

Hugh Grant delivers a career best performance in the hugely enjoyable A Very English Scandal. Just don’t mention your National Insurance card.

“Tell him not to talk. And not to write to my mother describing acts of anal sex under any circumstances whatsoever”

I don’t think I’ve ever been chilled quite so much by the end credits of anything like A Very English Scandal. You know, that bit when you find out what happened next to the people who you’ve just been watching. It helps of course that I knew nothing about the 1970s Jeremy Thorpe affair on which it was based but still, never have 11 dogs and a missing NI card seemed so ominous.

Written by Russell T Davies, adapted from John Preston’s book, and directed by Stephen Frears, A Very English Scandal is a complete breath of fresh air. Perhaps surprisingly for a true-life tale of sex, politics and attempted murder, it has a quirky, almost jolly tone that is hugely enjoyable, deftly comic as it negotiates the would-be Machiavellian moves of a politician desperate to save his skin. Continue reading “TV Review: A Very English Scandal”

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Pinter at the Pinter

The Jamie Lloyd Company, Ambassador Theatre Group, Benjamin Lowy Productions, Gavin Kalin Productions and Glass Half Full Productions present an extraordinary season of Harold Pinter’s one-act plays on the tenth anniversary of the Nobel Prize winner’s death, performed in the theatre that bears his name.

Pinter at the Pinter is a unique event featuring all twenty short plays written by the greatest British playwright of the 20thCentury. They have never been performed together in a season of this kind. Continue reading “Pinter at the Pinter”

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The complete 72nd Tony nominations

Best play
The Children
Farinelli and the King
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two
Junk
Latin History for Morons

Best musical
The Band’s Visit
Frozen
Mean Girls
SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical

Best book of a musical
Itamar Moses for The Band’s Visit
Jennifer Lee for Frozen
Tina Fey for Mean Girls
Kyle Jarrow for SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical Continue reading “The complete 72nd Tony nominations”

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Nominations for 2017-2018 Outer Critics Circle Awards

John Gassner Playwriting Award
Kate Benson, [PORTO]
Jocelyn Bioh, School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play
Lindsey Ferrentino, Army and the Orphans
Meghan Kennedy, Napoli, Brooklyn
Dominique Morisseau, Pipeline

Outstanding Actor in a Musical
Harry Hadden-Paton, My Fair Lady
Joshua Henry, Carousel
David M. Lutken, Woody Sez
Conor Ryan, Desperate Measures
Ethan Slater, SpongeBob SquarePants
Continue reading “Nominations for 2017-2018 Outer Critics Circle Awards”

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Review: Venus in Fur, Theatre Royal Haymarket

Despite the sharpness and cleverness of the writing which at times is bitingly funny, does Venus in Furs go far enough to not be part of the #MeToo problem itself?

“It’s a serious novel. It’s a central text of world literature.
‘Basically it’s S&M porn'”

What a charged moment for Venus in Fur to open into. As the fallout from the Harvey Weinstein revelations continues to reverberate around social media and perhaps even society at large, a play about the sexual dynamic between an actress and and a director and the erotic power play that emerges out of her audition feels…challenging. Intriguingly written, thought-provokingly staged and superbly acted, it nevertheless left something niggling at me.

David Ives’ play was extremely well received off- and on-Broadway at the beginning of this decade and it has a tricksy cleverness to its meta-textual construction and surfeit of theatrical in-jokes. A brash young playwright has spent a long day auditioning for his adaptation of Venus in Furs, an 1869 novel by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who literally put the masochism in S&M. Arriving late and swearing like a trooper, Vanda pleads for the chance to be heard but as an eventual audition becomes a read-through, little is as it seems. Continue reading “Review: Venus in Fur, Theatre Royal Haymarket”

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Not-a-review: Travesties, Apollo

“It may be nonsense but at least it’s not clever nonsense”

The problem with being addicted to theatre is that it can be hard to turn down things, even against your better instincts. I knew I didn’t really want to see Travesties so I didn’t go to the Menier but sure enough, it transferred into the West End to test my resistance further and I crumbled.

I should not have done.

Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes (with interval)
Booking until 29th April

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Round-up of news and treats and other interesting things

Next week sees the 9th Gay Art Festival GFEST start, an eclectic showcase of art, films, and performance work by LGBTQI artists from London, UK and beyond. There’s all sorts to choose from – full details here – with this year’s theme being OUT [in the Margins] and some of the things piquing my interest are European films Jonathan and Brothers of the Night, at Rich Mix and Arthouse Crouch End respectively, and trans documentary The Pearl on at Rich Mix on 15th November. You might be interested in their performance night at the RADA Studio on the 19th November too, a 2 hour double bill of LGBTQI music and dance narratives. Visit their website at www.gaywisefestival.org.uk. Continue reading “Round-up of news and treats and other interesting things”