The National’s version of a modest summer hit is The Motherfucker With the Hat, a vulgar look at a man trying to overcome his addictions and stick to his moral code. This man is Jackie, an ex-con who struggles to maintain a relationship after he finds out his coke-addled partner has been sleeping with the […]
Letter To Larry has the advantage of being a play that one cannot reasonably turn away from. It does this by its dialectics—past and present; stage and life; mania and depression—to the effect that the audience is engrossed and rarely numbed by the terrible sadness of it all. This balance is clearly a troublesome one […]
Get lost down the rabbit hole, immerse yourself in the madness and enter the freakishly wonderful world of Alice. Hidden away in the Waterloo Vaults, a beautiful and unique experience has been created as Les Enfants Terribles explore Lewis Carroll’s timeless novel. Alice’s Adventures Underground is an interactive theatrical piece consisting of a maze of […]
The Iris Theatre’s Pinocchio is a show for children. That does not necessarily preclude an adult from enjoying it, but the adult in question will have to find the childish part of their brain (as long as it still exists). Pinocchio is a kid’s show because it is not layered: it does not entertain both […]
There is nothing like the Iris Theatre’s outdoor season in London. It is usually the summer, you have been working all day and you venture to Covent Garden; no, not to see the buskers, although there is some similarity to the Iris and what goes on only metres away. You gather around the performers, starting […]
As part of their eclectic ‘Summer Season’ week, Sedos has put on a series of scenes from six American plays, each with distinctive moods and dynamics. I say dynamics because that it was most apparent in the selection we were given by the director Alex Magliaro. Despite the almost century-wide gap between the plays’ various […]
Robert Icke wants to do something with his adaptation of The Oresteia. He wants to smooth out the contrivances of Aeschylus’ original tragedy while increasing the emotional intensity. While I applaud that effort—recontextualisation is crucial for modern theatre—the funny thing is that for all its clever techniques, Oresteia leaves me wanting more formality in these […]
It is refreshing when a rarer musical pops up on the London fringe circuit, and this production of The Baker’s Wife does a fine job at demonstrating one of composer Stephen Schwartz’s lesser known works. The intimate Drayton Arms Theatre serves perfectly as the local French village where the show is set and the stage […]