Typical off-West End, though you’d expect Soho Theatre to programme something more enticing (and I’m definitely enticed by Burning Doors). Writer Owen McCafferty and Director Adam Penford’s Unfaithful is of the barely-enough variety, the kind of play that chucks rough sex and swears around to raise the room temperature (in the dramatic sense, not in […]
It is always difficult to adapt something that is as ingrained in popular culture as the 1993 movie Groundhog Day, particularly when such a film’s very title and premise have entered the modern lexicon. The musical certainly had a large degree of hype behind it, not least owing to the news that the book and lyrics […]
Every other month, seven playwrights come together at The Tank in Manhattan to engage in a creative collaborative process that results in seventy minutes of artistry sharing common themes and elements. The structure of Rule of 7×7, the brainchild of writer and producer Brett Epstein, sounds simple – seven writers conceive of and produce seven […]
“Master Harold”… and the Boys This South African-set one-act by Athol Fugard takes a long time to get going but, once it does, it’s a gut punch. The idea is that James Daly’s charming brat Hally is super chummy with the two black men who work at his family’s diner (his parents are offstage dealing […]
The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God In commissioning Lisa Codrington to adapt Shaw’s short story about a missionary-raised black girl searching for meaning in the African jungle, artistic director Jackie Maxwell kills a whole host of important birds with a single stone: 1- Find a memorable and entertaining one-act for […]
The Aeneid Under the guise of greek mythology, playwright Olivier Kemeid (with translator Maureen Labonté) and director Keira Loughran have snuck an honest-to-god contemporary piece of full-length theatre into the Stratford Festival. A shamelessly modern story about the refugee crisis told through physical theatre (something you rarely see even in the studio) with a young, […]
Runts School can be rough, but one can hope it’s never as rough as it is in Runts. Set in an English state school, it tells the story of a class of girls in a school filled with bullies, uncertainty and cat fights. It depicts the kind of school many parents dread because children don’t feel […]
I’m calling the Shaw Festival’s Uncle Vanya a “must-see” without having really seen it. I’ve attended the show twice and can, by cobbling some pieces together, confidently say it’s the brightest light of their generally disappointing season. But I’ve never seen it the way you will see it if you do as you’re told and […]