London Archives - Page 13 of 167

8Mar

By Stewart Who?No Comments

London

tell me straight / aggy – Park Theatre

Despite an avoidance of capital letters, ‘tell me straight’ follows sold-out runs at The King’s Head and Chiswick Playhouse. Paul Bradshaw’s play explores sexuality and dating in a semi- autobiographical coming of age drama. Writer and co-producer Paul Bradshaw stars as the character known only as ‘Him’. Flashing back to childhood and progressing to the present day, it’s a comedic journey of sexual adventures, but mostly charts a chaotic fetish for straight men. Fresh from playing Alexander the Great in a Netflix historical drama, Buck Braithwaite abandons smouldering soldier homoerotica and plays a roll call of men who have little idea what to do with their sword, never mind their helmet. He pulls it off with considerable skill. In fact, the nuances of sexual confusion that Braithwaite...

5Mar

By Dave SmithNo Comments

London

Our Town – Rose Theatre

Michael Sheen is the Artistic Director of Welsh National Theatre, and this is their inaugural production, co-produced by Rose Theatre themselves. Sheen has put his money where his mouth is, funding WNT himself. They begin with an American classic, Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. While this may not sound innately Welsh - the tale of a quintessential American town - it is said that Dylan Thomas was familiar with both Wilder and his play when he wrote Under Milk Wood. So, we take ourselves to Grover’s Corners, a small town with a Welsh accent somewhere, well let’s just say somewhere. The Stage Manager guides the audience through the story, introduces us to a number of the inhabitants and we jump back and forward in time to follow their trials and tribulations. Sheen himself plays the Sta...

5Mar

By Zain RussellNo Comments

London

Double Indemnity – Richmond Theatre

Double Indemnity is a thrilling stage adaptation that dives deep into the darker side of human nature, exploring how lust, greed, and temptation can drive even the most ordinary people toward murder. The play captures the essence of classic noir storytelling, asking the audience to consider just how far someone might go when love and money become intertwined. The story follows insurance broker Walter Huff, played by Ciarán Owens, whose seemingly routine job takes a dangerous turn when he meets Phyllis Nirdlinger, the wife of one of his clients. Phyllis, portrayed by the wonderful Mischa Barton, quickly draws Walter into an illicit affair. What begins as flirtation soon escalates into something far more sinister, as the two begin plotting the murder of Phyllis’s husband in order to claim...

5Mar

By Stewart Who?No Comments

London

Broken Glass – Young Vic

Unlike Arthur Miller’s heralded classics, Broken Glass is not a play that turns up on the syllabus or tests the skills of the nation’s amateur dramatic societies. As one of Miller’s later plays (1994), it’s not the best example of his genius. It’s a complex oddity that mixes history, symbolism and the challenges of identity into an itchy and overly ambitious psychodrama. The play was first performed in Connecticut in June 1994 and had its UK premiere in August of the same year at the Lyttelton Theatre. It bagged the 1995 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play and was nominated for a 1994 Tony. The play has an undeniable history of mixed reviews, but this particular production drew curious anticipation thanks to the presence of director Jordan Fein. Young Vic scored a coup by getting F...

Jeffery Bernard is Unwell – Coach & Horses

4Mar

By Stewart Who?No Comments

London

Jeffery Bernard is Unwell – Coach & Horses

The tempting novelty inherent to this production of Jeffery Bernard is Unwell by Keith Waterhouse, is the fact it’s staged in Soho’s Coach & Horses pub on Dean St. This iconic boozer was once a magnet for bohemian artists, day drinkers and creative ‘characters’ such as the journalist Jeffery Bernard who worked for The Spectator. Bernard’s column, popular throughout the 1970s, was titled Low Life and described by Jonathan Meades as a “suicide note in weekly instalments.” Bernard was still alive when this play first hit the West End in 1989, and the production proved a hugely successful vehicle for Peter O’Toole in the leading role. The show returned a year later to the Old Vic, where it enjoyed a sell-out run and was filmed in front of a live audience. It’s hard to imagine a theatre ...

28Feb

By Klervi GavetNo Comments

London

Last and First Men – Coronet Theatre

At a time when humankind seems increasingly determined to write itself out of its own timeline, Neon Dance’s Last and First Men feels uncannily well placed. This 65-minute movement piece is a resonant speculative journey, with at its heart an act of listening: to the future, to the deep past, and to the fragile thread that still connects them. Based on Olaf Stapledon’s visionary 1930s sci-fi novel, the piece imagines a far future in which the last remnants of humanity reach back across two billion years to address us, the “first men”. Under the inspired direction of Adrienne Hart, the dancers — Fukiko Takase, Aoi Nakamura and Kelvin Kilonzo — perform with an otherworldly, masterful precision that feels recognisably human yet unmistakably other, as if the genus Homo had remained while th...

28Feb

By Stewart Who?No Comments

London

16 Postcodes – King’s Head Theatre

Like all big cities, London has always been a challenging place to live and work. Smog, sewage, soot and squalor have held the city together for centuries. However, the past 20 years has seen a dramatic escalation in factors that largely render the capital an exclusive urban enclave. London’s once cosmopolitan centre is now only affordable for a super-rich, culturally hollow, elite echelon of society. The shocking expense of being alive, blended with a housing crisis, stagnant wages and a generous slug of austerity, means that a simple day out in London becomes a Hunger Games battle for sanity and a surviving bank balance. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution has become crueller than nature, with gentrification, zero-hours contracts and inherited wealth skewing the odds. Writing review...

28Feb

By Charles PipeNo Comments

London

Savage – White Bear Theatre

Savage is admiral in its efforts to spread information about the atrocities committed by lesser-known Nazi war criminal Carl Værnet, and his post-war escape to Argentina. Værnet was a Danish doctor who attempted to “cure” homosexuality, and his methods involved human experimentation on concentration camp inmates. After the war, he was captured and detained in a British prisoner of war camp, but was able to escape, with the British and Danish governments perhaps even aiding him in starting a new life in Argentina. Gay conversion therapy, of which Værnet was a proponent, is legal in the UK and Denmark. Despite the play’s noble intentions, Savage is not particularly enlightening or powerful. As an exposé of Værnet, it provides only the most surface level information, and as a drama it fall...

The Village Where No One Suffers – Jack Studio Theatre

27Feb

By Paul AckroydNo Comments

London

The Village Where No One Suffers – Jack Studio Theatre

Four years on from the start of the disastrous and unnecessary Ukraine war, which has brought so much suffering to the Ukrainian people and changed the world for all of us, is a good time to stage a theatrical drama about these troubled times. But this play written by Polia Polozhentseva and playing at the Jack Studio Theatre is a very odd one to choose. It is located in a village in rural Ukraine which has barely been affected by the war; no missile strikes, no deaths or injuries, no damaged buildings and no conscription. Lukyana has returned from her comfortable life in Poland to visit her late grandmother's house, where she has fond childhood memories of growing up with her grandparents. She is responding to her grandmother's wish that she should spend some time in ...

26Feb

By Zain RussellNo Comments

London

Dracula – National Youth Theatre

Everyone knows the classic Gothic horror tale of Dracula, first written by Bram Stoker, but the National Youth Theatre offers a bold reinterpretation that feels almost like two plays in one. The first act remains largely faithful to the spirit of the original story. Sasha Jagsi commands centre stage as the young woman who has been bitten by Dracula and is visited nightly as he continues to drain her blood. Her portrayal captures the terrifying uncertainty of a character questioning her own sanity: is she unwell, losing her mind, or actually dying? Through visions, night terrors and sleepwalking episodes, the audience is drawn into her psychological unravelling. Jagsi’s slow, deliberate movements and her haunting, bewitching stare out towards the audience create an unsettling atmosphere....