Barbican Archives - North West End UK

20Jun

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

Kiss Me, Kate – Barbican

What rhymes with Coriolanus? Kiss Me, Kate is one of Cole Porter’s musical and lyrical triumphs with each melody seeming catchier than the last and every turn of phrase pushing the envelope further. Although its source material, Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew is hardly considered radical, Porter’s daring sense of humour and lecherous joy in lewd lyricism give this show an undeniable boldness. Its characters are imperfect. Not only are their love lives tempestuous, but every aspect of their personal lives is magnificently messy. Director Bartlett Sher in this production attempts some half-hearted tidying of the grand imbroglio that is this play within a musical within a musical but achieves much the same effect as using a dab of Purell to clean up mud-caked hands. Adrian Dunbar is ...

30Jun

By Gemma PrinceNo Comments

London

A Strange Loop – Barbican

Nominated for 11 Tony Awards including Best New Musical, A Strange Loop, Michael R. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, has just landed at the Barbican for a strictly limited season. The meta musical tells the story of Usher, a young, gay, and Black writer, desperate to escape his life as a theatre usher, so decides to write a musical about a young, gay, Black writer whose writing a musical about a young, gay, Black writer...and so on. We see Usher struggle with his identity, sexuality, and desires while trying to navigate the harsh modern world and the circles within circles of his life. Directed by Stephen Brackett, Usher is joined by the hilarious six-person ensemble who personify his inner thoughts and feelings from self-loathing to sexual ambivalence. Kyle Ramar Freeman who l...

4May

By Anisha AnantpurkarNo Comments

London

The World’s Wife – Barbican

Clad in red, sitting on blocks shaped like the roof of a house, the Ragazze Quartet sit while Baritone Lucia Lucas stands leaning against the roof with her back to the audience. The sound of one violin and Lucia Lucas’ baritone radiates through the theatre. We don’t see her sing, all we see are the choreographed responses of the rest of the Ragazze Quartet. For the entirety of the performance we are immersed in a production where words, sound, and movement are in conversation with one another as they tell us the stories of women hidden from history. The performance The World’s Wife is based on and named after the book of collection of poems by Carol Ann Duffy’s. It includes the poems The Little Red Cap, Pilate’s Wife, Salome, Mrs. Icarus, Medusa, Mrs Aesop, Anne Hathaway, Mrs Beast, Que...

15Apr

By Gonzalo SentanaNo Comments

London

Life is A Dream – Barbican

Life without consequences. Life as theatre. The great stage of the world. Life as a dream, and dreams as dreams. Welcome to the undying and unrelentlessly current world of Calderon de la Barca. In the huge stage of the Barbican, the companies Cheek by Jowl, LAZONA and Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico join forces to bring this oneiric classic to life, with a staging irreverent and bold, but thoughtfully provoking and challenging. Directed by Declan Donellan, and Design by Nick Ornerod, the stage is very simple yet effective in its metaphor: the audience is received by a wall of doors that will open and close during the performance, to let characters in, but also to hide and show the farce that is about to be shown. The known story of Segismundo, played by Alfredo Noval born ill-fat...