Rachael Stirling Archives - North West End UK

28Sep

By Alice RoseNo Comments

London

Giant – Royal Court

In 1983, weeks before Roald Dahl’s new book ‘The Witches’ is to be released, a fury is coming back round to question and confront Dahl’s recent book review in which he comments on Tony Clifton’s ‘God Cried’ picture book. This review sparked a huge amount of controversy and corrupted Dahl’s sweet and humorous image. In this imagined piece, Mark Rosenblatt creates a fictitious afternoon in which Dahl’s publicists are pushing for an apology for his review. John Lithgow as a superbly complex Dahl is adamant on standing by his beliefs no matter the consequences to who might cull his books from the shelves. Rosenblatt comments that this piece although fictitious, has intertwined verbatim comments made from Dahl on this matter. As our current day viewers are now confronted with the long hi...

Private Lives – Donmar Warehouse

Michael Longhurst's revival of Noel Coward's classic play downplays the lightness and wit of Coward's dialogue and emphasises the violence of the relationship between the two main characters. Elliott and Amanda. The plot is familiar: two honeymooning couples happen to occupy adjoining balconies in their seaside resort, and unfortunately one of the members of each of the couples used to be married to the other. When they discover this and overcome their initial shock and horror, they realise that their underlying love for each other is much stronger than they have for the nonentities whom they have recently married. The first scene takes place on the two balconies and the rest of the play takes place in a Paris apartment, to which Elliott and Amanda have escaped from their new spouses...

Scandaltown – Lyric Hammersmith

Mike Bartlett's Scandaltown is contemporary London writ very large - big, crass, rollicking London as Restoration comedy. As Cromwell banned theatre in the 17th Century, and Covid managed to do the same in the 21st, both led to a restoration of theatre to (hopefully) their former glory. In Scandaltown there are debauched parties, lies, social media manipulation and cancel culture putting the reputation and power of London's political and social elite at stake. So, it's just about as topical as it gets. The story centres on the thoroughly woke Phoebe Virtue who, when she hears news (on Instagram of course) that her twin brother Jack is up to no good in London, she heads to town to find and save him. In true comedy fashion, she disguises herself as a man and persuades Jenny, Freddie an...