[back from Berlin I had one last spin for Time Out for old times’ sake] Thanks to his inclusion in theatre studies A-Level alongside Brecht and Stanislavsky, Steven Berkoff has long enjoyed a reputation out of all proportion to his achievements. The flip side of this is that he also suffers more cynicism than most. […]
Veteran playwright Peter Nichols’s new drama seems to be based half on his memories of teaching English as a foreign language in post-war Florence, and half on The History Boys. There’s a remarkable degree of similarity between the way that the two staff rooms seem to function as metaphorical microcosms, even unto the long-suffering female […]
Ninon Jerome’s production of Wolf Mankowitz’s short 1953 play has already gathered enough favourable notices elsewhere that its run has been extended. For the life of me, I really can’t understand why. The play is an adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s short story, albeit one which removes roughly three quarters of the plot and takes such […]
British Parliament, like the Tricycle theatre, is still essentially run by men. Only 22% of MPs are women (143/650), just as only 17% of the playwrights who contributed plays to the Tricycle’s last multi-play cycle about Afghanistan were women (2/12). However, to explore the issue of women and political power, artistic director Nicolas Kent has […]
John Graham Davies’s monologue is inspired by the story of Liverpool fan Mark Radley, who ended up watching a European cup final between Liverpool and AC Milan sitting next to Silvio Berlusconi. That encounter barely takes up the injury time of this football match length show, though. It’s the back story that counts. Davies has […]
Appropriately enough for a version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Victorian horror story, Jonny Kemp’s adaptation of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has something of a split personality. One minute it’s larking about somewhere between the music hall and The Goon Show, sending up Victoriana and doing all sorts of funny voices; the next minute it’s […]
Why stage Hippolytus? Does this story of Aphrodite destroying a young man who refuses the advances of his step-milf say anything to us? Are we hankering for a return to lengthy slabs of verbose speech? Is it anything other than cruel to take plays designed for vast outdoor amphitheatres and cram them into tiny black […]
It’s a bold move for a new venue to announce its presence with a short season of Romanian New Writing, but if Rachel Parish’s taut, naturalistic British premiere of Gabriel Pintilei’s Elevator is anything to go by, The New Diorama will soon be established as a must-visit destination for London’s discerning theatregoers. The premise of […]
Review by programme notes: “Getting Away was conceived by Gillian Foley (director) and Sarah Henley (writer). Sarah and Gillian have built Getting Away around their specific aptitudes and interests in theatre by using multi-role play, physical theatre and improvisation.” “Sarah is a big fan of John Godber, in whose plays she first witnessed the joys […]
Les 7 Doigts de la Main’s last show, Traces, garnered all sorts of rave reviews when it opened in Edinburgh with pundits lauding its “intimacy” and “fragility”. On this showing, it looks like the success has gone to the company’s head, without much attention being paid to what it was that made them successful. Granted […]
Andrew Haydon 
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