Harold Pinter Theatre
Two hours of yakking about Israel: Giant, at the Harold Pinter Theatre, reviewed
Two hours of yakking about Israel. That’s all you get from Giant at the Harold Pinter Theatre. Endless wittering laced…
If you have two hours to spare, spend it anywhere but here: The Years reviewed
The Years is a monologue spoken by a handful of actresses, some young, some old enough to carry bus passes.…
Germ of an idea
Bleach and germs are the central themes of Dr Semmelweis, written by Mark Rylance and Stephen Brown. The opening scene,…
Chekhov in a straitjacket
The Southbury Child is a comedy drama set in east Devon featuring a distressed vicar, Fr David, with a complex…
Watching the detective
Producers are getting jittery again. Large-scale shows look risky when a single infection can postpone an entire show. Hence Poirot…
The National is the graveyard of talent
Somewhere in the wilds of England a stately home is collapsing. Rising floodwaters threaten the foundations. Storms break over the…
Phantom thread
Blithe Spirit is a comedy with the plot of a horror story. Charles, a middle-aged novelist, lives happily with his…
Kitsch tomfoolery
The latest movie to turn into a musical is Amélie, from 2001, about a Parisian do-gooder or ‘godmother of the…
Doing Chekhov by halves
Uncle Vanya opens with a puzzle. Is the action set in the early 20th century or right now? The furnishings…
The greatest actor in the world couldn’t salvage David Hare’s batty adaptation: Peer Gynt reviewed
The National Theatre’s boss, Rufus Norris, has confessed that he ‘took his eye off the ball’ when it came to…
Danny Dyer is not so much an actor as a fairground attraction: Pinter Seven reviewed
The Dumb Waiter is a one-act play from 1957 that retains an extraordinary hold over the minds of theatre-goers. It’s…
A facile indulgence: Pinter Six reviewed
The cast of Party Time includes John Simm, Celia Imrie, Ron Cook, Gary Kemp and other celebrities. They play a…
One masterpiece, one dud and one interesting rediscovery: Pinter Five reviewed
One masterpiece, one dud, and one interesting rediscovery. That’s Pinter Five. Victoria Station is a hilarious sketch which might have…
One of the finest productions I’ve seen at the Globe – a triumph of crony casting: Macbeth reviewed
Michelle Terry, chatelaine of the Globe, wants to put an end to penis-led Shakespeare by casting women in roles intended…
Pinter comes across as an eccentric lightweight scribbler: Pinter Two reviewed
Pinter Two, the second leg of the Pinter season, offers us a pair of one-act comedies. The Lover is a…
After 1980 Pinter began to write like a student troll: Pinter at the Pinter reviewed
The drop-curtain resembles a granite slab on which the genius’s name has been carved for all time. The festival of…
Class act
Cripes. How did I get that one wrong? A few issues back I blithely predicted that Harry Hill’s musical I…
Quest for Tank Man
Chimerica. The weird title of Lucy Kirkwood’s hit play conjoins the names of the eastern and western superpowers and promises…
