London Road should never have worked on stage. It really shouldn’t work on screen. It's a musical about a horrible news story – a series of murders of prostitutes in eastern England committed by Steve Wright, who was convicted in 2006. The writer Alecky Blythe, who has developed a morally telling form of verbatim theatre that preserves her interviewees’ vocal quirks and stumbles, paired up with … [Read more...]
Archives for June 2015
Act of worship
Status update: Waiting for Godot and I have decided to stop seeing each other. I guess it won’t come as a surprise. Things have been pretty bad for a while. Looking back, I can’t remember when we were last happy. Or even interested in each other. In my head, I have a perfect version of Samuel Beckett’s play: not in the details of staging, just one that has some of the effect I’ve had when … [Read more...]
Second act
Sylvie Guillem and the changing shape of a dance career The options for a dancer when the plié turns to rust have conventionally been restricted. Teacher, family or ballet mistress. Some became choreographers or artistic directors; others, it was rumoured, were lured behind the opera house with the promise of fresh pasture and sugar lumps and never heard from again. Sylvie Guillem changed … [Read more...]