Are we all excited about Angels in America? Yes we bloody are. It’s coming to the National Theatre this spring with a dream cast and some of us have been slavering for months. Booking my seats last week, stuck in an over-subscribed online ticket queue, was a rollercoaster of fanboy emotions. So, it’s time to get in our pre-season Kushner training. I saw – loved ¬– the sprawling, brawling The … [Read more...]
Archives for January 2017
12 Plays of Xmas: 10 Thieves Carnival by Jean Anouilh
I’ve just seen the trailer for La La Land (again), and now I’d like some of that at the theatre, please. Colourful, romantic, witty, blithe, with just enough melancholy to cut the sugar icing. Is that too much to ask? As previously discussed, it is if you judge by this series of posts. So I was charmed charmed charmed to find Thieves Carnival (Le Bal des voleurs, 1932) by Jean Anouilh in this … [Read more...]
12 Plays of Xmas: 9 The Town Fop by Aphra Behn
‘Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.’ WH Auden speaks true – one of the pleasures of this little project has been sitting down with the past. Sometimes, however, it’s like sharing a meal, some dishes of which taste familiar, while others are so completely baffling you don’t know whether they’re a starter, a pudding or a peculiar kind of medicine. Such is The Town … [Read more...]
12 Plays of Xmas: 8 Ecstasy by Mike Leigh
A friend points out that this hasn’t been the cheeriest of series. Few hugs and precious few puppies. This may say something about me, or my bookshelves. And prospects for joviality don’t seem much brighter with today’s choice, despite its title. Ecstasy (1979) by playwright turned (mostly) filmmaker Mike Leigh. A long night in a cramped bedsit with a heroine who is more despairing than … [Read more...]
12 Plays of Xmas: 7 Egor Bulychev by Gorky
I’ve seen a lot of Chekhov. I mean, a lot. Last year, I marvelled at Uncle Vanya at the Almeida and spent a day with the National Theatre’s Young Chekhov trilogy. I can almost sing along with the Three Sisters and Cherry Orchard, even bits of Ivanov. The characters’ disconsolate eccentricity is a wardrobe I recognise; their world on the shift feels familiar. So it’s good to remember that … [Read more...]
12 Plays of Xmas: 6 Pal Joey by O’Hara, Rodgers & Hart
Book trouble – it’s the curse of the musical. One of my most slaveringly anticipated shows of the past winter was David Bowie’s Lazarus, but the book by Enda Walsh was an embarrassment of portent, messily motivated and thumpingly framed. Similarly, some of the zippiest musical choreography I saw this year was in the retooled Half A Sixpence, but the rancidly snobbish book by Julian Fellowes made … [Read more...]