I've been having a very good time reviewing theatre for the Sunday Times this spring (interesting things to see, nice editors: we don't take these things for granted). But the word count is tight, and that presents difficulties: especially if, like me, one of your pleasures is collecting gemstone performances in smaller roles. These are often cherishable - partly because the part isn't heralded, … [Read more...]

A final bulletin from Berlin. Spring Awakening, the American musical which triumphed on Broadway, has settled into London's West End, so it seemed apt to see the play on which it's based - Wedekind's Frühlings Erwachen. The musical is snappily staged, but it smooths out a brilliantly disconcerting play which is all jagged edges. As I had hoped, as produced by Claus Peymann at the Berliner … [Read more...]

After the experience of the lambent Robert Wilson/Rufus Wainwright Sonnets shenanigans, and before we get to grip with adolescent passions in Spring Awakening, a short intermission. Wouldn't want you to think that the monkey is starry eyed about all things Berliner Ensemble, but furry caps must be doffed and forelocks tugged in the direction of the interval snacks. This is, for many, a vexed … [Read more...]

What has Robert Wilson been up to? Well, he's clearly been busy busy busy in recent years, according to his website, but we wouldn't know that here in London. For a while, his work frequently visited the city: it opened the first BITE season at the Barbican in 1997 (with the splashy but dodgy Monsters of Grace, complete with a score by Philip Glass and whizzy 3D glasses. All I really remember is a … [Read more...]

Along with Sir David Hare and other theatre groupies, I've been to Berlin. It's a good place for theatre right now - Thomas Ostermeir's chillingly revelatory Hedda Gabler has toured internationally (his Ibsen explorations continue with what sounds like a mighty John Gabriel Borkman). But I was visiting what was for decades the archetypal German company - the Berliner Ensemble. On the river, its … [Read more...]

The small bones are so fiddly - it's easier to play with something bigger. After looking around for a moment, I spot a fibula and start to twist it. Yes, I'm a critic but, despite popular belief, I'm not actually a serial killer. The bones are made of brown cardboard, and the entire audience is playing with them, standing around tables in groups of ten on the stage at Sadler's Wells. This is You … [Read more...]

I do love a stage auteur. The kind of director - Robert Wilson, Katie Mitchell, David Alden - who has a beady eye for every detail, for every moment on stage, in whose productions every element of a work - performance, direction, movement, design - to work towards a particular vision. The level of theatrical intelligence in their shows is so acute that their productions are never lifeless, but … [Read more...]

Virtually throughout Tusk Tusk, the piercing second play by 22-year-old Polly Stenham, the only characters on stage are 16 and younger. Maggie and her two brothers are kidding themselves that everything will be alright, even though there's no indication that their severely depressed mother will return several days after her unmedicated flit from their new home. They hide from the doorbell, … [Read more...]

The Victorian physician John Conolly, who specialised in care of the mentally ill, urged actresses to visit his London asylum when they approached the role of Ophelia and observe his own patients. This would give them, he believed, a better idea of how to assume the role of a madwoman. In 1870, Ellen Terry took up the idea, but found it of little use - the madwomen, she asserted, were much 'too … [Read more...]

Any readers wondering what London is like at this time of year? Well, you and me both. It's been a strange week, most of which I've spent moaning softly and consumed with self-pity in my bed. And this differs how from the monkey's routine? Well, this time I've been unwell. London seems to have been gripped by some seasonal lurgy, and the bravest and best of our generation have been clutching their … [Read more...]