By Tim Hochstrasser I willing to concede that I have may have missed a great deal, and certainly the mainly youngish audience loved it on press night; but to me this was ultimately a prepost…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 11:02AMBy Tim Hochstrasser This is an unsettling rather than disturbing night at the theatre that raises more questions than it can readily answer, and part of trouble lies in the way those questio…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 10:42AMBy Tim Hochstrasser There are many more layers both to this play and to this production that deserve further comment, but which lie beyond the reach of a relatively brief review. Suffice to …
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 06:34AMBy Tim Hochstrasser There is a long tradition of performance of classic Russian-language theatre in Ukraine that dates back to Stanislavski, and one of the great rewards of this current resi…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 12:38PMBy Tim Hochstrasser We encounter rural Britain more frequently through soaps – Emmerdale and The Archers – than on the stage. This is a missed opportunity for writers and for this reason…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 06:39AMBy Tim Hochstrasser Arthur Miller was born a hundred years ago. A centenary is about discovering work afresh if it is about anything and the King’s Head deserve great credit for choosing t…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 12:31PMBy Tim Hochstrasser One part of the mission of Above the Stag is to remind us of notable plays on gay themes that have not always received the attention they deserved, or whose continuing to…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 11:41AMBy Tim Hochstrasser This play can be seen as a saucy romp or as something rather more unexpectedly melancholy than that; but either way it is a thoroughly absorbing evening, and you really …
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 12:26PMBy Tim Hochstrasser While this is a deserved revival of an intriguing show, the core material remains in some respects unsatisfactory, and the scale of the show is not a great fit with the l…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 12:51PMBy Tim Hochstrasser And so to the culmination of the contemporary opera section of the Grimeborn Festival, a double-bill in the form of Peter Maxwell Davies’ The Medium and The Wanton Subl…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 11:16AMBy Tim Hochstrasser It is very rare that a company integrates a new concept so thoroughly into a Shakespeare play – too often it is merely gestural – but here the level of attention to d…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 09:04AMBy Tim Hochstrasser The play triumphantly uncovers and re-asserts McQueen’s credo that design is at its best an act of love of the person – a summing up of who that man or woman was, is …
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 05:21AMBy Tim Hochstrasser If this performance did not clear all of the hurdles set by Shakespeare and the play’s daunting production history, it cannot be faulted on ambition and daring. The com…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 05:22AMBy Tim Hochstrasser Not everything in Grimeborn can work and while the commitment of all concerned deserves recognition, this adaptation cannot be considered wholly successful. As a better t…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 05:58AMBy Tim Hochstrasser After Monty Python and Blackadder it is not really possible to present this type of opera in full cross-gartered fustian without an ironic angle; so much better in many w…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 11:29AMBy Tim Hochstrasser There is an open-minded integrity about these conversations and characterisations that is highly impressive and which deserves a wider audience in a larger (but not too m…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 08:24AMBy Tim Hochstrasser The evening as a whole provided a superbly invigorating beginning to the Grimeborn Festival at the Arcola. We were given new insights into an old work that made it seem m…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 07:06AMBy Tim Hochstrasser So in sum, the production did achieve exactly what Grimeborn sets out to do each year. It knocked old layers of varnish off an old favourite and found a new and convincin…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 11:41AMBy Tim Hochstrasser So while this is a challenging night in the theatre in the best sense, it remains incomplete and unfinished and invites further revision and reflection on the part of the…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 11:40AMBy Tim Hochstrasser The evening was notable for reviving a work of genuine tuneful elegance and comic potential. The commitment and skill of the production overall makes you want to see the …
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 10:59AMBy Tim Hochstrasser Inevitably there are many priceless anecdotes that had to be left out of this play, and its dramatic transformation is not perfect. But it captures the spirit of the orig…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 10:08AMBy Tim Hochstrasser In sum, this is a thoroughly absorbing evening in the theatre with high professional values across the board, but where the real rewards and revelation come in the second…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 09:26AMBy Tim Hochstrasser Montemezzi may have been something of a one-work composer, but this performance made the best case possible for his masterpiece, and we can only hope that the repute of t…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 11:16AMBy Tim Hochstrasser Yet, Holland Park Opera, here working under director Aylin Bozok, show that these problems are by no means insuperable where the company have confidence in the quality of…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 05:24AMBy Tim Hochstrasser If you have missed this charming opera this time around then do book now for one of the performances at the Linbury Studio Theatre in early November. You won’t regret i…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 05:02AMBy Tim Hochstrasser This is a noisy and shouty play and in many ways that is necessarily so – industrial processes, bombs, football matches, drinking in the pub – these provide the neces…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 04:08PMBy Tim Hochstrasser This is a very great opera that can take many different interpretations. However, there is no room for compromise. Ultimately, it either has to be done straight and with …
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 10:03AMBy Tim Hochstrasser So often the press night comes too early in a run to fully assess a production’s potential. This welcome and ambitious new version has not yet attained greatness but ce…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 02:42PMBy Tim Hochstrasser For all these reasons, a new production of Hecuba is very welcome and cannot fail to be thought provoking and moving, even when allied to a parallel re-telling of the sto…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 11:26AMBy Tim Hochstrasser In terms of lighting, set, costumes, sound and design the creative team led by director Donnacadh O’Briain do a very solid job, alongside the cast. But the professional…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 08:56AMBy Tim Hochstrasser Memories still linger of the impressive Opening Ceremonies to the Olympic and Paralympic Games held in London in 2012, and The Four Fridas is best viewed as a (partly) su…
SOURCE: britishtheatre.com at 12:14PM
