Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Multimedia artist Rashid Zakat’s exhibit at Asian Arts Initiative is a meditation on music, joy, and spiritual vitality. John Morrison profiles.
SOURCE: Broad Street Review at 03:01PMMonday, April 6, 2020
Philly's music scene has taken a hit as clubs and restaurants have shut down and gigs have been canceled. John Morrison speaks with a few local artists on how they are coping, how they are a…
SOURCE: Broad Street Review at 10:06AMMonday, July 24, 2017
Three resounding cheers from me for today's announcement. Michelle Terry is an ideal choice and I predict she will have no difficulty in moving the theatre into a new era that blends traditi…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 08:06PMThursday, June 15, 2017
Understudies don't get much recognition in the theatre unless the lead actor has to withdraw for an extended period. So I'm happy to blow the trumpet for Theo Solomon, who stepped in to play…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 07:24AMFriday, May 26, 2017
Greg Hicks mesmerises the audience for three hours with a performance that mingles sadism, misogyny, venom and flashes of humour, distilled and concentrated by the Arcola theatre's tiny stag…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 09:36AMWednesday, May 24, 2017
This Othello is among the very best I have seen. Without star names and with no public subsidy, Andrew Hilton's Bristol-based company has a glowing reputation for concentrating on the essent…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 08:24AMThursday, May 11, 2017
There aren't too many fixed rules for making theatre. Thank goodness for that. But in my experience, an alarm bell starts to tinkle when the writer of a show and the director are one and the…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 08:36PMThursday, March 16, 2017
A lightly edited version of the letter I posted yesterday to my MP Sir Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary. Like Theresa May and Philip Hammond, he was a Remain supporter who seamlessly sw…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 10:24AMWednesday, March 8, 2017
In many ways this is one of the very best productions I have seen of Chekhov's greatest play, which I first encountered in Chichester half a century ago. Mehmet Ergen's casting is inspired, …
SOURCE: John Morrison at 06:48PMWednesday, February 22, 2017
When I've seen a Shakespeare play dozens of times, studied it at school and acted in a student production, there's always a risk of seeing it once too often. Will it really be funny when I s…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 12:36PMWednesday, February 15, 2017
This survey of Russian art’s turbulent history between 1917 and 1930 opens an extraordinary range of material, much of it familiar, but it also contains some stunning surprises. I’m fair…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 02:54PMFriday, February 3, 2017
I finally caught up with a second cinema showing of the RSC's flagship production for 2016 of The Tempest, with our greatest Shakespearean actor Simon Russell Beale as Prospero. It's a trium…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 10:36AMFriday, January 13, 2017
A half-empty snowbound local cinema was the ideal place to catch a repeat NTlive showing of Pinter's masterpiece dealing with the icy wastes of dementia and the loss of memory. Of course, th…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 08:33AMSunday, December 11, 2016
Josie Rourke's revival of Shaw's 1923 play could not be more different from the last major London production at the National Theatre in 2007. On that occasion director Marianne Elliott, with…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 07:42AMWednesday, December 7, 2016
I'm not usually a fan of European-style 'director's theatre' but I'm prepared to stretch a point when the director is Ivo van Hove, whose version of A View From The Bridge at the Young Vic c…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 05:42AMTuesday, November 8, 2016
I used to dismiss Lucy Bailey's theatrical dishes as indigestible, but she is fast turning into my Star Baker. Using an early 17th century recipe that has been out of fashion for more than a…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 10:54AMFriday, November 4, 2016
Isango Ensemble of Cape Town is a trailblazing company that has taken opera by the hand and led it into areas it never dreamed of. From mediaeval mystery plays to Mozart's Magic Flute and Sh…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 09:42PMSunday, October 30, 2016
This production is a triumphant success on every level, a revival of Peter Shaffer's classic play that subtly brings it into the modern era without violating its 18th century period context.…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 01:36PMSunday, October 2, 2016
Back in June I was enthusiastic about the National Theatre's revival of Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea, with Helen McCrory as Hester Collyer. Now I'm even more enthusiastic about the A…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 10:31AMTuesday, September 27, 2016
The Tempest completes director Phyllida Lloyd's impressive trilogy of all-female productions, which began with Julius Caesar in 2012 and continued with Henry IV . Harriet Walter (previously …
SOURCE: John Morrison at 08:51AMFriday, September 23, 2016
Tom Stoppard was in the audience for last night's preview of his 1974 play Travesties, and I thought he looked as delighted as the rest of us. Patrick Marber's revival at the Menier Chocolat…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 07:33AMWednesday, September 21, 2016
Over-amplified and over-lit, this version of Shakespeare's Cymbeline at the Globe continues artistic director Emma Rice's demolition of the theatre's founding concept and the work of her two…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 12:52PMSaturday, September 10, 2016
The empty crib, the absent baby. It's a powerful dramatic symbol which many writers have used, most famously Edward Albee in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. And it's at the centre of this sh…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 08:57AMFriday, September 9, 2016
Al Smith's play, now at the Gate Theatre, garnered a raft of good reviews at the Traverse in Edinburgh in August, and it's easy to see why. It's a very loose adaptation of a short story by N…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 08:39AMSaturday, September 3, 2016
Belarus Free Theatre has been established in exile in the UK for more than a decade, but their uncompromising work makes few easy concessions to charm a fickle British theatre audience. Some…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 12:49PMSaturday, August 27, 2016
Lear's cavalier division of his kingdom into three ranks with David Cameron's ill-thought referendum on EU membership as an example of catastrophic decision-making. Both moves are followed b…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 05:16PMWednesday, August 17, 2016
Director Iqbal Khan has delivered a Macbeth packed with good acting and exciting ideas, but one whose impact is for me fatally undermined by the Globe's new policy of heavy reliance on artif…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 01:42PMSunday, August 14, 2016
Playwright Martin McDonagh, winner of the 2015 Olivier best new play award for Hangmen, is being honoured with his own theatre festival, in which his plays will be performed non-stop for a w…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 07:10PMThursday, August 11, 2016
Even when the actors are wringing their guts out on stage, my usual approach is to keep a stiff upper lip and maintain my critical distance. Occasionally that's not possible, and I have to c…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 12:09PMFriday, July 15, 2016
Some of the very best evenings in the theatre happen when great acting and directing bring to life a great text, without the benefit of elaborate sets, costumes, lighting, smoke, video monit…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 04:37PMWednesday, June 8, 2016
This play is often considered Terence Rattigan's best, and it provides a fantastic opportunity for any actress in the central role of Hester Collyer, the judge's wife who has embarked on a d…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 11:27AM 
