Do any of these headlines ring a bell? HORROR AS IMMIGRANTS BARBECUE LLAMA AT PETTING ZOO WHITES IN MINORITY BY 2020 NOW PAEDOPHILES IN BURQUAS STALK OUR KIDS WHITE SUICIDE BOMBER IN BLACKBU…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 05:47AMToday's reports of hundreds of migrants drowned off the Italian island of Lampedusa lend a horrifying topicality to Anders Lustgarten's new play at the Soho Theatre. But while applauding the…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 02:49PMI'm tempted to call this production at Southwark Playhouse a revival, but it isn't. It's the world premiere of an unperformed play by Michael Hastings, who died in 2011. While the play has o…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 11:51AMThis is the most audience-friendly Philip Ridley play that I've seen. That's not because of the subject matter, which is every bit as disturbing as in his other plays; nor has it anything to…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 10:55AMFraming a story on stage can be a way of bridging the gap between performers and audience; but the play-within-the-play, though a very powerful device, can be overdone. Shakespeare's framing…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 07:27AMSouth Africa's Isango Ensemble delivered the outstanding production of the 'Globe to Globe' international series in 2012 with Venus and Adonis, which they brought back to Shakespeare's Globe…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 10:29AM'They've done away with King Hildebrand!' my companion the Gilbert & Sullivan Expert (GSE) whispered to me in shocked tones as she read the programme at the Finborough Theatre. It was tr…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 09:56AMMultitudes at the Tricycle theatre had its last performance yesterday, and I saw the penultimate show in the afternoon. It's a debut play by actor John Hollingworth, set in Bradford in the n…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 01:49PMI have often complained to my family that our Christmas festivities furnish no worthwhile material for drama. Nary a cross word is exchanged; nobody complains about their presents; no skelet…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 05:36AMIt took me a while to tune in to Zinnie Harris's new play at the Royal Court. While I was mesmerised by Maxine Peake's extraordinary performance in the leading role, I was turning the dial t…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 03:59PMI've written before about the 'Donmar Effect' which makes every play staged in this intimate West End venue seem twice as good as it really is. But Closer is a play that's so well written th…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 03:19PMMike Bartlett's new play at the Almeida is a disorienting and uncomfortable experience in several ways. It's physically claustrophobic for the audience, the visual and auditory experience is…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 02:53PMFarinelli and the King is a delicious 18th century confection of words and music that provides a perfect vehicle for Mark Rylance's first appearance on the candlelit stage of the Sam Wanamak…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 03:52AMThis is a very sharp satire on the world of television by Dan Davies, whose play Is Anything Broken? wowed audiences at Player-Playwrights a couple of years ago and went on to the Camden Fri…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 04:51AMWhat would I do if a Russian bank offered to part-fund a play of mine set in Russia, as part of a London-Moscow theatre festival? If I were to refuse the funding, it might mean none of the a…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 06:41AMThis 90-minute stage production at the Young Vic, coming to a close this weekend, has bowled over just about everyone who has seen it, including those like me who are discovering 1927's work…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 10:14AMBrain scientists will love Tom Stoppard's new play, and it's a feast of ideas for the intellectually curious. But in dramatic terms it's a disappointment. Seeing Stoppard's first hit Rosencr…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 04:43AMDominic Dromgoole's production of The Changeling in the Sam Wanamaker theatre has the same power and intimacy as his version of The Duchess of Malfi a year ago. It's a robust, though fairly …
SOURCE: John Morrison at 10:03AMYes, I'm all shook up. Rupert Goold's Las Vegas-themed production of the Merchant won't appeal to people who disapprove of Elvis, but I loved it. I found it one of the most entertaining nigh…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 07:14AMPost-war vintage cars like the Ford Popular and Austin A30 have a certain appeal to motorists jaded with more contemporary models, but you wouldn't want to drive one every day. Emlyn William…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 11:26AMWell, it didn't work for me. That's a polite way of expressing my opinion of this new play by Alistair McDowall, which has garnered rave reviews all round. I'm allergic to sci-fi fantasy, ha…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 06:57AMBlood. How useful is it to a theatre director staging Jacobean revenge plays? John Ford's play ends with a scene that makes the end of Hamlet look like a vicarage tea-party. So is it best to…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 07:52AMSam Yates. Never heard of him? Neither had I until I saw his cracking revival of Ayub Khan Din's East is East last night at Trafalgar Studios. This is is his first West End show, but he's cl…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 06:03AMThere's a strong sense of place and time and social context in Chekhov's plays which make them difficult to adapt convincingly to a modern setting. That's why I'm generally lukewarm about ve…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 12:54PMHarriet Walter 'Mad' Frankie Fraser When Phyllida Lloyd staged Julius Caesar at the Donmar two years ago, reinventing the play by placing it in a women's prison, I welcomed the absence of ha…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 05:30AM'Melodrama' is often used by me and by most theatregoers as a pejorative term. Today the word suggests a form of drama that relies on over-intense emotions, improbable plots and thinly drawn…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 09:39AM'FRIENDS, series 11. The one where Phoebe and Joey organise a creative writing group.' That's my review of Theresa Rebeck's comedy at the Hampstead Theatre. I kept it short because good crea…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 09:34AMThe first play in this cycle by Rona Munro about 15th century Scottish monarchs whetted my appetite for more. Now I've seen parts two and three, I would really like to see all three of them …
SOURCE: John Morrison at 02:07PMMax Stafford-Clark's fertile imagination as a theatre director provided the initial suggestion for this new play by Richard Bean, just as he provided the initial spark for Timberlake Wertenb…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 05:48AMContest over. There can be only one winner of Best Actress at the next Olivier awards. Her name is Kristin Scott Thomas. Scott Thomas delivers a performance of breathtaking intensity in the …
SOURCE: John Morrison at 07:20AMChorleywood is a harmless little town in Hertfordshire, within striking distance of Watford. I feel sorry for its hapless residents, because Chorleywood is also notorious as the name of the …
SOURCE: John Morrison at 06:25AM
