1,418 stories by "Aleks Sierz"
World on fire: The NT Live recording of this classic Young Vic production stars Gillian Anderson and is genuinely unmissable.
Over the past couple of months, theatre reviewing has become film reviewing, and venues all over the country have struggled to make material available for watching online. The biggest instit…
So far, it could be said that the National Theatre is having a good lockdown. Every week, this flagship streams one of its stock of NT Live films, which are always a welcome reminder of the …
Lockdown occasionally spawns some real delights. Like the surprise appearance of a strange creature from the profoundest depths. One of these must be Andrew Scott's superb performance in Sim…
Howard Brenton's docu-drama about the harassment of the Chinese artist is imbued with fresh urgency and relevance.
The megahit NT Live version of this iconic tale of creative hubris features a dynamic acting duo, but it is not perfect.
She's an ordinary young woman, and she really doesn't know what to think. After all, things are way out of control. Out of order. She knows that the natural world is pretty fucked and that n…
Reviewing theatre now means reviewing the film. Knowing that Emma Rice's Old Vic 2018 production of Wise Children, her typically rambunctious version of Angela Carter's last novel, published…
Virginia Woolf's reputation has closely followed British cultural trends: in the interwar years she was a beacon of modernism, austere and difficult; by the 1970s a feminist icon; in the 199…
Emma Rice's version of Angela Carter's last novel is a beautifully bizarre celebration of alternative families.
The BBC film version of a Renaissance rape trial is powerfully resonant, relevant and a riveting watch.
Armchair theatre-lovers rejoice. During the lockdown, the National Theatre is streaming a selection of its past hits for free for one week at a time. These shows, originally filmed as part o…
Gloriously surreal monologue about everyday anxieties in extraordinary circumstances: welcome back the glittering dark!
It's only been a week since London's West End went dark and theatres closed all over the UK, but it feels like months. Really. Like many others, I'm in self-isolation, stressed by working on…
With everyone in lockdown, observing physical if not social distancing, a story about isolation can have a particular resonance. And there are few places in the UK that are as isolated as so…
These shows, originally filmed as part of the flagship's NT Live project, are now available on its YouTube channel. The first is Richard Bean's gloriously silly farce, One Man, Two, Guvnors,…
This touring theatre's new tartan gothic thriller is complex, but also a bit overwrought and conventional.
Your story. Our story. Their story. Just imagine: you're a political refugee, and, having experienced horrible things that happened to your family, you finally, after a lot of trouble, arriv…
Theatre Uncut's Bubble, a streamed film about social media and the woke generation is educational, but unexceptional.
Once-radical theatre companies are increasingly celebrating anniversaries, as if to say, hey, look, we're still here. Now it's the turn of Frantic Assembly to mark its 25th anniversary with …
Since 2000, Esther Baker's Synergy Theatre Project has worked with prisoners, ex-offenders and young people at risk of offending to produce powerful dramas about some of the most fraught soc…
Random and topical thoughts and quotes gathered by My Theatre Mates contributor Aleks Sierz, first published on www.sierz.co.uk.
Shoe Lady at the Royal Court is not the most involving play in the world, but it does have an evocative resonance.
Gerald Moon's 1983 comedy-thriller, Corpse!, is a typical example of a style of writing about murder that is entertaining in its plotting, but offers little else of dramatic pleasure.
A verbatim piece about the subject of transatlantic deportation, The Special Relationship is a well researched, strongly contemporary piece.
