70 stories by "Daniel Harrison"
Sometimes taking your seat as an audience member can be a bit of a turgid affair: the inevitable apologising as you crunch onto someone's toe, or give your neighbour a sharp elbow to the rib…
I've always been meaning to check out The Black Cat Cabaret. It markets itself very well, conjuring up imagery relating to the very best (or worst, depending on how you look at it) of 1930s …
Anyone remember Soho Cinders? It was in the Soho Theatre's main space a couple of seasons ago. It was a subversive -musical- account of the classic Cinderella story. And I very much enjoyed …
As Director Kirk Jameson's own programme notes attest, even those bizarre creatures who claim that they 'don't do musical theatre' would have to acknowledge the creative genius of, and contr…
The present government aside, there's been a spate of political farces recently: the decidedly bland Coalition, Margaret Thatcher Queen of Soho (more of a pastiche, admittedly), and the unde…
There's been plenty said about Grammy Award winning Lady Rizo already. Plenty said about her smoky vocals, smoky eyes and smoky settings. Plenty said about her ability to combine wit, charm …
 You would have to be a very miserly grouch indeed not to be enchanted by Candide. This is a raucous, bawdy, energetic, but most importantly fun production: an intelligent and witty crit…
It's almost inevitable that a pantomime housed in the Leicester Square Theatre downstairs space, and called Dick! Comes Again: Bigger, Longer, Harder, would be free of that pesky subtlety…
Little did Lee Harvey Oswald know that 50 years later his mug shot would still be one of those prolific criminal images, so resonant in pop culture, political and social history, conspiracy …
It's a bit of a risk to rely almost solely on an old fat-backed TV to keep an audience sustained. Valentina Ceschi's gamble just about pays off in this sweet and mellow retelling of the medi…
Three very distinct pieces of contemporary dance were presented to the Sadler's Wells crowd this evening. What linked them was the impressive level of skill and verve employed in each, as th…
The last time I went to the Arcola was for one of those uber-cool east London club nights. Zoe Ford's production of Titus Andronicus was more similar to my last visit that one may first thin…
It's been almost a year since I last saw Clout Theatre perform, again at Battersea Arts Centre, in its truly excellent How A Man Crumbled. I had never heard of Clout before this, and I quick…
The Wrong Crowd aims to address, as they put it, “a hunger for real, tangible theatricality”. It employs and relies upon a heightened sense of the carnivalesque, of exaggerated g…
I've never really been all that enthralled by Shakespeare's comedies. Give me a meaty King Lear or Macbeth any day, dripping with blood and venom, than the lighter stuff, which I've always b…
I have a terrible confession to make. I arrived late to the Press Night for Hysteria at the Hampstead Theatre. And more fool me, because Terry Johnson's production zips along merrily, provid…
And so it came to be that, on a muggy and uncomfortable late summer evening, the Finborough fell foul to the elements, as an audience of just thirteen braced the heat to take in Robert Price…
“If you remember the sixties, you weren't there” is an often quoted line, as 60's Britain, with 'Swinging London' in particular, receives the usual rose-tinted and sentimentalise…
Puccini's Tosca is 114 years old, and is originally set at a time of an Italy divided, facing the onslaught of a Napoleonic invasion. Yet its themes, as expressed by this production's poster…
Alexi Kaye Campbell's The Pride premiered at the Royal Court in 2008. Five years on, and with Equal Marriage finally trudging its way through the statute books, and with horrific scenes of h…
Connections at the National Theatre is undoubtedly a great and useful idea. With the risk of 'drama' becoming a dirty word within secondary schools, and the future of youth theatres far from…
It is hard not to be slightly envious of Valentijn Dhaenens. Dhaenens, with his sinister charm and understated charisma, takes to the space like a soul possessed in his eighty-minute solo to…
Hard Feelings was first performed in 1982, before more than meriting its transfer to the Bush Theatre a year later. What makes this so striking is that Doug Lucie's play still feels so relev…
In life and in office, Margaret Hilda Thatcher was the inspiration behind much theatre, often that of revolt or opposition, yet also a form of theatre that chimed with her neo-liberal princi…
It seems that you can always rely on Rufus Norris to create a piece of theatre pulsating with soulful melancholy that wears its heart most deliberately on its sleeve. Just like other recent …
