Category: London
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Billy Budd at the Royal Opera House review ****
Billy Budd Royal Opera House, 7th May 2019 The corruption of innocence, the struggle of good vs evil, Christ-like redemption and Pilate-like equivocation, the conflict between natural and legal justice, the outsider’s struggle for acceptance, repressed, scopophiliac, homosexual desire, the rational, scientific world contrasted with the mythic poetry of the…
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My London theatre recommendations May 2019
Time to update my London theatre recommendations. The last list from February 2019 turned out pretty well and a fair few from that are still available for selection. Now I know I go on a bit, and offer too many options, so I have taken the wider selection below, considered…
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Rosmersholm at the Duke of York’s Theatre review *****
Rosmersholm Duke of York’s Theatre, 6th May 2019 Right finally a review that might conceivably be of some value to my solitary, loyal reader. Not that you should need me to tell you to go and see this. The proper critics and committed theatre bloggers will already have told you…
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Edmond de Bergerac at Richmond Theatre review ****
Edmond de Bergerac Richmond Theatre, 1st May 2019 Alexis Michalik is a loving looking chap. Oozes Gallic charm. The wunderkind of French theatre. So its good to know he is half-British. He kicked off as an actor but it is his plays, which have run to packed houses in Paris…
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Don McCullin exhibition at Tate Britain review ****
Don McCullin Tate Britain, 1st May 2019 The main event first. The astonishing work of Don McCullin, the renowned “war” photographer, though this epithet doesn’t get close to covering the depth of the work revealed in this retrospective at the Tate, (now finished, sorry). McCullin, now 83, left art college…
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The Crucible at the Yard Theatre review ****
The Crucible The Yard Theatre, Hackney Wick, 29th April 2019 The latest instalment in the Tourist’s engagement with this year’s unofficial Arthur Miller season was director Jay Miller’s often insightful, occasionally daft take on The Crucible which for me, and I know this is not the aesthete’s choice, probably just…
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Creditors at the Jermyn Street Theatre review ****
Creditors Jermyn Street Theatre, 27th April 2019 I am still tiptoeing my way into Strindberg. A long history of ignoring him after an early dismissal many years ago was corrected with the companion piece to this, a version of Miss Julie, also translated by Howard Brenton, also directed by JST…
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Three Sisters at the Almeida Theatre review ****
Three Sisters Almeida Theatre, 25th April 2019 It creeps up on you this Three Sisters. As with her feted take on Tennessee Williams’s neglected Summer and Smoke last year, Almeida Associate Director Rebecca Frecknall is unafraid of letting the play take its time to unfold and delivers a similar, dreamy…
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Tartuffe at the National Theatre review *****
Tartuffe: The Imposter National Theatre Lyttleton, 24th April 2019 Top Girls. Downstate. Small Island. Follies which I can vouch for from the first run. And now this Tartuffe. All superb. If the NT is still going through a dodgy patch artistically then f*ck knows how good it is going to…
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Small Island at the National Theatre review *****
Small Island National Theatre Olivier If you know Andrea Levy’s Small Island either from the original 2004 book, (not me I confess), or the 2009 Two part BBC adaptation with script from Sarah Williams and Paula Milne and starring the inimitable Ruth Wilson and Naomie Harris then you will know…
At Home He Feels Like A Tourist 