At Home He Feels Like A Tourist

Category: London

  • Knives in Hens at the Donmar Warehouse review *****

    Knives in Hens Donmar Warehouse, 21st September 2017 Now I guessed I was going to like this. All the clever folk who know about plays and stuff had raved about it. Written in 1995 by David Harrower it is considered a classic of British modern theatre. Its ostensible subject matter,…

  • Oslo at the National Theatre review *****

    Oslo National Theatre, 19th September 2017 Well I’ll be damned. I didn’t book Oslo at the earliest opportunity, as is my wont for most of the NT output, and only took a swing at it because of the NYC reviews. And even then I wasn’t sure. I mean how could…

  • Mosquitoes at the National Theatre review ****

    Mosquitoes National Theatre, 18th September 2017 Two sisters. Some sad stuff happens to them. Sciencey backdrop. There you go. That’s Mosquitoes. Except that is isn’t. Lucy Kirkwood is not the type of playwright to let us off the hook that easily. She chucks a lot into this pot, brings it…

  • Man to Man at Wilton’s Music Hall review ***

    Man to Man Wilton’s Music Hall, 15th September 2017 I am confused about this. Is it an expressionistic masterpiece that explores the nature of gender identity and German history through devastating poetry, or a piece of pretentious fuck-wittery which couldn’t be bothered to serve us up a coherent story? Was…

  • Loot at the Park Theatre review ****

    Loot Park Theatre, 14th September 2017 There has been a lot of progress in the last 50 years in this country. Good people are more tolerant and accepting of the identity of others (though there are still plenty of bigoted d*ckheads to be found polluting the discourse), The fairy tales…

  • Cat On a Hit Tin Roof at the Apollo Theatre review ***

    Cat On a Hot Tin Roof Apollo Theatre, 13th September 2017 Hmm. I was expecting so much more of this production. It’s Tennessee Williams. An all star cast. The imprimatur of the Young Vic. And Benedict Andrews, who was responsible for the, by all accounts, revelatory A Streetcar Named Desire…

  • Judith at the Arcola Theatre review ***

    Judith: A Parting from the Body Arcola Theatre, 7th September 2017 I am guessing they don’t watch Bake-Off in the Barker household. Howard Barker does not write easy plays. By his own admission he wants each of us to experience his plays as an individual: none of that namby-pamby rush…

  • Prism at the Hampstead Theatre review ****

    Prism Hampstead Theatre, 14th September 2017 Full disclosure. I love Terry Johnson’s plays. The marrying of “high” and “popular” culture themes and structures, the mix of humour and, as he calls it “brainy stuff, the abrupt lurches in tone: all this works for me. I have many more plays to…

  • Against at the Almeida Theatre review ****

    Against Almeida Theatre, 9th September 2017 The more plays I see the more I realise there are many ways to build a work of theatrical drama. You can build the foundations on language and the space around it, You can create powerful, memorable, immediate characters. You can construct a plot…

  • London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall review ****

    London Philharmonic Orchestra, Vladimir Jurowski, Alina Ibragimova (violin) Prom 71, Royal Albert Hall, 6th September 2017 Igor Stravinsky – Funeral Song, Igor Stravinsky – Song of the Volga Boatmen, Sergei Prokofiev – Violin Concert No 1 in D Major Benjamin Britten – Russian Funeral Dmitri Shostakovich – Symphony No 11…

  • road at the Royal Court Theatre review ****

    road Royal Court Theatre, 7th September 2017 Another useless review as this revival of Jim Cartwright’s seminal debut play is about to end its run. But I would be pretty confident it will pop up again somewhere in the next few years. And that is because, as this production shows,…

  • Sargent Watercolours at Dulwich Picture Gallery review *****

    Sargent: The Watercolours Dulwich Picture Gallery, 5th September 2017 There have been some top drawer exhibitions already this year. The comprehensive survey of American painting in the 1930s at the Orangerie and Royal Academy, the joyous Rauschenberg retrospective at Tate Modern, the astonishing survey of Michael Andrews’s spray painted landscapes…