At Home He Feels Like A Tourist

  • Out of Love at the Orange Tree Theatre review ****

    Out of Love Orange Tree Theatre, 6th February 2018 The second of the three co-productions with Paines Plough and Theatre Clywd and, for me, somewhat more persuasive than Black Mountain (Black Mountain at the Orange Tree Theatre review ***), though very different in subject and scope. Mind you, in both…

  • Black Mountain at the Orange Tree Theatre review ***

    Black Mountain Orange Tree Theatre, 5th February 2018 The latest in a long string of ambitious, but not outrageously so, projects from the OT, this time commissioned in conjunction with trusty partners Theatre Clywd and Paines Plough. Three plays, in rep, from OT favourites, Brad Birch, Elinor Cook and Sarah…

  • Nicola Benedetti and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at the Royal Festival Hall

    The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Marin Alsop, Nicola Benedetti Royal Festival Hall, 4th February 2018 Beethoven Symphony No 4 in B flat Beethoven – Violin Concerto in D major “Stardom” in the classical music world is a curious thing. To get there ideally you need to be a…

  • John at the National Theatre review *****

    John National Theatre (Dorfman), 6th February 2018 I would be very wary of playwright Annie Baker if I were you. She will bewitch you. Magical powers. That is the only way to explain John. Nothing really dramatic happens, the setting doesn’t change and the words, initially at least, seem quite…

  • Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir at Milton Court review ****

    Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Kaspars Putnins (conductor) Milton Court Concert Hall, 30th January 2018 Arvo Part Solfeggio Summa Magnificat Zwei Beter The Woman With the Alabaster Box Nunc dimittis Dopo la vittoria Cyrillus Kreek Onnis on inimene (Blessed is the Man) Psalm 104 Jonathan Harvey Plainsongs for Peace and Light…

  • Darkest Hour film review ****

    Darkest Hour, 30th January 2018 I wonder when they decided? Is it what the producers demanded at the outset? Was it always there in Antony McCarten’s script? Did director Joe Wright, (who has shown in his stage work at the Young Vic with Life of Galileo and A Season in…

  • The Open House at the Print Room Coronet review ***

    The Open House The Print Room Coronet, 27th January 2018 Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, August Wilson, Lorraine Hansberry, Sam Shepherd, Lillian Hellman. All succeeded at writing a Great American Play, or in some cases Plays, about dysfunctional families. In an entirely naturalistic way. It is the meat and…

  • Glengarry Glen Ross at the Playhouse Theatre review ****

    Glengarry Glen Ross Playhouse Theatre, 25th January 2018 I am wary of West End productions that import a big American movie star to embellish a revival. And, like most ill thought out prejudice, this invariably turns out to be wrong. Still the only person harmed by this ignorance is me.…

  • Dry Powder at the Hampstead Theatre review ****

    Dry Powder Hampstead Theatre, 29th January 2018 At last a play about the world of “high finance” which does not wade in with both feet in some ham-fisted (I know, mangled metaphors), didactic attempt to explain to the audience why it is “evil”. Actually that is a little unfair as…

  • Edward II at Greenwich Theatre review ****

    Edward II Greenwich Theatre, 24th January 2018 Right then, This is what theatre is all about. Take a cast-iron classic history play from Jacobean bad-boy Kit Marlowe, hack out thematic repetition, wordiness and some characters, pare back set, costumes, sound and lighting, and let a young, hungry cast do its…