At Home He Feels Like A Tourist

Tag: Arcola Theatre

  • A (flawed) guide to London theatres

    When I was a young teenager I took to making up some very odd games. I wasn’t lonely, with a handful of very good friends as I remember, and my very earliest encounters with the ladies were amongst my most successful, since my true nature, an awkward mix of the…

  • Napoleon Disrobed at the Arcola Theatre review ****

    Napoleon Disrobed Arcola Theatre, 7th March 2018 Here is JL David’s preposterously heroic painting of Napoleon Bonaparte Crossing the Alps. The Napoleon of Simon Ley’s alternative history The Death of Napoleon, is of a somewhat different hue. Ley’s novella, his real name was Pierre Ryckmans and he was a Belgian…

  • Insignificance at the Arcola Theatre review ****

    Insignificance Arcola Theatre, 21st October 2017 Regular readers of this blog (don’t be shy) will know that I adore the work of Terry Johnson. As do a lot of proper theatre critic types. I also have a very soft spot for the Arcola. With this revival of Insignificance the combination…

  • Angel at the Arcola Theatre review ****

    Angel Arcola Theatre, 4th October 2017 I had been hoping to get an opportunity to see Angel after reading a review of the premiere at the Edinburgh Festival last year. I had read of the very sad death of the actor, Filipa Branganca, who had played the role of the…

  • 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…

  • Some forthcoming London theatre ideas

    So we have had a few new season announcements over the past few weeks so here is a wrap up of what I think looks interesting in terms of stuff coming up on various London stages. To spare you crawling through all this guff here is my top ten, including…

  • Richard III at the Arcola Theatre review ****

    Richard III Arcola Theatre, 10th June 2017 I have had a surfeit of Dickie IIIs over the last few years. Mind you I am not complaining. Mark Rylance on his return to the Globe found a vulnerable, despairing Richard who didn’t seem to care about his actions. Ralph Fiennes was…

  • The Plague at the Arcola Theatre review ****

    The Plague Arcola Theatre, 27th April 2017 I booked this not knowing quite what to expect. I couldn’t really visualise how this was going to be staged but was intrigued at the idea. Well more fool me. Neil Bartlett and the cast have done a wonderful job in bringing Camus’s…

  • Tamburlaine at the Arcola Theatre review ***

    Tamburlaine Arcola Theatre, 6th April 2017 In many ways this was a brave piece of theatre. Tamburlaine, in two parts, was Christopher Marlowe’s first performed solo play, written in his early 20s, and which changed the course of English drama and massively influenced all the big boys of Elizabethan/Jacobean drama…