http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/?service=Rss http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/spring-storm-royal--derngate-theatre-northampton-1814768.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/spring-storm-royal--derngate-theatre-northampton-1814768.html ]]> <p>It's a troubling April down on the Delta, where the river is rising, and the blood too. "The crape myrtle's been out a week," says the genteel Mrs. Critchfeld. "I always start to wear white when the crape myrtle's out." Her daughter, however, worries she may never wear get to wear white and toss a bouquet. One of Tennessee Williams's high-strung beauties who are half spinster, half sexpot, Heavenly Critchfield is sleeping with the virile, shiftless Dick but tempted by the rich, repressed Arthur (a nice reversal of the traditional dilemma). The quartet of restive youth is completed by the librarian Hertha Neilson, "the most sensitive and intelligent person in Port Arthur, Mississippi", where teenagers she catches necking in the stacks laugh at her and call her an old maid.</p> Reviews Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/michael-clark-company-barbican-london-1814136.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/michael-clark-company-barbican-london-1814136.html ]]> <p>Rock music is good for Michael Clark. His latest work, Come, Been and Gone, shown as part of bite and Dance Umbrella, returns to the music of his teens: Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, David Bowie. Even the programme is designed to look like a 7-inch record sleeve. With this soundtrack, Clark and his company gleam with purpose. It's the best thing he's done in years. </p> Reviews Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/seize-the-day-tricycle-theatre-london-1814137.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/seize-the-day-tricycle-theatre-london-1814137.html ]]> <p>If I were the Labour MP and former Culture Minister David Lammy, I'd be disappointed not to be namechecked in Kwame Kwei-Armah's entertaining new play about the real possibility of a new black mayor for London. </p> Reviews Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/if-there-is-i-havent-found-it-yet-bush-theatre-london-1814139.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/if-there-is-i-havent-found-it-yet-bush-theatre-london-1814139.html <p>David Hare published a very penetrating article recently in which he characterised the Noughties as the decade of Looking Away, technologically, politically and morally. By a somewhat delicious irony, I found myself reading this on a train late at night while being steadily eyeballed by the young man opposite, who was giving his girlfriend the most thorough of snogs. They had moved on to heavy petting by the time we hit Didcot, his glances to check on me now fitful.</p> Reviews Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/mrs-klein-almeida-theatre-london-1813067.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/mrs-klein-almeida-theatre-london-1813067.html <p> You think you've got a difficult mother! Melanie Klein's daughter didn't stand a chance, from the moment she put her head out. Klein gave the girl a name that was a diminutive of her own, then psychoanalysed and wrote about Melitta for her brilliant theories in child development. </p> Reviews Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/pains-of-youth-nt-cottesloe-londonbrif-there-is-i-havent-found-it-yet-bush-londonbrmrs-klein-almeida-london-1812611.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/pains-of-youth-nt-cottesloe-londonbrif-there-is-i-havent-found-it-yet-bush-londonbrmrs-klein-almeida-london-1812611.html <p>Everyone should shoot themselves at 17. So says the wild child Desiree in Pains of Youth. Penned in the 1920s and now revived by director Katie Mitchell – in period costume – this is Ferdinand Bruckner's morbid depiction of screwed-up Viennese students in Freud's era. It might well strike a chord with today's suicidal teenagers and twentysomethings, but little comfort is offered.</p> Reviews Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/mark-morris-dance-group-sadlers-wells-londonbrthe-sleeping-beauty-royal-opera-house-london-1812612.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/mark-morris-dance-group-sadlers-wells-londonbrthe-sleeping-beauty-royal-opera-house-london-1812612.html <p>For those convinced that contemporary dance is a mystery designed to keep them out, the work of the American Mark Morris offers a riposte. "I make it up; you watch it", is the beginning and end of his philosophy, though he might have added " ... and listen, too": in a world where good, live music seems to matter less and less, his dance shows are also a very smart concert ticket.</p> Reviews Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/pains-of-youth-national-theatre-london-1811073.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/pains-of-youth-national-theatre-london-1811073.html <p>Camus thought that, in philosophy, suicide is "the only problem". It may not be the sole preoccupation of the six bored, sexually entangled medical students in the 1920s Vienna of Ferdinand Bruckner's brilliantly odd 1923 play Pains of Youth. But it is seen as one of only two alternatives open to the young in a post-First World War Austria of widespread social disillusion and personal instability. The play receives a very rare revival now in a Cottesloe production by Katie Mitchell that will, I suspect, divide critics in the manner that is traditional with this controversial director's work. I thought the play blackly exhilarating in its ruthless (often mordantly amusing) anatomy of anomie. I thought the strategic take-it-or-leave-it stealth production (as usual with Mitchell, one might have chanced upon a tribe that is so mesmerically intent on its own practices that it has not noticed the "concealed" observer) arrestingly pivoted at that point where the different leylines of painful tragicomedy exruciatingly cross.</p> Reviews Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/raoul-barbican-london-1811075.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/raoul-barbican-london-1811075.html <p>Doubtless the people who applauded James Thiérrée loud and long would award him more stars than I. But would these be given out of delight or duty? For though the audience laughed as Thiérrée mimed his way through 75 winsome minutes, the laughs were scattered and never so full-bodied as to make the clapping a logical outcome</p> Reviews Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-sleeping-beauty-royal-opera-house-london-1810372.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-sleeping-beauty-royal-opera-house-london-1810372.html ]]> <p>The Royal Ballet's Sleeping Beauty is almost a fairy tale. Following two costly and unfortunate versions, artistic director Monica Mason returned to the company's iconic 1946 production. It's handsomely traditional, with fantasy designs and a decent text. Good, but not as good as it could be. There are plenty of virtues here, but the production is just a step away from being magical. </p> Reviews Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/terror-2009-theatre-of-horror-and-grand-guignol-southwark-playhouse-london-1810373.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/terror-2009-theatre-of-horror-and-grand-guignol-southwark-playhouse-london-1810373.html <p>Macabre things are going on in Southwark Playhouse's Stygian underground space in the run-up to Hallowe'en. With its auditorium the temperature of a cold-storage warehouse, exposed brickwork and suggestively gloomy lighting, the venue provides a setting of dank dread.</p> Reviews Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/bedroom-farcemiss-julie-rose-theatre-kingston-1809849.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/bedroom-farcemiss-julie-rose-theatre-kingston-1809849.html <p>The Rose Theatre's "Behind Closed Doors" season pairs August Strindberg's 1888 tragedy Miss Julie with Alan Ayckbourn's Bedroom Farce. Why? As a theme, "Behind Closed Doors" is flimsy: "Plays Set in a Room" or "Plays About Humans" would have done just as nicely. </p> Reviews Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/not-the-messiah-hes-a-very-naughty-boy-royal-albert-hall-london-1809854.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/not-the-messiah-hes-a-very-naughty-boy-royal-albert-hall-london-1809854.html <p>And now for something completely different? Well, yes and no; swings and roundabouts, square pegs and round holes, know what I mean, nudge, nudge. Eric Idle and composer John Du Prez have already conquered Broadway and the West End with their stage musical version of Spamalot. But on Friday – to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first Monty Python broadcast – they presented a one-off performance of a piece that is just a smidgen more megalomaniac.</p> Reviews Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/twelfth-night-courtyard-theatre-stratforduponavon-1809350.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/twelfth-night-courtyard-theatre-stratforduponavon-1809350.html <p> The setting for Gregory Doran's new RSC Twelfth Night is Eastern Mediterranean, Regency-style – all hookahs, Persian rugs, whirling dances and bushy-bearded Greek Orthodox priests. </p> Reviews Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-spanish-tragedy-arcola-londonbrannie-get-your-gun-young-vic-londonbrtwelfth-night-courtyard-stratforduponavon-1808816.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-spanish-tragedy-arcola-londonbrannie-get-your-gun-young-vic-londonbrtwelfth-night-courtyard-stratforduponavon-1808816.html <p>Is there a word in our language for gouging out your own tongue? Linguectomy, perhaps? But that's too clinical for Dominic Rowan's ferocious self-mutilation, playing the grief-maddened father, Hieronimo, in Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy.</p> Reviews Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/morphoses-the-wheeldon-company-sadlers-wells-londonbrshobana-jeyasingh-dance-company-queen-elizabeth-hall-londonbrjames-thirre-barbican-theatre-london-1808817.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/morphoses-the-wheeldon-company-sadlers-wells-londonbrshobana-jeyasingh-dance-company-queen-elizabeth-hall-londonbrjames-thirre-barbican-theatre-london-1808817.html <p>They say "tomayto"; we say "tomahto". They respond positively to smooth PR; our hackles rise at the same sales talk. They like to believe ballet dancers live the life of a Ralph Lauren photoshoot; we're reassured to see ours at work in holey tights. </p> Reviews Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-rise-and-fall-of-little-voicemy-real-war-1914---the-vaudeville-theatre-trafalgar-studios-london-1806794.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-rise-and-fall-of-little-voicemy-real-war-1914---the-vaudeville-theatre-trafalgar-studios-london-1806794.html ]]> <p>There may come a day when you will have to have featured in a viewer-voted TV talent contest to do anything of note in London theatre – not just star in a West End show, but direct Shakespeare, run a flagship national company, the whole shebang. So I suppose we should be relatively calm about the containable fact that an X Factor finalist, Diana Vickers, is currently failing to add either lustre or plausibility to Terry Johnson's energetically mediocre revival of The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, Jim Cartwright's lovely blowsy-yet-poetic Northern tragicomedy which was first seen in a production by the young Sam Mendes at the National in 1992. The blame lies not with Ms Vickers, but with the misguided producers.</p> Reviews Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/annie-get-your-gun-young-vic-london-1806119.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/annie-get-your-gun-young-vic-london-1806119.html ]]> <p>The evening generates a certain degree of warmth at moments, so I didn't have what you would call a bad time – though, given the following list of objections, this must count as quite an achievement. Annie Get Your Gun has an infectiously happy Irving Berlin score and one of the feeblest books of all hit musicals. As an entertainment, it's so undemanding that it's almost demanding. When you think of all the neglected tuners that could be rehabilitated, it is a weird work for the Young Vic to be reviving.</p> Reviews Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/martin-creed-ballet-work-no-1020-sadlers-wells-london-1806120.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/martin-creed-ballet-work-no-1020-sadlers-wells-london-1806120.html <p>I wanted to do something with lots of starts," explains Turner Prize-winning artist Martin Creed. "Lots of starting and not much finishing. Except when it does finish." Creed is a disarmingly frank guide to Ballet (Work No 1020), his first experiment in choreography. It's a mix of talk, film, song and movement, making a meandering but cheerful evening.</p> Reviews Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/comedians-lyric-hammersmith-london-1805069.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/comedians-lyric-hammersmith-london-1805069.html ]]> <p> Vibrantly revived now by Sean Holmes, Trevor Griffiths's 1975 play Comedians has a simple, dramatically satisfying structure that bravely exposes its main character's thesis to a practical test. In the first act, we see six would-be stand-up comics in a night school run by Eddie Waters, an idealistic veteran of the Northern music-hall circuit who believes that true comedy should challenge stereotypes, liberate the will and help change society. </p> Reviews Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/in-the-spirit-of-diaghilev-sadlers-wells-london-1805070.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/in-the-spirit-of-diaghilev-sadlers-wells-london-1805070.html ]]> <p>Sadler's Wells salutes Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, the most innovative ballet troupe of the 20th century, by commissioning new works from four big name choreographers. As in Diaghilev's regime, the stress is on collaboration. It throws up everything from the dreamy to the fatuous. </p> Reviews Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/endgame-duchess-theatre-londonbrlife-is-a-dream-donmar-warehouse-londonbrterror-2009-southwark-playhouse-london-1804653.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/endgame-duchess-theatre-londonbrlife-is-a-dream-donmar-warehouse-londonbrterror-2009-southwark-playhouse-london-1804653.html <p> Stuck in ruts, yearning to escape but caught in a loop, incapable of change. That describes most of the characters in Samuel Beckett’s plays. It seemingly didn’t apply, however, to the cast in this major West End production of Endgame, Beckett’s existential dark farce played out in a post-apocalyptic hovel. </p> Reviews Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:13 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/in-the-spirit-of-diaghilev-sadlers-wells-london-1804625.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/in-the-spirit-of-diaghilev-sadlers-wells-london-1804625.html <p>The job of theatrical impresario has always been heart-attack territory. All those egos to stroke, all those temperaments to balance, and will the show come together on time? Take another Valium and pray.</p> Reviews Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/first-night-endgame-duchess-theatre-london-1803757.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/first-night-endgame-duchess-theatre-london-1803757.html <p>This is a brilliant Complicite production of <i>Endgame</i>, but it's not at all as originally planned. </p> Reviews Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-truth-about-love-royal-opera-house-london-1803211.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-truth-about-love-royal-opera-house-london-1803211.html <p> Four talented Jette Parker Young Artists, three song cycles, one very familiar canvas – life, love, loss. The devisor and director of this somewhat overcooked confection, Jose Dario Innella, subtitled it “Dramatic ruminations over Schumann, Britten, and Ebel song cycles” and therein lay the problem: too much rumination. Directed to within an inch of its life, the title – The Truth About Love - is drawn from the most familiar of Britten’s Cabaret Songs whose stanzas are scattered like discarded one-liners throughout the evening. </p> Reviews Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:30:11 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/life-is-a-dream-donmar-warehouse-london-1802718.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/life-is-a-dream-donmar-warehouse-london-1802718.html ]]> <p>Have you heard the Chinese sage's story about the man who dreamt he was a butterfly and then woke up to wonder if he was, in fact, a butterfly dreaming he was a man? A compelling variation on this theme of the confusion between illusion and reality is dramatised in Life Is a Dream, the 1635 play by the great golden age Spanish dramatist, Calderó*de la Barca. Set in Poland, the play focuses on Segismundo, the young heir to the throne who has spent his life imprisoned in a tower because omens foretold that he would one day overthrow his father, the king. As in Oedipus Rex, this paternal insurance policy backfires. The monarch's neurotic desire to outwit fate is itself outsmarted by circumstance, although here a very qualified happy ending is reached.</p> Reviews Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/all-my-sons-octagon-theatre-bolton-1802071.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/all-my-sons-octagon-theatre-bolton-1802071.html ]]> <p>Launching a new regime at the Octagon Theatre in Bolton, its recently installed artistic director, David Thacker, has returned to the same in-the-round concept he favoured for his Old Vic production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons 17 years ago. Beneath the glass floor of this set there's a murky layer, suggesting mechanical wreckage. The audience surrounds the communal yard where characters tread sometimes warily, sometimes recklessly, on a transparent surface that looks as treacherous as the unfolding narrative and as fragile as the threads holding the guilt-wracked Keller family together. Miller's apple tree, with its trunk snapped and its fruit fallen, is a prominent visual image.</p> Reviews Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/timing-kings-head-london-1802074.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/timing-kings-head-london-1802074.html ]]> <p>Ex-partners make a habit of running into one another in comic plays and films. In Private Lives, Noël Coward arranges for his former spouses to meet on adjoining hotel balconies in the South of France, where they have both just embarked on their second honeymoons. In Timing, the very funny debut play by the actor and impressionist Alistair McGowan, there's a fresh, fertile twist to the formula. Julian and Amanda are voice-over artists who, after seven years of strained estrangement, wind up in the same tiny London recording studio where they are disarmed to find that they've have been booked to appear together in a radio advert.</p> Reviews Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/it-felt-empty-when-the-heart-went-at-first-but-it-is-alright-now-arcola-theatre-london-1801694.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/it-felt-empty-when-the-heart-went-at-first-but-it-is-alright-now-arcola-theatre-london-1801694.html ]]> <p>Dijana has some new bottles of L'Oréal shampoo – bought, or rather nicked, from Boots, because she's worth it. Being a 22-year-old, sex-trafficked Croatian, she's in a position to know precisely what she's worth, by one way of computing it, because she knows how much Babac, her lover-turned-pimp, paid for her. And she knows how much she still owes him before she can be re-united with her passport and the young daughter who is also his. When we first encounter her, in It Felt Empty When the Heart Went At First But It Is Alright Now, Lucy Kirkwood's wonderful new piece, Dijana is in her desolate Dalston prison of a room, awaiting the punter who (she hopes) will be her last.</p> Reviews Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/mayerling-royal-opera-house-london-1801204.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/mayerling-royal-opera-house-london-1801204.html <p>Kenneth MacMillan's Mayerling isn't a conventional choice for a first-time ballet. It traces the decline of Crown Prince Rudolf, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, from his marriage to his death in a suicide pact with his teenaged mistress. This really isn't The Nutcracker.</p> Reviews Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-power-of-yes-nt-lyttelton-londonbrthe-caretaker-everyman-liverpoolbrinherit-the-wind-old-vic-london-1800772.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-power-of-yes-nt-lyttelton-londonbrthe-caretaker-everyman-liverpoolbrinherit-the-wind-old-vic-london-1800772.html <p>David Hare's latest mission is to grapple with the financial crisis – dramatically, that is. But can his state-of-the-nation play, The Power of Yes, get to grips with such convoluted economics and be engaging into the bargain? The answer is "Yes!" On balance, at least. </p> Reviews Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/cloudgate-dance-theatre-of-taiwan-barbican-theatre-londonbrmayerling-royal-opera-house-london-1800773.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/cloudgate-dance-theatre-of-taiwan-barbican-theatre-londonbrmayerling-royal-opera-house-london-1800773.html <p> Unlike the Olympics, the annual Dance Umbrella season has never had, and never thought it needed, an opening pageant. But it got one by default this year with the latest work from the choreographer Lin Hwai-Min and his phenomenal t'ai chi-based Cloudgate Dance Theatre of Taiwan. </p> Reviews Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100