Author: The Reviews Hub - London

Writer: Tom Stoppard Director: Carrie Cracknell  Go and see the new production of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia at The Old Vic for the sheer beauty of it. The theatre itself has been transformed so it all takes place in the round, and Alex Eales’ set itself is a thing of elegance and beauty. There’s a circular stage with a double revolve above which hang planet-like globes of light. It’s somewhere between an astrolabe and an orrery brought to life – an apt visual image for the Enlightenment ideas touched on in the play. But the self-conscious intellectualism of the 33-year-old play…

Writer: Samuel Beckett Director: Stockard Channing  It was while in Vilnius, Lithuania, that actor David Westhead followed some random arrows on a street that led to a Soviet apartment block. Here, an actor performed Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape in his modest flat, an unexpected, moving performance that enthralled and inspired Westhead to put together his own production.  He contacted long-term friend and Broadway royalty, Stockard Channing, to see if she would direct, and she agreed. “Have play, will travel”, enthused the Emmy Award-winning actress at Norwood’s Stanley Arts at the Q&A after the magnetic performance at the South London…

Writer: Miriam Battye Director: Jaz Woodcock-Stewart Highly anticipated, Miriam Battye’s new play is slightly disappointing. Its examination of the lives of teenagers, who are both desperate and simultaneously afraid to lose their virginity, is often very funny and even moving in places, but their stories are stubbornly static, and the narrative struggles to move forward. Battye’s previous play, Strategic Love Play, looked at the trials of a first date where the female character wants a relationship without the preliminary flirting and dating, while Battye’s earlier work, Scenes with girls, interrogated the value of marriage over female friendship. The Virgins, with…

Writers: Matt Chiorini and Greg Giovanini Directors: Matt Chiorini and Maya June Dwyer ‘Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see,’ a maxim attributed to writer Edgar Allen Poe, is also a warning to the audience joining Edgar in the Red Room by Matt Chiorini and Greg Giovanini at The Hope Theatre, a 65-minute chamber musical that attempts to combine Poe’s famous stories with the circumstances of his own death. In what becomes a scramble, The Shylock Project could make better use of their concept of the dual writer – “the man and the myth, the genius…

Composers: Leoš Janáček, Grażyna Bacewicz et al. Conductor: Edward Gardner A rousing drum-roll and a frenzy of strings opens the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO)’s first evening of Central European music in style. Grażyna Bacewicz, a Polish composer and violinist, often wrote for violins. But this 1943 Overture also features plenty of wind instruments and percussion (bass and snare drums, cymbals, glockenspie), compressing the power of a whole symphony into a rousing six minutes. There’s a brief and haunting flute and then the full orchestra is back and blazing. The evening’s programme of Bohemian Rhapsodies is technically demanding, but the LPO…

Adapter and Director: Christopher McElroen In February 1965, the Cambridge Union, the university’s debating society, hosted a debate about the state of the United States of America, which was broadcast live by the BBC. The attention was due to the Union having secured two famous Americans to contribute to the motion that “the American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro”. Alongside students who would propose and oppose the motion, the Union presented novelist and civil rights campaigner James Baldwin, seconding the motion, and conservative commentator William F. Buckley. Theatre company the american vicarious replicates the television portion…

Writer: Adam Lazarus Director: Alexandra Rizkallah Cristiano Benfenati is absolutely incredible in this one-man show about an overly protective father living in Canada. Daughter begins in a sickly-sweet manner when Benfenati, butterfly wings on his back, bursts onto stage to show off his young daughter’s dance moves, all to the music of her favourite tracks. He even persuades the audience to clap along to the beat, but this effervescent and ignominious start completely hides the dark, disturbing material to come. The shift is gradual, making it even more chilling when the horrors are finally revealed. At first, we like this…

Writer: Shona Bukola Babayemi There is a disarming candour at the heart of Boxes, a solo piece that draws directly from lived experience and asks its audience to sit with uncertainty, precarity, and endurance. Written and performed by Shona Bukola Babayemi, the play unfolds as an autobiographical account of survival against long odds. It charts a life shaped by instability, displacement, and the constant negotiation of space – physical, emotional, and social – in a society not designed to accommodate those on the margins. The production arrives at Soho Theatre following an earlier run at Peckham Theatre, and its intimacy suits…