Author: The Reviews Hub - London

Cole Porter’s back. Back at the Barbican, and back in very good hands. Trafalgar Theatre Productions has quietly established itself as the Barbican’s summer resident over recent years, bringing Goodnight, Oscar, Fiddler on the Roof, Kiss Me, Kate and Anything Goes to the venue in successive seasons. Given that list, a Cole Porter revival feels less like a coincidence and more like a mission statement. Their latest is High Society, and on the basis of a press morning that offered three musical numbers, a Q&A with the cast, and a good look at the design concept, it’s shaping up to…

Coming to Jerymn Street Theatre this summer is a new production of Wife to James Whelan, a play by almost-forgotten Irish playwright Teresa Deevy and set in a small town in Ireland in 1937, focusing on the relationship between Nan Bowers and the eponymous James Whelan. It’s being brought to London by Mint Theatre, which specialises in bringing neglected plays back to the stage.  It will be directed by Mint Theater’s Jonathan Bank. Fiach Kunz (Becoming Maggie, Extremities (The New Theatre, Dublin), Romeo and Juliet, Three Days of Rain (Mill Theatre Dundrum), and A Fear and Loathing Actor in Dublin (Edinburgh Festival Fringe – also…

Writer: April Hope Miller Director: Merle Wheldon When looking for a play location that supports multiple people crossing paths, opportunities for conversations between friends and strangers, and conversations from the inane to the intimate, you can’t do much better than the ladies’ toilet in a nightclub. The particular facilities in question in April Hope Miller’s Flush belong to an establishment in Dalston – one imagines not too far from the Arcola itself. Elle Wintour’s artfully designed set, walls between cubicles left to the imagination, and fluorescent graffiti that does the opposite, plays host to teenage girls stressing about their fake…

Writer: Moira Buffini Directors: David Fairs and Conor O’Kane  The Friday night streets in Clapham are heaving with revellers eating outside, but inside the beloved local theatre in the Old Town, there is another meal being prepared, a revival of the Olivier Award-winning (or Oliver as the programme tells us) and Bafta-nominated Moira Buffini’s Dinner. The opening scene makes it clear through the news on in the background and a vintage Apple Mac on the table that this production has not been updated from its debut at the National Theatre. It’s set back in 2002 when Tony Blair was still…

Writer: Titas Halder Director: Annie Kershaw Genesis Future Director’s Award winner Annie Kershaw takes the reins of Titas Halder’s latest play, Foal, and delivers magnificently. Halder’s first play, Run the Beast Down, also debuted at Finborough Theatre and received five stars from us. Rising star Halder proves once again he is a name to be reckoned with. In fact, this play might cement his status as a star already risen and firmly established in London theatre. Foul follows A.K. as he takes us through his childhood in the UK, growing up with Indian parents in an increasingly hostile Britain, dealing…

Choreographers: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Radouan Mriziga On a May evening when the possibility of experiencing all four seasons in one day is a realistic prospect, watching Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Radouan Mriziga’s dance interpretation of Vivaldi’s famous concerti is, like the annually changing climate, beautiful and frustrating, exuberant, vivid and sometimes slow-moving. Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Inventione, performed at Sadler’s Wells, is brought to life by a recording of violinist Amandine Beyer accompanied by Gli Incogniti, who capture the intricacies of Vivaldi’s annual cycle, yet the long periods of dancing in silence as well as the jagged…

Writer: Christopher Sainton-Clark Director: Rosanna Mallinson Christopher Sainton-Clark’s dark, brooding comedy-thriller The Night Ali Died delivers an engaging slice of Sunset Boulevard-style beyond-the-grave narration, revealing the events leading up to the murder of unambitious chemistry technician Ali. Except it is not just dullard Ali (Sainton-Clark plays all the characters) who meets his untimely demise on a thoroughly blood-stained evening. A crooked detective, a malevolent mob boss, and a scheming small-time hitman all encounter variously gory ends. In fact, so much violence is committed on the streets of Norwich that it evokes bigger headlines in the local newspaper than, we are…

Writer: Morgan Lloyd Malcolm Director: James Haddrell The rewinds are the best thing about this thriller that was first presented at Hampstead Downstairs in 2015. Dialogue from certain scenes is often repeated, once, twice, or in one crucial section of the play, three times. It adds drama to what is already dramatic play. It’s a shame that the trick is dispensed with and forgotten about in the second half. The Wasp, a two-hander featuring Cassandra Hercules and Serin Ibrahim, echoes in a modern way the psychological thrillers of the late 1980s and early 1990s, female-led films such as Single White…