Writer: Arthur Miller Director: Jonathan Munby The Price is perhaps one of Arthur Miller’s most straightforward plays. Victor Franz (Elliot Cowan), a 50-year-old New York cop facing retirement, is forced to divest an attic room full of his family’s antique furniture because the building in which the collection is housed is to be demolished. And so he invites a furniture dealer, Henry Goodman’s Gregory Solomon, to assess and hopefully purchase all the properties. Despite a rather sleazy attitude to Victor’s wife, Esther (Faye Castelow), that would seem out of place even in the 1960s when this play was first performed,…
Author: The Reviews Hub - London
The Reviews Hub - London
The Reviews Hub London is under the editorship of Richard Maguire. The Reviews Hub was set up in 2007. Our mission is to provide the most in-depth, nationwide arts coverage online.
The Art of Fugue, performed by Circa and the Australian Brandenberg Orchestra, is a particularly imaginative pairing of art forms at Southbank Centre’s exciting Multitudes festival. Johann Sebastian Bach’s final composition, his intricate The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080, is here illustrated by the renowned Australian circus arts company, Circa, who have created a quite extraordinary physical interpretation of the music. In The Art of Fugue’s 14 fugues and four canons, Bach offers a wealth of variations on a single principal subject. Circa’s nine-strong ensemble of acrobats, under the direction of Yaron Lifschitz, responds to these with an equal wealth…
Creator: Red Biscuit Theatre Funny, clever and subversive, Little Town Blue charts the course of three stereotypical US teens – jock; nerd; dumbass – on a knockabout tour of scenarios from classic American flicks and comedy TV, roughly stitched together into a madcap story set around a troubled midwestern every-town. The five-strong Red Biscuit team started making physical comedy 10 years ago, so there’s a real sense of flow to the show, like watching five best mates on a chaotic night out, running with each other’s ideas, joshing and shoving. But their effortlessness disguises the huge amount of work that’s…
Writers: Ellie Jay Cooper/James Akka Director: Caleb Barron Back-to-back billing at London’s Pleasance takes audiences from a devastating earthquake in Alaska to an (equally intense) 12-year-old’s campaign for Head Boy. Maybe You Like It Productions presents an exciting, high-energy double bill that makes for a compelling night of performance. Down To Chance takes on a massive challenge – a 9.2 magnitude earthquake and roughly 20 characters across just 70 minutes. But writer and performer Ellie Jay Cooper’s text rises to this challenge with forcible energy, deft choreography, and a clearly told story of community and hope after tragedy. It is…
Writer: Farine Clarke Director: Sean Turner The show blurb for Farine Clarke’s Heartsink tells us the writer practised as a GP for a while before a near-death experience woke her up to her own mortality, so one supposes she knows a thing or two about how doctors deal with becoming gravely ill patients. One imagines, like the rest of us, each in their own unique way. It is a shame, then, that one cannot help but feel we have met GP Dr Jeffrey Longford, the gruff, knight-in-sour-armour medical protagonist of the piece, a fair few times before. Behind Dr Jeffrey’s…
Book: Sergio Antonio Maggiolo Music and Lyrics: Sergio Antonio Maggiolo and Guido Garcia Lueches Director: Laura Killeen Most Christian religions ask you to love Jesus, but maybe it’s possible to love him a bit too much. In a big week for biblical fantasies following Christopher Brett Bailey’s I Saw Satan at the 7-Eleven, containing devilish sex scenes, Sergio Antonio Maggiolo, Guido Garcia Lueches and Laura Killeen’s new musical JEEZUS! centres on erotic thoughts about Jesus. Transferring from the Edinburgh Festival to the New Diorama Theatre, this very specifically 69-minute show (and it is too) is a bold, sacrilegious satire but…
Writer: Taylor Carmen Director: Kay Brattan Roman Cowboy Productions presents a play centred around the purpose of life in the near future. In the year 2108, two stagehands must shelter in place at a New York City theatre. The play begins as soon as you enter, with the stagehands thanking the audience for visiting. Green Day plays in the background as the pair talks amongst themselves and slowly starts the clean-up process after a performance. This occurs for several minutes until the play officially begins. This play uses dialogue to create an image of the future for the audience. Set…
Writer: Mike Bartlett Director: Dylan Trowbridge Mike Bartlett’s Cock has been around long enough to have acquired a reputation as one of the more testing plays in the contemporary British canon, a 90-minute exercise in romantic torment that refuses to offer its audience the comfort of resolution. This TIFT production, staged in a basement room at COLAB Tower, does the text full justice and then some. The premise is deceptively simple. John (Aidan deSalaiz) is in a long-term relationship with M (Michael Torontow), a man. He then falls for W (Tess Benger), a woman. Rather than choose, he agonises, equivocates,…