Author: The Reviews Hub - London

Writer: Hannah Khalil Director: Chris White Writer Hannah Khalil teams up with director and husband Chris White once again for this fictional comedy-drama at Theatro Technis. 1983. Omar Sharif (Al Nedjari), legend of the screen, now past his peak, prepares for a role in Terence Rattigan’s The Sleeping Prince at the Chichester Festival. Mag (Lara Sawalha), his assistant director, enters on a pretence but lingers, and the play revolves around their conversations, a verbal sparring match as tense as one of Sharif’s games of backgammon. New Order’s Blue Monday is an odd choice of song for the opening track. It…

Writer, Book & Lyrics: Andrea Milton-Furlotti Music: Tom Fowkes Directors: Laura Shipler, Chico & Andrea Milton-Furlotti Marilyn Monroe – the American “blonde bombshell” sex symbol, actress, model, and icon who is still a firm embodiment of the 1950s. Presented as Marilyn at 100 years old (Donna King), looking back on her life since she was a child, audiences see a young Norma Jeane (Alice Mayer) struggling through childhood in foster homes and an orphanage, before being shipped off to World War II to work on a factory floor. It was here she was scouted as a model, and her illustrious…

Writer: Oscar Wilde Director: Nicholai La Barrie Sir Robert Chiltern (Chiké Okonkwo) is a rich, successful politician, respected in elite circles and devoted to his wife. Nicholai La Barrie’s compelling new production of An Ideal Husband opens as Robert and his wife Gertrude (beautifully poised Tamara Lawrance) are hosting a charity ball, introduced by the voice of DJ Trevor Nelson. But Sir Robert’s wealth was built on a piece of youthful insider trading, which Mrs Cheveley, a glamorous new arrival in London, threatens to expose. Lyric Hammersmith’s Associate Director La Barrie sets Oscar Wilde’s London-based tragicomedy in the contemporary city,…

Writer: Joel Horwood Director: Sean Holmes The show blurb for Joel Horwood’s complex, ambitious, visually arresting take on Sherlock Holmes describes the piece as a new story. In fact, for the first half, the production leans heavily on Conan Doyle’s densely plotted 1890 novella, The Sign of Four. What is new then? Horwood positions the piece as a post-colonial critique of the entire rotten enterprise of the British Empire – racist, class-obsessed, avaricious abroad, and slowly decaying from within – and, by extension, current attitudes towards race and immigration. Newish, yes, though one cannot help feeling that the theme of…

Serenading this small but bountiful exhibition of Asian and Pacific art, carefully selected from various iterations of the Asia Pacific Triennial held at Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) over the last 30 years, is the plaintive voice of Christian Thompson. His song Refuge,2015, performed on video, is entirely composed in Bidjara, an endangered Aboriginal language in south-west Queensland. There is no translation, but its theme of loss and connection is the perfect soundtrack to this fascinating collection. Thompson’s elegiac voice certainly hits a different note from the first artwork encountered just outside the V&A’s Porter Gallery. A grumpy…

Book and Lyrics: Jishik Kim Music: Seungyeon Kwon Director: Daljung Kim The only (unnamed) character in the South Korean musical The Last Man is a film nut with many a movie reference at the ready for any situation. It is perhaps a little on the nose, then, for the only film posters adorning the Seoul basement flat that forms Shankho Chaudhuri’s set to be those from zombie movies. For an impending zombie apocalypse is the reason why The Survivor (played by Lex Lee on press night, in a role he alternates with Nabi Brown) has barricaded himself inside. A mysterious…

Writer: Ava Pickett Director: Lyndsey Turner One of the great joys of theatre is that sometimes you’re in the room when an extraordinary voice breaks through, when something really quite special happens. And so it was last summer, when 1536, Ava Pickett’s debut play, opened at the Almeida Theatre, when many in the audience had taken a punt on a new writer with no expectations other than Rupert Gould’s eye for new talent. Fast forward exactly a year, and that play has not only earned a clutch of awards and nominations, the backing of Margot Robbie and a forthcoming BBC…

Writer: Eleanor Cowlin  Directors: Eleanor Cowlin and Lev Govorovski  The shows that do well at fringe festivals tend to continue their success at other fringe festivals. Very rarely do they make the West End, but Eleanor Cowlin’s Debris, playing at this year’s high-quality Peckham Fringe, has West End written all over it. It’s the kind of tricksy self-referential play that theatre audiences love. Kaia has written a play called Surviving a Narcissist about her relationship with her ex, Tom. But the problem is that before the play is staged, Tom buys the script off Amazon Prime for £8.99 and “rawdogs”…