Tag Archives: Finborough

Writer: Dion Boucicault Director: Phil Wilmott Reviewer: Richard Maguire It’s a difficult task to pull off Victorian melodrama in this day and age. The stock characters and the sentimental coincidences seem so out of place on the stages of today. And so The Finborough and director Phil Wilmott should be commended for this revival of a play first seen in ...

Writer:  Robert Graves Director:  Fidelis Morgan Reviewer:  Richard Maguire This is an odd one: a ‘lost’ Robert Graves play which documents the aftershocks of war and, surprisingly, has two characters, one male and one female, struggling to come to terms with their homosexuality. Very funny and almost embarrassingly melodramatic, it’s difficult to label this play with a genre. Perhaps, as ...

Writer: Jeff Page Director: Manuel Bau Reviewer: Scott Matthewman Deep in the heart of Islington’s sleepy, hippy academia, poet Bev Hemmings has published a new volume of work. It should be a welcome cause of celebration, a bright spot in a life where her father’s slow descent into Alzheimer’s is exacerbating her alcoholism. But a line in one of the ...

Writer: Christopher Chen Director: Georgie Staight Reviewer: Alex Ramon As previously proven a couple of years ago with its brilliant, bruising production of Colleen Murphy’s Pig Girl, the Finborough isn’t a theatre that believes in easing us into the New Year with something cosy. And those already overdosed on festive theatrical fun may be relieved to discover that the theatre ...

Writer: Bola Agbaje Director: Valentina Ceschi Reviewer: Alex Ramon Founded in 1956, as the first youth theatre in the world, and having boasted the likes of Helen Mirren, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Daniel Day-Lewis among its members, the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain remains a vital and vibrant force: a great place for aspiring actors and practitioners to get their ...

Writer: Ted Whitehead Director: Purni Morell Reviewer: Karl O'Doherty Attention to detail in close quarters is an undeniably good trait to have. Magicians who rely on sleight of hand tricks, artists who make a feature of their brush strokes; good attention to detail is essential, you know? Same too for theatre in a small, brightly lit space. The visual details ...

Writer: Colleen Murphy Director: Helen Donnelly Reviewer: Alex Ramon   The plays of Colleen Murphy have become something of a staple of the Finborough’s programming over the last few years, resulting in the playwright’s tenure as Canadian Writer-in-Residence at the theatre in 2011-12. The last work by Murphy to be staged at the Finborough (albeit all-too-briefly) was Armstrong’s War in ...

Writer: Angelina Weld Grimké Director: Ola Ince Reviewer: Alex Ramon   Here’s a fascinating item indeed. Angelina Weld Grimké’s Rachel should, by rights, be heralded as a classic of 20th Century American drama. Written by Grimké in 1916 under commission for the NAACP, the piece is the first play produced professionally by an African-American woman writer, and one of the ...