Tag Archives: Southwark Playhouse

Book and Lyrics: Jethro Compton Music and Lyrics: Darren Clark Director: Jethro Compton Reviewer: Karl O'Doherty Cornish mysticism replaces jazz-age American dreaming in this beautiful, engaging, fizzing version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous short story. Transposed and translated from the West Coast of the US to a small fishing village, the curious case now becomes a folk tale revolving around ...

Book: Murray Horwitz and Richard Maltby, Jr.  Music: Fats Waller  Director: Tyrone Huntley  Reviewer: Scott Matthewman There are not many first-time directors and first-time choreographers who could make their debuts in such roles at the Southwark Playhouse, one of the top tier of off-West End fringe venues. Name recognition surely plays a small part: the director is Tyrone Huntley, Olivier ...

Writer: Jerry Sterner Director: Katharine Farmer Reviewer: Maryam Philpott “Money is unconditional acceptance” argues Lawrence Garfinkle, the soulless raider from Wall Street who buys flailing companies only to sell off their assets in Jerry Sterner’s 1989 play which became a film two years later. Revived now at the Southwark Playhouse, Other People’s Money is the evocation of the “greed is good” mantra, ...

Writer: James Phillips Director: Joe Harmston Reviewer: Maryam Philpott For lovers of spy drama, the early years of the Cold War are among the most exciting of the twentieth-century. While Ian Fleming and Graham Greene were creating the templates for espionage fiction and its heroes, in reality all eyes were turning East with the slow unveiling of the Cambridge Five ...

Writer: Alex Oates Director: Dominic Shaw Reviewer: Heather Deacon All any writer can wish for is to ignite impassioned debate with their script and all a producer could wish for is that the production furthers that debate. Given the protesters outside of the Southwark Playhouse on Monday evening, All in a Row is doing just that, with a play that ...

Writer: Anthony Neilson Director: Alex Sutton Reviewer: Stephen Bates When we see a children’s show that is totally unsuitable for children, somehow we know that it must be Christmas. December 2018 at Southwark Playhouse is ushered in with Anthony Neilson’s 65-minute one-act play, a mix of ingredients that include a Santa’s elf, kids’ toys and glitter along with prostitution, hard ...

Writer: Iman Qureshi Director:  Hannah Hauer-King Reviewer:  Richard Maguire The Funeral Director is this year’s winner of the 2018 Papatango New Writing Prize, an award that guarantees the winner a full production of their play, and a £6,000 commission for another one. The setting, a Muslim funeral home, is definitely a novel location for London theatre, but Iman Qureshi’s story is, ...

Writer: Oliver Lansley Directors: Oliver Lansley and James Seager Reviewer: Scott Matthewman As the centenary of the Armistice approaches, it feels an appropriate time to revive Les Enfants Terribles’ 2012 show The Trench, set in the muddy battlefields of World War I – and far below them. Lansley’s script takes the form of an epic poem: the combination of battle ...