Monthly Archives: May 2012

30 years ago there was a brilliant Richard III in Russian at the Round House. Sadly, history does not repeat itself. The Richard III of Companhia Bufomecanica, which has arrived in London as the guest of the RSC and as … Continue reading →

ABIGAIL’S PARTY Wyndham’s Theatre Mike Leigh’s comedy, with its definitive performance by Alison Steadman, was a legendary cult hilt on television in 1977 with 16 million viewers. The satire on the marital miseries and bad taste of the under-educated and … Continue reading →

Eugene O’Neill’s expressionistic allegory is not often revived by the commercial theatre and was last seen in London in a visually stunning German production by Peter Stein with huge sets at the National Theatre 25 years ago. Yank, a brutish … Continue reading →

Neil Simon, the most financially successful playwright in Broadway’s history, began his career as a radio and television sketch writer. He is the master of the one-liner and the diminutive Danny DeVito and not-so-diminutive Richard Griffiths get a lot of … Continue reading →

Joe Orton’s much over-rated, Freudian black farce, which is set in a lunatic asylum, constantly oversteps the bounds of good taste with Ortonesque vulgar bravado and a verbal style, which is modelled on Oscar Wilde’s epigrams. It hasn’t had a … Continue reading →

Anybody reading George Orwell’s stark and unforgettable essay, Down a Mine, would instinctively feel all mines should be shut down immediately. But, ironically, if you see Alan Plater’s play today, you will feel they should have stayed open. Plater (1935-2010), … Continue reading →

I think it was Katharine Hepburn who said Fred Astaire gave Ginger Rogers class and she gave him sex. RKO’s Top Hat, which is generally considered their best film together, was hugely successful at the box office in 1935, thanks … Continue reading →

Charles Dyer’s comedy, which was last seen in 1973, is an oddity. There are just two characters at war with each other: a bed-ridden, crippled old mother, a former missionary, and her unmarried middle-aged son, a museum curator. Her son … Continue reading →