Monthly Archives: February 2013

Carl Zuckmayer’s famous satire on Prussian militarism, the veneration of the uniform, German obsequiousness and bureaucracy gone mad, was extremely popular in 1931; until the Nazis banned it. The story is based on an event which had taken place in … Continue reading →

Artistic director Sam Walter’s last discovery is a fine play by Githa Sowerby which had but one performance in London in 1924 and has not been seen in Britain since. In fairy tales, stepmothers are almost always wicked. Here it … Continue reading →

The 24-year-old Noël Coward caused something of a furore when his play, in which he had written a whacking leading role for himself, opened in 1924. A neurotic young man returns from Paris, engaged to a girl he doesn’t love, … Continue reading →

Eugene Ionesco’s political parable on totalitarianism, appeasement and mindless conformity, inspired by the rising fascism in the 1930s, is a major example of the Theatre of the Absurd; but I have yet to see it done well and this over-physical … Continue reading →

French-Canadian director Robert Lepage’s two-and-a-half hour epic, without interval, set in Las Vegas and the surrounding desert, has been created specifically for a circular performance space. The actors enter from under the high-standing drum-like stage. There are 36 trapdoors. The … Continue reading →

John Van Druten, the Anglo-American playwright, had many successes in London and New York, starting in 1925 with Young Woodley and ending with I Am A Camera in 1951. London Wall, which dates from 1931, takes place in the offices … Continue reading →

With the Arts under serious threat in the market place and in education, the revival of Timberlake Wertenbaker’s play, which explores the redemptive power of Theatre, could hardly be timelier. Max Stafford-Clark’s new production confirms what everybody thought when he … Continue reading →

Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel (aka The Sun Also Rises) is about the self-indulgent, boozy “lost generation” and is set in Paris and Pamplona in the 1920’s. Brett (Josie Taylor), a glamorous, promiscuous divorcée, is loved by three men: Jake (Gideon … Continue reading →