Monthly Archives: May 2017

The moment the Royal Court announced they were staging Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman, the whole season was sold out and a West End transfer guaranteed even before it had opened. The drama is set on a farm in rural Armagh … Continue reading →

What should be done with the senile, the mentally handicapped, the disabled, the epileptics and the Down Syndromes? The Nazi’s had a Euthanasia Programme which was signed by Hitler on September 1st, 1939. 200,000 people were rounded up, placed in … Continue reading →

Southwark Playhouse stages two interesting and very rare revivals: James Shirley’s The Cardinal, a characteristic watered-down, anti-Catholic Jacobean drama from 1641 and Sam Shepard’s potent absurdist family drama, A life of the Mind, from 1985. When it comes to writing … Continue reading →

Bertolt Brecht’s famous satire, written in 1941, equated Hitler and the Nazi Party Party with Al Capone and Chicago gangsters. In this adaptation by Bruce Norris and in this cabaret production by Simon Evans, Hitler is notable for his absence. … Continue reading →

In a series of short, sharp, satiric scenes, partly real, partly fantastic, Martin Crimp explores what happens to scenarios when disenchanted movie producers get hold of them. Art changes everything. When an author objects strongly to her real-life story being … Continue reading →

I entered an unusually darkened auditorium and I remained in the dark for most of Paul Auster’s highly obscure City of Glass, an existential classic film noir crime story, which turns out to be a search for identity and language. … Continue reading →

Emma Rice’s second and final season opens with Daniel Kramer’s volatile, cartoonish, take on Romeo and Juliet, which will have purists screaming. The star-cross’d lovers are no longer teenagers but in their late thirties. The spectacle will appeal most to … Continue reading →

Ivo van Hove, artistic director of Tonnelgroep Amsterdam, has taken up residency at the Barbican. He follows his highly praised productions of Shakespeare’s Histories and Romans, Arthur Miller’s View from the Bridge and Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler with a disappointing production … Continue reading →