Month: June 2012
The Dark Side of Love
Red balloons litter the floor like bloodied, deflated hearts; knives are thrust into stomachs again and again; a couple dance with need and disgust; and we watch like voyeurs. The party is over in this splintered vision of love, staged in the bowels of the Roundhouse as part of the … Continue Reading The Dark Side of Love
St James Theatre to open in the autumn
St James Theatre, the first new, purpose-built theatre in central London for 30 years, will open its doors this August. It is situated in the heart of Victoria on the site of the former Westminster Theatre, which was destroyed by fire almost a decade ago. The fully wheelchair-accessible venue will … Continue Reading St James Theatre to open in the autumn
Chicken
Mike Batistick’s play about identity crisis among ‘the working poor’ has some sharp lines and could be interesting in the right hands. But this lacklustre production does it no favours. Hard-up Big Mac addict Wendell (Craig Kelly) is struggling to provide for his pregnant wife, Lina, while trying to rid … Continue Reading Chicken
Interview: Tim Hoare
Theatre excels at transforming interior spaces into imaginative landscapes. Pop-up companies are breathing new life into derelict or abandoned buildings, staging Shakespeare in basements and blurring the line between film and live performance with secret cinema screenings. But walk past these places and you might never know what was going … Continue Reading Interview: Tim Hoare
The Last of the Haussmans
Guylinered Nick (Rory Kinnear) has returned to the family home – a dilapidated British seaside pile that stands out like a sore thumb among a rash of achingly tasteful celebrity-owned houses – dragging behind him a barely-kicked drug addiction and a lifetime of resentment. Waiting for him is his sister … Continue Reading The Last of the Haussmans
The Park
The sun is out and the air is crisp and cold. The sky above is blue but the bench is in shade, sheltered from a busy street by two blocks of student accommodation. Sandwich wrappers and crisp packets spill out of a nearby bin, attracting pigeons that peck at stray … Continue Reading The Park
The Comedy of Errors
This brilliantly funny production of Shakespeare’s comedy of separation anxiety and mistaken identity – set in modern times and part of the RSC’s ‘Shipwreck Trilogy’ – is a bright splash of colour flung across the Roundhouse stage with assuredness and a keen eye by director Amir Nizar Zuabi. Antipholus and … Continue Reading The Comedy of Errors
The Witness
The photo of a badly burned Kim Phuc running naked and screaming as napalm rains down on her destroyed village turned the American public against the Vietnam War and is still shocking now. In one frozen moment it captures the human cost of conflict in a way that no statistic … Continue Reading The Witness