REVIEW: Sinbad The Sailor, Theatre Royal Stratford East ✭✭✭

Book tickets to Sinbad The Sailor at Theatre Royal Straford East

Some people attending probably only ever go to the theatre to see the Christmas panto, and this certainly doesn’t disappoint. Some attending may even by inspired to go and read up on the beautiful stories whence the title figure springs. And some will merely be grateful that this provides two and a half hours in which they do not have to try to entertain their children: the show will do that for them.

REVIEW: McQueen, Theatre Royal Haymarket ✭✭✭✭

McQueen at the Theatre Royal Haymarket

The play triumphantly uncovers and re-asserts McQueen’s credo that design is at its best an act of love of the person – a summing up of who that man or woman was, is and may become – and therefore lies, paradoxically, in the mind as much as purely in the visual sense. It was for this reason that Alexander McQueen chose the Shakespeare line that heads this review to wear as a tattoo – a blazon for his time, and – surely – for all our times.

First Look at McQueen at the Haymarket

McQueen at the Theatre Royal Haymarket

Following its success at the St James Theatre, McQueen opens tonight at London’s Theatre Royal Haymarket for a strictly limited season until 7 November 2015. McQueen is a journey into the visionary imagination and dream world of Alexander McQueen, fashion’s greatest contemporary artist.  Set on a single London night, it is more than a bio-play. It is stepping into the fairy story landscape of McQueen’s mind, the landscape seen in his immortal shows, where with a dress an urchin can become an Amazon, where beauty might just help us survive the night.  A girl has watched McQueen’s Mayfair house for eleven consecutive days. Tonight she climbs down from her watching tree and breaks into his house, to steal a dress, to become someone special. He catches her, but, instead of calling the police, they embark together on a journey through London and into his heart. McQueen features Stephen Wight in the … Read more

REVIEW: The Merchant Of Venice, Shakespeare’s Globe ✭✭✭✭

Jonathan Pryce Merchant Of Venice

Set firmly in its time, circa 1597, with costumes and accoutrements which establish an exotic, far away and, most importantly, bygone era, Munby avoids the great questions of the play and steers a course through the waters of sympathy, self-interest and capitalism. The result is a richly amusing take on the play, which is involving and clear, but which never achieves great heights of lyricism or drama, happily accepting “everyday” as its overall pulse. The high point of poetry for the evening comes with Jonathan Pryce’s heartfelt “Hath not a Jew eyes?” speech, the words wrenched from his very soul.