Tim Hochstrasser

Tim Hochstrasser is a life-long enthusiast for and supporter of the performing arts in all forms, from classic to contemporary. By day he teaches and lectures intellectual and cultural history at LSE and also conducts guided historical walks around London. By night he is usually in a theatre, possibly followed by a cabaret chaser...

REVIEW: Second Soprano, King’s Head ✭✭✭✭✭

Off West End, Reviews
Second Soprano at The King's Head Theatre

In this theatre season where commemoration and remembrance of the outbreak of the First World War are much to the fore, many of the most successful dramatic ventures are small-scale. In some ways this fine double-act, written by Martha Shrimpton and Ellie Routledge, and performed by Shrimpton and Olivia Hirst, is the mirror-image of Stony Broke in No Man’s Land, which I reviewed here recently. Both are virtuosic displays of actorly craft, using multiple genres, creating manifold roles, and mixing mood and manner, music and words to create an ineffable and individual blend of humour and pathos. As a result the act of commemoration is made more complex and ultimately, I would say, more moving, than a simple, full-on narrative or historical approach.

REVIEW: I Went To A Fabulous Party, Kings Head ✭✭

Off West End, Reviews
I Went To A Fabulous Party at the King's Head Theatre

The King’s Head has a notable tradition in supporting contemporary drama on gay themes, but sadly as things stand this new 65-minute play by And Davies does not add very many leaves to those laurels. It is not by any means without potential and with a longish run ahead in Edinburgh in August there is scope for development and refinement of both the text and the depth and authenticity of the acting.

REVIEW: The Picture Of Dorian Gray, St James Studio ✭✭✭✭✭

Off West End, Reviews
The Picture Of Dorian Gray at the St James Studio Theatre

Sadly this fine adaptation has a very brief run – I do hope another theatre can be persuaded to allow us to experience this play with this cast once more – and soon…..It deserves to be seen for its own qualities, for the fresh insights it brings to a work we think we know all too well, and for what it tells us of Wilde as well. It showcases in exemplary fashion the jostling, unstable and ultimately tragic combination of talents and aspirations that comprise Wilde’s unique persona. As usual, he perceived the truth ahead of all the critics: ‘Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry is what the world thinks me: Dorian is what I would like to be – in other ages, perhaps.’

Alice Comes To Opera Holland Park

News, Opera
Alice at Opera Holland Park

Diving into the 1901 Club just nearby Waterloo is not exactly like falling down a rabbit hole, but the press preview for the launch of a CD album ahead of the summer revival of Will Todd’s opera was certainly a startling escape from the harassed world of the commuters of SE1. While ‘another hundred people got onto their trains’, your reviewer exchanged pleasantries with a very debonair Mad Hatter and a droll White Rabbit. Tarts with hearts (baked) were scattered temptingly around the different levels of this charming period building, and we could explore the cluttered, over-furnished Edwardian rooms at leisure….. I had rather hoped to be accosted by a Red Queen or rescued by a White Knight or even to have shared a chaise longue with the Caterpillar, but in the end I was happy to settle for a demure performance by Fflur Wyn of Alice’s main number, ‘I … Read more

REVIEW: Now This Is Not The End, Arcola Theatre ✭✭✭

Off West End, Reviews
Now This Is Not The End at the Arcola Theatre

This then is a play about memory and a sense of homeland, and the inter-generational consequences of the Holocaust and Jewish Diaspora. Clearly this is well-trodden ground and anyone approaching it really needs to calculate a new, oblique angle of approach in the way that – for instance – The Hare with Amber Eyes was successfully organised around the history and travels of the netsuke collection owned by the family rather than a full-on narration of the personal fate of the people. There are indications of such an approach here focused on the different meanings and experiences of the untranslatable term Heimat or ‘homeland’, but it is never fully sustained across the play as a whole. Moreover while there are many intriguing connections developed between the six characters none of them really catch light or come to a resolution, so that at the end we are left with a frustratingly inconclusive trajectory. Not that there is anything wrong in leaving plot-lines open-ended, but in the end we are simply not given enough material to care about any of the characters and how they come to be who there are, despite the best efforts of the cast.

REVIEW: Violence and Son, Jerwood Theatre Upstairs ✭✭✭✭

Off West End, Reviews
Violence and Son at Jerwood Theatre Upstairs

The Royal Court has not had the best of runs recently, so it is heartening to report that in this new play by Gary Owen they have a really fine piece of writing in a memorable production that is fully in line with the radical and deliberately discomfiting traditions of this theatre. The action is disconcerting and uncomfortable at times to watch and until its denouement entirely convincing. The cast is uniformly excellent and the production values entirely in line with aims and ambitions of the writer.

REVIEW: Turn Back The Clock, St James Theatre ✭✭✭✭

Off West End, Reviews
Turn Back The Clock at the St James Studio

It leaves us with a slight regret that, as with so many English comedians of her generation, Joyce Grenfell did not emerge more often from the comfort zone in which she had successfully built her reputation. We can be very grateful though to the Knights for demonstrating how brightly her legacy, both comic and quietly tragic, still shines.