REVIEW: Kristin Chenoweth, Royal Albert Hall ✭✭✭✭✭
From the cries of “We love you” from the audience, the feeling was clearly reciprocated.
From the cries of “We love you” from the audience, the feeling was clearly reciprocated.
Its great stuff and easily the best production Bailey has helmed. No wonder it had a return season. It’s a great production of a Shakespeare text that is not well known but if done like this often enough ought be one of the most popular.
The performances are uniformly terrific. Especially excellent were the wonderful Wunmi Mosaku, Jenna Russell, Justine Mitchell and Michael Shaeffer – and Demetri Goritas’ precise breakdown in Act Two is harrowing, almost unfeasibly precise.
It is difficult to recall, at least over the course of the last seven years, a commercial production of a new play which has opened directly in the West End and which is as funny, dramatic, enthralling and educational.
I would see it again and again if I could. It’s an amazing achievement on a tiny budget; with proper support it could run for ages. It’s better than many West End productions of musicals which do.
Farber makes no mistakes in casting, design, pace, tone or intensity, with the result that the play throbs with vitality, is both visceral and sensuous and, even if you know the plot, plays out like the frightening psycho-drama thriller it is.
A truly delightful, engaging and joyous piece, chock full of important subjects and thoughts.
There is an abundance of shrill shouting, tiresome arguing and pedestrian staging. It’s like watching Revenge but without the irony. Or the humour. Or the style.