REVIEW: The Price, Wyndham’s Theatre ✭✭✭✭
Paul T Davies reviews David Suchet in Arthur Miller’s The Price now playing at London’s Wyndham’s Theatre.
Adrian Lukis
REVIEW: The Seagull, Chichester Festival Theatre ✭✭✭✭
Hare’s adaptation, the best of the three in the Season, is crisp, charming and comical, thereby magnifying the effect of the more tragic aspects. It’s a markedly short version of the play, and Kent assists the understanding of its contours and colours by interposing interval between Acts 3 and 4. This allows the four central characters of the play to stake out their positions, develop their tensions and alliances, their hopes, fears and dreams; by the time the third Act is over, the various dice have been rolled and Act Four, set two years on, is about consequences; chickens – or seagulls – coming home to roost.
REVIEW: Orson’s Shadow, Southwark Playhouse ✭✭✭✭✭
The play is staged in the round with a pleasing and teasing contrast between the artifice stage convention and informality. The gestures towards setting are practical and functional and do not distract from the verbal duelling of the players, which is the heart and centre of the action. While there have been several productions in the USA, this play has had only one previous outing here, and for the quality and intensity of the writing and acting it deserves a long and successful run.
