CRITIC’S CHOICE 2016 : Mark Ludmon

Billie Piper in Yerma

We asked our reviewers to take a look at 2016 and to nominate some stand out productions for 2016. Mark Ludmon replied with the following:- In another wonderful year for British theatre, one of my highlights was Annie Baker’s The Flick at the Dorfman at the National Theatre, unfolding the quiet desperations and joys of young people working at a small independent cinema in Massachusetts. Despite its running time of three-and-a-quarter hours and long silences, it was an absorbing, beautiful play with perfectly pitched performances. A powerful performance by Billie Piper made Yerma at the Young Vic stand out for me. Simon Stone’s modern adaptation played pretty freely with Lorca’s original, creating a stunning, heart-breaking drama about the despair of childlessness, played out within a glass box to add to a feeling we were glimpsing private horrors. My favourite show of the year has come at the end: Schiller’s Mary … Read more

REVIEW: Great Britain, Lyttleton Theatre ✭✭

Billie Piper in Great Britain

Because there is no coherent overall style, the audience is left uncertain what it is watching and why. It’s a pity, really, because there are so many good actors here – the cast is enormous – and marshalled in the one direction the results might have been very different.

Phone hacking play gets West End transfer

Billie Piper in Great Britain

The National Theatre has another smash hit on its hands with the play Great Britain by Richard Bean starring Billie Piper and Robert Glennister. The play satirising the phone hacking scandal and other dubious press practices opened at The National Theatre shortly after the verdicts on real life phone hacking trials had concluded. News of the transfer comes just two days after the play opened. The play, starring Piper as an ambitious tabload news editor, was rehearsed in secret while the phone hacking trial was taking place. The play will move to the Theatre Royal Haymarket from 10 September.