REVIEW: Luce, Southwark Playhouse ✭✭✭✭
Luce is a fresh and interesting take on American extremism in the 9/11 era. Full of intrigue and tension, it offers a thought provoking night out.
Dick Bird
Bake Off’s Mel Giedroyc to star in UK premiere of Luce
Actress and comedian Mel Giedroyc, co-presenter of The Great British Bake Off, will star in the UK première of JC Lee’s play Luce at the Southwark Playhouse. Bookings are now open. Luce will be directed by Simon Dormandy, whose recent productions include the world première of his own stage adaptation of The Hudsucker Proxy, and designed by Dick Bird, who won the 2015 UK Theatre Award for best design. Luce, which premièred at Lincoln Center Theater in 2013, marks the arrival in the UK of a startling new voice. JC Lee’s play is about the fear of homegrown terrorism. Set in an ordinary American town, but addressing anxieties that are growing throughout the Western world, it raises troubling questions about parenting, education and racism, such as where do the springs of violence lie? Luce runs at Southwark Playhouse from 9 March to 2 April 2016. Further casting is to be … Read more
REVIEW: Ah, Wilderness!, Young Vic Theatre ✭✭
The combination of sand, water, and romantic moon makes for a touching image towards the end of the play. It is beautifully lit by the talents of Charles Balfour and, for that one moment, it seems as though the shifting, gritty presence of the comatose sand has been worthwhile. Dominic Rowan’s rascally Sid is full blooded and he makes the most of what the part offers. George Mackay is impressive as Richard, vibrant, compelling and suitably obsessive.
REVIEW: Ah Wilderness!, Young Vic, ✭✭✭✭
Ah, Wilderness! Young Vic 4 stars In his 1932 play Ah, Wilderness, Eugene O’Neill returns to familiar themes such as family life, alcoholism and thwarted idealism but it stands out among his work for having a lightness of touch and event moments of comedy. Set in Connecticut on July 4 in 1906, it is a nostalgic family drama that is said to be O’Neill’s reinvention of his own less than happy childhood brought up by a distant, drug-addicted mother. In Ah, Wilderness!, the central character of 17-year-old Richard Miller is roughly the same age that young Eugene would have been in 1906. But, instead of a dysfunctional family, there is a sweet, loving mother and a father who is stern but a big softy underneath, both proud of their poetry-loving son. The play’s charm is beautifully captured in a new, trimmed-down production directed by Natalie Abrahami at the Young Vic. … Read more
