REVIEW: Monster Raving Loony, Soho Theatre ✭✭✭✭
With the audience donning party hats and at times encouraged to participate, it is an entertaining show that slips in plenty of sharp insights into British politics and society.
James Graham
Parliamentary Drama This House Comes To The Garrick
This House, the critically acclaimed political drama will transfer to the Garrick Theatre in London in November 2016. This House will open soon at the Chichester Festival, having played two sell-out seasons at the National Theatre. 1974. The UK faces economic crisis and a hung parliament. In a culture hostile to cooperation, it’s a period when votes are won or lost by one, when there are fist fights in the bars and when sick MPs are carried through the lobby to register their vote. It’s a time when a staggering number of politicians die, and the building creaks under idiosyncrasies and arcane traditions. Set in the engine rooms of Westminster, James Graham’s This House strips politics down to the practical realities of those behind the scenes: the whips who roll up their sleeves and on occasion bend the rules to shepherd and coerce a diverse chorus of MPs within the … Read more
Danny Boyle Presents Star Studded Dramatic Fund-Raiser
Fifteen children growing up in a poor and remote part of rural South Africa have inspired Academy Award winner Danny Boyle to bring their stories to life in London as part of a hard hitting special theatre production starring James McAvoy, Academy Award Nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kit Harington, Josh Hartnett, Christopher Eccleston, Zawe Ashton and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. The Children’s Monologues dramatise the testimonies of young children growing up in Rammulotsi, a small rural township in the Free State province of South Africa. Invited to write about a day they will never forget, the Children’s Monologues retell the stories of young people expressing personal experiences in their own words, in their native Sesotho language. While some monologues capture moments of childish joy and wonder, many stories tell of desperate circumstances: what it is like to watch their parents die because of inadequate medical treatment, discover their mother has been gang raped … Read more
Autumn Donmar Warehouse Season Announced
Donmar Warehouse Artistic Director Josie Rourke today announced the theatre’s Autumn season of three plays which includes Abi Morgan’s Splendour directed by Associate Director Robert Hastie, the UK Premiere of Christopher Shinn’s Teddy Ferrara directed by Dominic Cooke and the thirty-year revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Christopher Hampton directed by Rourke herself. Artistic Director Josie Rourke said: One of the things that most excites me about this season is the strong leading roles for women. It is a thrill to announce a season of work that features, in plays by living writers, women of the calibre and power of Zawe Ashton, Sinéad Cusack, Michelle Dockery, Michelle Fairley, Genevive O’Reilly and Janet McTeer, who returns to the Donmar and the London stage. This, combined with the transfer of Phyllida Lloyd’s second instalment in her trilogy of all-female Shakespeares to New York shows a programme of work in deep conversation with … Read more
REVIEW: The Angry Brigade, Bush Theatre ✭✭
The play strikes one as more comic, at least in the first Act, than it is played here under James Grieve’s direction. More Thin Blue Line and less Z Cars might have helped. James Graham’s writing, his focus on convention and protocol, should guide proceedings, and it does, at least to start. The opening scene goes a long way in the right direction, although the characters, all police, could afford to be more stereotypically quirky and fussy. Harry Melling, a supple and intriguing actor, always reliable, does the very best work here.
First Look at Finding Neverland On Broadway
Finding Neverland opens tonight on Broadway following a Sold Out preview period, and we are pleased to bring you some of the great production photos from this show. Finding Neverland On Broadway stars Matthew Morrison (Glee, Hairspray), Kelsey Grammer (Frasier, La Cage Aux Folles), Britain’s very own Laura Michelle Kelly (Mary Poppins) and Carolee Carmello (Parade). Based on the Miramax film of the same name, Finding Neverland follows playwright J.M. Barrie as he summons the courage to become the writer – and the man – he yearns to be. Barrie finds the inspiration he’s been missing when he meets the beautiful widow Sylvia and her four young sons: Jack, George, Michael and Peter. Delighted by the boys’ hilarious escapades, Barrie conjures the magical world of Neverland and writes a play unlike any the high-society London theatre-goers have ever seen. It’s a tremendous risk, but as Barrie himself has discovered— when … Read more
REVIEW: Finding Neverland, Lunt-Fontanne Theatre ✭✭✭✭✭
Finding Neverland is a truly magical musical theatre experience. The score is lively and quite quite beautiful. From ballads to raucous boy songs and big, generous ensemble pieces, plus an exceptional anthem or two – Barlow and Kennedy really deliver the goods. Without question, though, the star here is Matthew Morrison, who gives a boundlessly energetic turn as the troubled playwright J.M.Barrie. Morrison is better than he has ever been.
