Category: Theatre

  • From Morning to Midnight, at the National

    Written in 1912, Georg Kaiser’s expressionist drama From Morning to Midnight has been given a bravura treatment in a new version by Dennis Kelly. I joined the queue for day seats at 8:30 on a Wednesday, and snagged two matinee tickets, along with two evening tickets for the second preview of King Lear. What a…

  • Women of Twilight by Sylvia Rayman

    White Bear Theatre, London One of the highlights of our visit to London was a most ambitious production at the White Bear, a tiny pub theatre in South London. It was Women of Twilight, Sylvia Rayman’s all-women play from 1951, powerfully performed by a profit-share company of eleven, appropriately called 11F.  Unmarried women who find themselves…

  • Adini Söyle / Say Your Name, at the Arcola

    The Arcola Theatre, up in rough-and-tumble Dalston, is a hotbed of alternative vitality, always trying out new ideas and approaches, politically engaged, with a perspective that spans the globe. The theatre, formerly in a rambling industrial building on Arcola Street, moved a few blocks south in January 2011, a few steps from the Dalston Junction overground…

  • Protest Song, at The Shed

    The Shed, at the National The Occupy movement in London had its camp in the square outside St. Paul’s Cathedral, a location that was already occupied by “rough sleepers”, the current British term for what in North Armerica are called “street people”. A new one-person play, Protest Song, by Tim Price, imagines the interaction between…

  • Fortune’s Fool, at the Old Vic

    Saint Paul’s from across the river. So our first real day in London (December 31), we rush over to the Old Vic, and are fortunate to get tickets for Fortune’s Fool by Turgenev, in a translation by Mike Poulton. There’s a discrete sign in the lobby saying that due to the indisposition of John McAndrew,…

  • Richard II, Royal Shakespeare at the Barbican

    It wasn’t easy to get to see Richard II. It was sold out, so we figured we’d get day seats, something we’re quite used to doing. We figured Saturday would be good. Two performances, matinee and evening, thirty tickets each. Horrible weather, surely we’d get tickets? We arrived an hour early to a sight usually…