James Mack and Mitesh Soni in The Autobiography of a Cad. Photo: Matt Crockett
I always look forward to seeing a play by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury, but on this occasion I was disappointed. Their adaptation of The Autobiography of a Cad, a 1930s satire about a self-centred lying politician with a public school background, may have modern parallels but it didn’t seem like a play for today. Fortunately it did feature an outstanding lead performance. Keep watching and I’ll tell you all about it.
Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye and star of Have I Got News For You, and Nick Newman have almost made a speciality of paying homage to past satirists. Wipers Times told of First World War soldiers who mocked their commanders, Spike was a tribute to Spike Milligan and The Goons who sent up the establishment, Trial By Laughter concerned the early 19th century government’s attempt to censor satirist William Hone. All of those, like their new offering, were premiered at The Watermill.
The author of The Autobiography of a Cad, A G MacDonell, was a popular satirist in the 1920s and 30s. All satire is vulnerable to the passing of time and its targets, and he is now almost forgotten. In the case of this book, though, you can see the appeal of revisiting it. It dates from a time when Britain was run by a self-serving corrupt elite who inherited their positions irrespective of ability. You would think that by the twentieth century this had long been replaced by a meritocracy. Except when you realise how many members of the last government came from wealthy backgrounds and had gone through Eton and Oxbridge.
More than that, the subject of this particular story is not simply incompetent or old fashioned, in the way of say Colonel Blimp. The Cad, whose name is Edward Fox-Ingleby, is entitled, self-centred, and misogynistic. He lies his way out of trouble and cheats his way to the top. There’s no explicit nod in the play to any modern self-serving mendacious politician, but you may well be reminded of a few.
James Mack powers the show
Rhiannon Neads and James Mack in The Autobiography of a Cad. Photo: Matt Crockett
The irony of the original ‘autobiography’ speaks for itself but, for dramatic purposes, this play puts the Cad in the process of writing it. This task inevitably involves rewriting history, which two assistants question and challenge with a mixture of bemusement and contempt.
Fox relives moments from his life in which he encounters various friends, colleagues and lovers, and proceeds to stab them in the back. He moves through his boorish misbehaviour as a student, to his mistreatment of the staff on his estate, to avoiding front line fighting in the First World War, to pursuing a political career, all the while carrying on affairs.
James Mack is a regular at The Watermill and always good value. His wide smile with even white teeth makes him perfect for this role as a Teflon politician. He exudes a smarmy charm, while conjuring wide-eyed panic when he thinks he’s been caught out. His bravura performance powers the show.
Two actors take on all the other characters. Rhiannon Neads flits from the shocked assistant Miss Appleby to the snarling ghost of Granny Ingleby to sundry girlfriends and wives, while Mitesh Soni is the sneering assistant Mr Collins, the downtrodden farm worker Williams and many powerful but naive men.
Designer Ceci Calf‘s set uses wood panelling and oil-painted portraits to suggest appropriately a Gentlemen’s Club, while cleverly concealing the various props that will be needed.
Each scene is funny in itself but the pattern is always the same: a threat to the Cad, followed by his escape using lies or bribes, then on to the next until it feels relentless. It needs an edit: if nothing else, some of what is in effect a series of sketches could be cut to avoid the diminishing returns.
Having said that, the Cad’s character and behaviour are at times hilarious, and director Paul Hart keeps the pace moving for over two hours.
Top class acting makes ordinary life extraordinary
★★★★
Anjli Mohindra, Deborah Findlay, Gina Mckee, Romola Garai & Harmony-Rose Bremner in The Years. Photo: Helen Murray
The Years was originally a book by a Nobel Prize winning French woman Annie Ernaux. It was adapted by a Norwegian woman Eline Arbo who directed it while working with a Dutch company. She has now brought the production to London in an English translation by Stephanie Bain. There were moments when I wondered whether the story of an ordinary life was worth all that pan European effort, but in the end it was the acting that sold it to me.
All the actors have familiar faces. Deborah Findlay, Gina McKee and Romola Garai have appeared regularly on stage and screen for decades. Anjli Mohindra and Harmony Rose-Bremner are young, up-and-coming actors who are already building big reputations.
All have the same ability to convey characters through the subtlest of gestures and expressions, and to communicate with confidence when they are centre stage. These are qualities essential to performing in this play, where the actors play the same person at different stages of her life, and the rest of the time take on the multiple other characters who are part of the story.
Harmony Rose-Bremner is Annie as a child fascinated by the family around her. Then Anjli Mohindra takes over as the joyous adolescent discovering, among other things, masturbation. And I must say I have never seen such an enthusiastic depiction of the act on stage.
In the other half of her life, as the middle-aged Annie, Gina McKee, with her trademark knowing smile, observes a new generation of adults and has the maturity to enjoy her own life more- especially the sex. Then in old age, Deborah Findlay takes over as the actual storyteller, looking at the present and all that has happened with a benign smile. If anyone could be said to take the honours in this masterclass of acting, it would be Romola Garai who takes on the mantle of the fresh young adult, learning about the harsh realities of relationships.
And it is quite an epic, taking a provincial French woman from childhood to old age. But what happens to her isn’t exceptional, with the important exception that the lives of ordinary women are rarely told on stage or anywhere else for that matter.
It gains much of its force from being told against the background of the second half of the twentieth century. In other words, it becomes a celebatory story of Women in our time or, depending on our age, the time of our parents and grandparents. So we run through post-Second World War austerity to the growth of consumerism, 1960s rebellion, the sexual liberation encouraged by the Pill, the triumph of free market capitalism, the beginning of a new millennium and 9/11. Lists of brand names and new consumer devices like the Walkman form a motif throughout the play.
The woman is first seen as a young girl, the youngest in the family, and ends up a grandmother, the oldest. In the course of the play, she discovers her sexuality, has non-consensual sex, an unwanted pregnancy, babies, a divorce, more pleasurable sex, copes with teenage children, and becomes an empty nester. The exploration of a life from it all being ahead to being behind is fascinating, and salutary. Annie describes how the memories ‘will all vanish at the same time, like the millions of images that lay behind the foreheads of the grandparents, dead for half a century, and of the parents, also dead…And one day we’ll appear in our children’s memories, among their grandchildren and people not yet born.’
Some of the events are upsetting, such as a harrowing illegal abortion (the play was stopped the night I was there because a member of the audience fainted, which I gather is not unusual), some are funny as when they all join in doing stretches with varying degrees of success as part of a Jane Fonda style fitness session.
But, in itself, this is not enough. Not because it’s about a woman but because a cushioned middle-class life is just not that interesting. It can be: even the most ordinary life has conflicts, challenges, threats, difficult relationships. But in this story, such things are deliberately played down. The alienating way of telling this trip of a lifetime, in which an actor describes what’s going on even as it happens, and with the characters around her almost anonymous, anaesthetises us from the dramas of her life.
The trip of a lifetime
Where we all gain, male and female, is in the story of time itself, and the way our memories remain with us, making the past always present. This is reinforced by all five incarnations, in the form of the actors, remaining on stage throughout. Another motif concerns the taking of photographs that hold one moment in time for a lifetime and beyond.
The story might still seem a trifling thing but for the performances and the creative elements of the production. The actors are all at the top of their game. They wear roughly the same costumes throughout and have few props but, because they speak with passion and mime so convincingly, we believe they are schoolchildren, disco dancing, naked in the bedroom, and so on.
In Juul Dekker’s sparse set, white cloths that represent the background to the photos, are rolled up to act as a baby or become a tablecloth, and end up, having been stained by wine, blood and other fluids of life, hanging as the backcloths to the life we have witnessed. Then, there’s the music. Harmony Rose-Bremner and Romola Garai sing beautifully and add extra depth to the moods of joy and sadness.
I don’t think the play carries the weight it aspires to, but the acting more than makes up for that.
Another day, another Hollywood star in a Sophocles tragedy given a major overhaul by a dynamic young director. And if you thought the critics’ average rating of 2.9★ for Rami Malek in Oedipus, wait until you get to the bottom of this roundup to see what they collectively thought of Brie Larson in Elektra. Daniel Fish, whose dark reinterpretation of Oklahoma! had plenty of fans, went full weird in the opinion of many of the reviewers. Brie Larson hid her acting talent beneath a lot of shouting and loud speakers. Only Stockard Channing emerged unscathed.
[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]
The Guardian’s Arifa Akbar (4★) continued to be a fan of Hollywood stars in extreme interpretations of Sophocles’ classics. Having been one of the few critics to give Rami Malek’s Oedipus four stars, she duplicated her rating but this time was a lonely voice. Here’s part of her commendation: ‘Part spoken, part sung through in recitative and partly shouted in fury, this is a lyrical, avant garde creation, like a long lamentation, bare in its staging and emotions.’ ‘The anger is never shrill or flatly pitched – her delivery captures not only anger but also grief, resembling Hamlet when at her most melancholy. It is a magnetic performance, fearless for a West End debut.’
Sarah Crompton at WhatsOnStage (3★) found ‘the production, full of strangeness and insight, feels half-baked, as if all its elements haven’t quite had time to gel. It simultaneously compels attention and frustrates it.’ She described how ‘Lines are spoken out rather than to one another, formalised and ritualistic rather than naturalistic…The effect is to turn the piece into an abstract meditation rather than drama, a gloss on Elektra not the thing itself. I rather loved it, but it never quite becomes the sum of its parts.’
Olivia Rook for LondonTheatre (3★) described Brie Larson thus: ‘her detached, reflective performance style makes it difficult to feel a connection with her character. Her voice is deliberately flat, which often jars, particularly when she is reunited with her brother and her reaction is borderline emotionless.’
Time Out’s Andrzej Lukowski (3★) said, ‘The biggest problem for me was the use of Anne Carson’s poetic but starchy 2001 verse adaptation – there is some mordant wit in there but I’m not convinced the formality of the verse helped the drama.’
‘It’s haunting, punchily feminist and perverse, all at once’ said Alice Saville in The Independent (3★). She continued: ‘this staging is full of a mesmerising but near-stagnant stillness’ She concluded, ‘It’s a fascinating experiment, one that’s beautiful, but ultimately impenetrable.’
Tim Bano in The Standard honed his sarcasm: ‘It’s not entirely clear if it was Elektra, or an exercise in alienation. A 75-minute test as to whether an audience can keep an open mind.’ He skewered the director: ‘It’s directed (boy is it directed) by the experimental American director Daniel Fish…(he) doesn’t let a single line go un-weirded.’ He ended, ‘“Let me go mad in my own way,” Larson cries – and that’s the whole show, really. Always baffling, never boring, and completely mad in its own way.’ No stars given, which may be intentional, but I’ve put it down as 2★.
The Stage’s Sam Marlowe (2★) was damning: ‘It is so self-consciously stylised, so artful and so devoid of any genuine sense of humanity in extremis that it’s more likely to provoke a yawn or a weary eye roll than pity or terror. You sense that it’s straining for austere elegance and intellectual heft; it comes off simply as sterile and insufferably pretentious.’ Matt Wolf for The Arts Desk (2★) said, ‘The hipster vibe might seem to invite us all to this pathological party only to leave us on the threshold awaiting some way in.’
The Telegraph’s Dominic Cavendish (2★) wasn’t impressed: ‘what gets confused swiftly is where our attention should fall. The problem of over-emphasis is redoubled by Larson’s jolting, forceful delivery into a microphone, sometimes with added distortion and with an almost tic-like need to amplify and draw out every use of the word “no”.’ He wasn’t entirely negative: ‘The laurels go to Stockard Channing (Greece is the word…), giving us a Clytemnestra of stately bearing and stirring defensiveness and lending the pivotal mother-daughter battle an urgency, danger and truthfulness.’
The Times’ Clive Davis (2) recalled happier times at the theatre: ‘Some shows you walk home from humming the songs or cooing at the acting. After Elektra, which gives us Brie Larson as a punk princess agitating against something rotten in the state of ancient Argos like some shaven-haired proto-Hamlet, you go home still boggling at the misguided avant-gardery of it all.’ His last words offered an olive branch to the star: ‘Larson is clearly a gifted, authoritative performer. But she is hemmed into a concept that makes her Elektra only a raging bore.’
Describing it as a ‘droning dud’, Broadway World’s Alexander Cohen (1★) had many questions: ‘Why is there a dangling blimp? Why is there a paint canon sporadically spritzing the chorus? Why does Larson wail atonally like a brat-like banshee into a microphone without any momentum to propel her? It took about three minutes for me to realise that it’s not meant to make sense. This is theatre where the #vibe rules supreme.’
Critics’ Average Rating 2.5★
Value Rating 31 (Value rating is the Average Critic Rating divided by the typical ticket price)
Rami Malek and Indira Varma in Oedipus. Photo: Manuel Harlan
Two new versions of Sophocles’ Oedipus went head-to-head either side of Christmas- Robert Icke‘s which starred Mark Strong and Lesley Manville versus this newly opened production at the Old Vic starring Rami Malek and Indira Varma. We have a winner, and it wasn’t the one featuring Freddie Mercury. Hardly any critic actually liked Malek’s style of acting and there was little praise for the adaptation by Ella Hickson. There were contrasting opinions about the production in which co-director Matthew Warchus conceded time and space to the loud sound and frantic choreography of Heofesh Schecter. It was, you might say, a Marmite decision. Only co-star Indira Varma was universally liked by the critics.
[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]
For a change, I’m going to present the reviews in reverse order of enthusiasm for the show. The most critical came from Claire Allfree in the Telegraph (2★). She began ‘The question of whether Rami Malek can actually act has always hung over this most idiosyncratic of performers.’ Her answer? ‘ Malek is almost entirely at sea with Oedipus, his curious tic-ridden delivery strangling almost every word at birth.’ He was, she said, ‘like an unholy blend of Trump at his most disingenuous and Biden at his most incoherent.’ She doesn’t stop there: ‘his relationship with Varma, who outclasses everyone on stage, is consistently jarring…it resembles a confused arrangement between two people of almost entirely different species’.’One has to wonder,’ she pondered, ‘if the craze for celebrity casting has this week reached its nadir.’
The i-paper‘s Fiona Mountford (2★) thought ‘Malek speaks in a strange drawl that suggests he has toothache’ and described him as ‘all adrift in a bewilderingly centrifugal production’. She wasn’t keen on the use of dance either, saying it was ‘undoubtedly powerful and emotive, but the trouble with these lengthy, wordless episodes is that they fatally disrupt the momentum of what should be the undiluted hurtle of Sophocles’ storytelling’.
Alice Saville in The Independent (2★) was no more enamoured: ‘Ultimately this Oedipus is one for contemporary dance fans…theatre lovers hoping for a coherent take on this often-told story should seek elsewhere.’ ‘It’s gorgeous to look at,’ she said, ‘but there’s more tension in a single chorus member’s bent finger than in its whole slack plot.’
Clive Davis in The Times (3★) was barely more enthusiastic but he did find an extra star. The text, he suggested, ‘For long stretches, in fact, sounds more like the work of an AI programme commissioned to generate soap opera chat laced with the sort of noirish boilerplate that would sit nicely in a Tarantino film.’ For him, Rami Malek gave a ‘curiously stilted central performance…his rigid facial expressions evoking all those socialite millionaires who’ve gone in for a few too many injections of Botox.’ Having praised the sound, dance, set and lighting, he damned it with faint praise: ‘We can’t help being drawn into a harsh, elemental world. If only it had a more charismatic presence at its centre.’
Dave Fargnoli for The Stage (3★) began, ‘Bursting with bold visuals and angsty, unsubtle performances, this ambitious, often incoherent take on Sophocles’ classic myth puts style firmly ahead of substance’ but in the end he managed to winkle out some substance: ‘Indira Varma gives a consummate, focused performance as Jocasta, grounding the production with heartfelt naturalism.’
‘The opening is dazzling,’ said Sarah Crompton at WhatsOnStage (3★). Unfortunately, ‘it can’t sustain the intensity it promises. By the end, there’s not much catharsis and without that, there’s not much tragedy.’ She pointed out that Malek’s ‘lack of emotion is emphasised by a script that chooses to offer an unusually tentative ending rather than searing revelation and despair.’
The Mail‘s Patrick Marmion (3★) found that Rami Malek’s ‘inward looking method acting is not well suited to ritualistic staging that’s meant to evoke Greek religious cults from antiquity’. He also berated ‘Ella Hickson’s wooden adaptation’.
Inevitably there were unfavourable comparisons with the recently closed Oedipus directed by Robert Icke. Take this from Tim Bano in The Standard (3★): ‘Where Icke’s was all sleekness and surgical precision, this one…takes Aristotle’s unities and rubs them in the old philosopher’s face. Why have unity when you can have the mad and slightly ridiculous chaos of several different creative visions squeezed into 100 minutes?’ He explained in more detail: ‘Hickson’s doing one thing, Warchus another, Schechter a third, Malek something else besides, possibly on another planet.’ Talking of the Hollywood Oscar winner: ‘Sinister and expressionless, he delivers every line in a strangely mannered way, and every word sounds like one long vowel.’
The Guardian‘s Arifa Akbar (4★) was one of the few genuinely enthusiastic reviewers. She liked the dance and the loud music and even Rami Malek’s performance: ‘He brings outsider vibes to Oedipus – speaking in an elusive American drawl, adopting the mantle of leadership like a haunted robot.’
Perhaps most impressed was Alexander Cohen for BroadwayWorld (4★). He was immediately taken by ‘a frenetic whirlwind of theatre and dance …that returns the power back to the people’ (i.e. the Greek chorus). As for Rami Malek: ‘It takes time to acclimatise to his slinky weirdness and syrupy southern drawl. But Oedipus is supposed to be an outsider welcomed in, the tendrils of his otherness bleeding deep into his paranoid psyche. Ella Hickson’s wily adaptation hints at scathing insecurity bubbling beneath his calm demeanour which Malek subtly preys upon in his angular mannerisms.’
Critics’ average rating: 2.9★
Value Rating 34 (Value rating is the Average Critic Rating divided by the typical ticket price)
Climate change negotiations become entertaining thriller
@sohoplace
Stephen Kunken & Kristin Atherton in Kyoto at @sohoplace. Photo: Manuel Harlan
Kyoto by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, directed by Steven Daldry and Justin Martin, was first presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, before transferring to @sohoplace in London. As many critics commented, the idea of negotiations about climate control offering a good night out seems unlikely but they all found it entertaining. The lead Stephen Kunken was universally praised (‘demonic charm’ Metro).
[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]
Many media representatives reviewed the production when it was first performed at Stratford-Upon-Avon:
Michael Davis for WhatsOnStage (5★) acknowledged that climate change talks might be off-putting as a subject for a play but assured us it was a ‘drama with a deeply powerful message, delivered with sleight of hand and considerable theatricality, and disguised in a hugely entertaining production’. Suzy Fey for the Financial Times (4★) agreed: ‘Kyoto is more exciting than it has any right to be’. The Observer‘s Susannah Clapp (4★) called it ‘a whirligig show’. Dave Fargnoli in The Stage (4★) said ‘the directing team of Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin instil proceedings with a similar breathless energy’. Mark Lawson for The Guardian (4★) quipped, ‘this play about the diplomatic consequences of commas deserves a string of exclamation marks’.
More reviews followed when Kyoto transferred to London:
Cindy Marcolina at BroadwayWorld (5★) commented, ‘The facts and figures are embroidered into a beckoning, snappy dialogue, naturalistic and throbbing with energy.’ Like others, she praised ‘ Miriam Buether’s exceptional design. Walking into the auditorium feels like entering a conference centre’. She ended her review: ‘Definitely one you can’t miss.’
Nick Curtis of The Standard (4★) called it ‘a taut and gripping thriller’. Time Out‘s Andrzej Lukowski (4★) joked it was ‘so indecently entertaining it almost feels like the result of a bet to choose the dullest, worthiest subject imaginable and make it as fun as humanly possible.’ ‘it’s impressively dynamic’ said Holly O’Mahony at LondonTheatre (4★). Dominic Maxwell in The Times (4★) found it ‘alive with drumming, stand-up comedy monologues, self-aware jokes, nods to the present day.’ (His colleague Clive Davis gave 3 stars in his Stratford review- ‘buckets of primary colours and a fair amount of knockabout humour’.)
Calire Allfree for the Telegraph (3★) acknowledged that ‘this near-three-hour marathon consistently moves with effervescent vigour’ but felt it ‘had little to say about climate change’.
Steve Pemberton & Reece Shearsmith in Inside No 9: Stage/Fright
Inside No 9 ran for a highly successful nine (of course) series. The spin-off stage show is clearly one for the fans but it embraces the medium of theatre, according to the critics. Some of them found it inventive and frightening, others thought it was funny but not that original.
[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]
‘It isn’t to be missed’ declared a besotted Katelyn Mensah for Radio Times (5★). And in case you missed the message, she ended her review ‘it’s a thrilling ride that shouldn’t be missed.’
For Dominic Cavendish of the Telegraph (4★) was more measured: ‘this is an evening that tallies the need to give us a good laugh and a valuable fright – encapsulating their relish for the absurd and macabre – with reflections on mortality and loss.’
For The Guardian (4★), Brian Logan called it ‘a slickly produced spooky wheeze, distinguished by Shearsmith and Pemberton’s clearly personal obsession with the double-act dynamic and old-school entertainment, and with theatres and their ghosts.’
‘There’s a lot that’s absurdly funny, as well as one sequence that is genuinely hair-raising. Meanwhile a deeper, more moving thread works through the piece about the interplay between acting, memory and haunting,’ said Sarah Hemming in The Financial Times (4★).
The i-paper’s Culture Editor Sarah Carson (4★) took on reviewing duties for this show, calling it ‘riotously fun’ and ‘raucously entertaining’. She praised ‘ writing and wordplay that is so clever and quick that it is impossible not to miss every reference.’ Not sure that’s what she meant to say but you get the message.
‘It’s not radical, or even as ground-breaking as the television shows which have spawned it. But it is great, all-encompassing fun,’ said Sarah Crompton at WhatsOnStage (4★).
Annabel Nugent for The Independent (4★) said, ‘if nothing else, this is one play you won’t be checking your watch in. Tonight, on stage, the spirit of Inside No 9 is alive and kicking.’
Anya Ryan from LondonTheatre (3★) seemed like she was hoping for more originality, nevertheless: ‘Recycled gags? Tick. An element of surprise? Tick. And the cherished pair giving it their everything? Oh absolutely.’
The Stage’s Sam Marlowe (3★) said, ‘It’s a show in need of a stronger sense of purpose and identity: it’s not quite funny, emotionally involving or frightening enough, even though it has flickers of all those elements.’
Nick Curtis of The Standard (3★) called it ‘a mix of the intelligent and the obvious – part smart reinvention and part lazy cash-in.’ Patrick Marmion had a similar reaction in the Mail (3★): ‘The show has a distinct feeling of using up the comedians’ off-cuts, out-takes and left-overs for the amusement of themselves and their fervid fan-base. ‘
At the start of 2025, it seemed that The Times’ Clive Davis (2★) had made a New Year resolution to be nicer to the shows but, if he did, he hasn’t stuck to it. In his latest outing, he reverted to the hard-to-please, sting-like-a-scorpion critic that we know and love. In a review was more frightening than the show, he warned, ‘Prepare to be underwhelmed… by this laboured set of ghoulish sketches’
Critics’ average rating 3.6★
Value Rating 42 (Value rating is the Average Critic Rating divided by the typical ticket price)
Nadi Kemp-Sayfi and Gabrielle Brooks in Cymbeline at Shakespeare’s Globe. Photo: Marc Brenner
William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline is one of his lesser known works for the very good reason that it’s a bit of a mess but director Jennifer Tang has made a good attempt at making it work, according to the critics, especially by swapping the genders of the eponymous lead and some of the other characters. Even so, some remained unenthusiastic about the play itself.
Matt Wolf for LondonTheatre (4) praised ‘Tang’s ability to find an emotional throughline to a sometimes wayward text’ ‘The vagaries of romance between Gabrielle Brooks’s superb Innogen and Nadi Kemp-Sayfi’s impassioned Posthumus, raised within the royal household, drive the newly queer narrative.’
Nick Curtis in The Standard (4★) found it ‘gets a bold, vivid production from Jennifer Tang that matches its hectic mix of comedy, horror and absurdity. ‘
Miriam Sallon writing for WhatsOnStage (4★) declared ‘if a lesser-loved, mishmash, three-hour, tragi-comic Shakespeare isn’t going to sell it for you, you should absolutely just go for the music. Led by composer Laura Moody, the musical trio, completed by Heidi Heidelberg and Angela Wai Nok Hui, are mesmerising all on their own.’
Alexander Cohen for BroadwayWorld (3★) said, ‘Tang’s directorial vision alone charges it with the momentum it needs. She has a solid grasp of a slippery play.’ Dave Fargnoli in The Stage (3★) seemed to agree, ‘Although the production’s bold ideas don’t all gel, this is an original and engaging reinterpretation that offers thought-provoking new perspectives on Shakespeare’s contrived historical drama.’
Dominic Maxwell in The Times (3★) opined, ‘while you’d be pushed to say that the director Jennifer Tang’s female-led sometimes resexed retelling of this romantic mishmash is either very tragic or very funny, even at almost three hours long, it keeps stubbornly finding ways to be interesting.’ The Guardian‘s Arifa Akbar (3★) wasn’t sure what to make of it: ‘it felt like a play trotting from one plot-turn to another to reach its exhausting end.’
David Byrne‘s first season as Artistic Director of the Royal Court continues to impress. His latest offering is Amy Jephta‘s play is set in South Africa where a middle-aged white couple enlist wealthy black neighbours whom they’ve previously ignored to improve the effectiveness of their bid to remove an unauthorised shack in their enclave. The critics mostly liked it but were split between those who thought it was ‘perceptive provocative fun’ and those who thought it didn’t quite convince.
[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]
Arifa Akbar in The Guardian (4★) found it was a play with layers: ‘Do they want to be insiders at all or remain wilful outsiders, keeping a connection to the imaginary invaders in the shack – and their own past geographies? How does being on the “inside” compromise the integrity of their identity politics, as well? The layers to this line of questioning are what gives this play its depth.’
Dave Fargnoli in The Stage (4★) liked the way the director Nancy ‘Medina takes a methodical approach, allowing conflict to escalate gradually, the debates eventually descending into rapid-fire shouting matches. This allows for some brilliantly judged comic timing, as the residents twist themselves into exquisitely awkward knots, trying to mask their toxic entitlement with hollow civility.’
The Times‘ Clive Davis (4★) began ‘this quirky domestic drama sends you home with awkward questions buzzing around in your head.’ He was happy that ‘there’s an intensity to all the performances that keeps agitprop at bay. Jephta’s mischievous portrait of life in a far-away country has a universal flavour.’
WhatsOnStage‘s Sarah Crompton (4★) called it ‘fast-moving and very funny, puncturing assumptions and attitudes with swift and searing observation’. The Standard‘s Nick Curtis (4★) said, ‘This isn’t perfect but it’s perceptive, provoking fun.’
Aleks Sierz at TheArtsDesk (3★) said it was ‘perceptive and provocative, but it’s also an imperfect mix of styles and topics.’ While calling it ‘a worthy exploration of prejudice and privilege’, Holly O’Mahony at LondonTheatre (3★) decided, ‘this play, with its cracking premise, still has room to grow.’
Alexander Cohen at Broadway World (2★) was disappointed, describing it as ‘A case of never being more than the sum of its parts, even if those parts have promise in themselves.’
Lionel Bart’s Oliver! is one of the few, perhaps the only, bona fide British musical from the Golden Age when shows were packed with memorable songs. The legendary producer Cameron Mackintosh has loved Oliver! since childhood and returned to it again and again. His latest production was praised in many 5 star reviews for Matthew Bourne‘s choreography, Paule Constable’s dramatic lighting, Lez Brotherston’s intimate set, Simon Lipkin‘s portrayal of Fagin and for being a little darker than past incarnations. But some found it too old-fashioned and lacking in bite.
[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]
Marianka Swain at LondonTheatre (5★) delivered her customary thoughtful analysis: ‘Bart’s musical can be something of a tonal challenge: steeped in the darkness of Dickens’ novel, yet simultaneously packed with jaunty tunes and cockney knees-up dance numbers. Bourne (who choreographs and co-directs with Jean-Pierre van der Spuy), manages that balancing act perfectly, giving us plenty of grime and grit alongside transporting pleasures.’ She declared ‘the true star is Paule Constable and Ben Jacobs’s sublime lighting design, which brings quite literal light and shade to the production. It’s genuinely terrifying when the villainous Bill Sikes looms out of the smoky darkness, his menacing shadow the first thing we see.’
WhatsOnStage‘s Sarah Crompton (5★) noted, ‘Its quality lies in the way that the collaborators … make a contrast between constant movement and stillness, allowing the focus to slide from broad, bright dance scenes full of life, to powerfully arresting moments of peril and sadness.’ Adam Bloodworth at CityAM (5★) declared, ‘director and choreographer Matthew Bourne has surely opened the musical of the year with his astounding dance sequences. It’s especially the ensemble numbers that are sheer staggering feats of imagination, offering insane levels of detail to bring Victorian London back to life.’
Helen Hawkins on the Arts Desk (5★) praised the ‘impeccable singing and dancing, teamed with a brilliant set, atmospheric lighting and a Poor Theatre design that makes the staging oddly intimate’. Allya Al-Hassan at Broadway World (5★) pointed out, ‘Whilst retaining the joy and exuberance of Bart’s music, it does not shy away from the dark heart of child poverty, exploitation and violence of Charles Dickens’ story. It also manages to have moments of pure theatrical comedy. It is a deft and masterful achievement.’
Neil Fisher for The Times (5★) added a star to his colleague Clive Davis’ previous Chichester review: ‘you can’t fault the verve with which Bourne drills the big numbers, nor the cast’s bonhomie.’ Of the show’s Fagin, he said, ‘Lipkin captures both the plight of the traumatised immigrant – and of anyone trying to lead a good life in a dark and devious world’. The Telegraph‘s Dominic Cavendish (5★) enjoyed ‘dollops of theatrical delight’, and said ‘the whole thing is delivered with such tightly choreographed panache’.
Dominic Maxwell in The Sunday Times (4★) described how ‘Matthew Bourne’s sumptuous production at the Gielgud Theatre in London gives us a Victorian London of shadows, spotlights and smoke. It looks dangerous, but gorgeous. Nice job.’
The Observer’s Susannah Clapp (4) picked out ‘Superb lighting by Paule Constable and Ben Jacobs shows the action as if through Oliver’s eyes: a harsh glitter of grey over the workhouse; a deceptive golden glow for Fagin’s den.’
The Stage‘s Sam Marlowe (4★) described how ‘Designer Lez Brotherston delivers a murky London of steel gantries, pawnshops, pubs and coffee houses, bustling with picture-perfect denizens: self-important men with mutton chops, moustaches and stovepipe hats, and purse-lipped women in mob caps with formidable bosoms. Bourne’s buoyant, nimble choreography is wrapped around darker drama that makes its mark in broad strokes.’
Not everyone was so impressed. Fiona Mountford at i-news (3★) said ‘rarely have I felt so awkwardly aware of a piece’s fundamental pretence…Everything here looks precise and lovely, immaculately well-drilled, but it’s almost impossible to feel emotionally invested.’
Andrjez Lukowski at Time Out (3★) felt it lacked punch. Take Simon Lipkin’s Fagin: ‘Making him so nice he won’t offend anyone is certainly one idea, but it does further defang Dickens’s yarn.’ He contended ‘The biggest flaw, though, is one that’s haunted the show for decades: Oliver himself is just pretty bland.’
Having reviewed it in Chichester, The Guardian decided the production didn’t require a second review
Critics’ Average Review 4.4
Value Rating 46 (Value rating is the Average Critic Rating divided by the typical ticket price)
Luren Drew & cast members in Titanique at the Criterion. Photo: Mark Senior
It started as a one-off cabaret concert and became a Broadway hit. However Titantique has never lost its roots as a gay parody of the film Titanic (as well as of musicals and much else), which features ‘Celine Dion’ recounting her experience as a passenger on board the fated ship. Lauren Drew impressed as Dion, as did Layton Williams.
The show sounds, and is, crazy, but most of the critics found it fun (to a greater or lesser degree) except one. The term ‘mixed reviews’ is often used in these roundups, but it’s rare for a show to receive both a five and a one star review.
[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]
Our most curmudgeonly critic The Times’ Clive Davis (5★) loved it: ‘Raiding the Canadian singer’s back catalogue, the show delivers a demented jukebox musical. An inspirational cast led by Lauren Drew, playing Dion in all her sequinned glory, rises to the challenge of delivering a script that turns the madness up to 11 and beyond. It’s Airplane! with a musical theatre twist.’ In the Daily Mail (5★), Patrick Marmion wrote, ‘This is one of the merriest performances I’ve seen in the West End’.
Nick Curtis in the Standard (4★) explained why it cheered him up: ‘It comes from the American school of wilfully schlocky, sloppy gay parody, packed with pop culture references, always seemingly on the brink of hysteria and collapse.’ Sarah Crompton at WhatsOnStage (4★) said, ‘it is quite frankly, riotously absurd. But it’s also endearing. And although neither quite as clever or hilarious as it sets out to be, it is so strongly sung and energetically performed under the direction of Blue and the musical direction of Adam Wachter, that it is impossible not to have a good time.’
’Fans of the film will certainly be satisfied, but there is no doubt that Titanique is largely a show for pop-culture-loving, queer theatre kids,’ advised Olivia Rook at LondonTheatre (4★). She drew attention to ‘Drew as Dion who is a revelation’ and Layton Williams who ‘gives one of the show’s stand-out performances, taking on a variety of roles from camp museum guide and a suggestive Seaman (plenty of double entendres here), to a Tina Turner-inspired “Iceberg B-tch”, who sets the stage alight during a rendition of “River Deep, Mountain High”.’
City AM’s Adam Bloodworth (4★) declared this ‘is probably the most brazenly weird thing on in the West End right now.’ He explained, ‘This is more like an east London queer cabaret show than heteronormative homage.’ Despite finding it exhausting, he said, ‘I’ll admit I do want it all over again.’
Arifa Akbar in The Guardian (3★) called it ‘a big queer cabaret with renegade energy. Outre and amped up to 11 in pace and humour, it is billed as “camp chaos.” That’s an understatement.’ Andrzej Lukowski for Time Out (3★) wasn’t so impressed. What it made exceptional for him was the portrayal of Celine Dion: ‘‘ultimately it’s an affectionate, funny and thoroughly lovable turn from Drew, who lights up the stage every time she steps on it.’ However, ‘it’s undeniably a fun way to start 2025’.
Paul Vale for The Stage (3★) ‘There’s little to disguise the fact that this is essentially a fringe show…But it’s relentlessly funny’. The Telegraph’s Dominic Cavendish (3★) had reservations (‘My enthusiasm sank as the disconnect between mirth and tragedy became inescapable’) but decided that ‘on its own terms, guying epic cinema with a shoestring theatricality, it’s hard to fault’. Fiona Mountford in the i paper (3★) pointed out it is ‘not the most heteronormative show you will ever see’. She said she ‘was by turns amused and bewildered, but I did not constitute the optimum audience demographic.’
Gary Naylor on The Arts Desk (1★) didn’t like it at all: ‘The vibe, on a rudimentary set that suggests, but no more than that, a generic liner, is of an undergraduate show brought to Edinburgh for a boozy midnight house. Worse still, just when you think you can consign panto to the back burner for 11 months, the fourth wall collapses, the dread fear of audience participation descends on the front rows and the double, though more often just single, entendres start to batter your ears in wave after wave. That they are crude is fine, that they are devoid of wit isn’t.’
Critics’ Average Rating 3.5★
Value Rating 45 (Value rating is the Critics’ Average Rating divided by the typical ticket price)
