Category: National Theatre
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The Normal Heart is a play of fights. Set in the early 80s, in New York, gay men are dying, but gay activist Ned Weeks (Ben Daniels) is struggling to get anyone to do anything. Only Dr Emma Brookner (Liz Carr), who is trying to treat the increasing numbers of sick men, shares his concern…
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If you had to choose one memory to take with you into the afterlife, what would you choose – and how would you choose? This is the premise of After Life, adapted by Jack Thorne from a film by Hirokazu Kore-eda. After Life, National Theatre Dorfman stage And it's an intriguing concept. One which gnaws…
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REVIEW: The National Theatre's production of Under Milk Wood, starring Michael Sheen, was much anticipated and turned into a mixed experience. Back at the National Theatre for Under Milk Wood It was much anticipated partly because it's my first trip to the National since before the pandemic, in part because I haven't seen Michael Sheen…
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This week's Sunday theatre question is inspired by a comment made on my Instagram post about how a song played during a production of Julius Caesar at the Bridge Theatre became forever associated with that play. It got me thinking about which songs take me back to a play whenever I hear them. I've always…
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Sometimes plays just have one actor. They might be playing one character, they might be playing many, but they don't have any other actors to play off. It is just them and their performance. There are no distractions, it's just you and them. Do you have a favourite solo performance? The moment I started thinking…
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Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction and that's how I preambled my review of The Great Wave at the National Theatre back in 2018. It was based on real events in the 1970s and 1980s when North Korean agents abducted ordinary people from Japanese beaches in order to steal their identities or learn the…
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Theatre-land is a mixture of new plays and revivals, but there are certain classics which regularly get staged – which have you seen the most? Is there a particular reason why you've seen one play more than any others? The hands-down winner for me is Hamlet. I think I've seen 17 or more different productions,…
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This week's theatre question is inspired by the wintery weather. The weathermen forecast snow for this weekend here in London but instead, it's peeing it down with rain. Not that I mind too much snow is just a pain – on those rare occasions we get it in the city. Anyway, the prospect of snow…
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If you had a theatre-watching nightmare, one where you were forced to sit an watch something and it was everything you hate, what would that look like for you? For me, it would be a musical, written by Tom Stoppard and starring Ben Whishaw for reasons I explain in the video below. There is one…