Reviews – Archive

The Snow Queen

Hans’s Andersen’s The Snow Queen is a cruelly bleak epic of a fairy tale, in which lost childhood innocence can only be redeemed at the price of suffering and sorrow.…

Dec 17 2008 | View Comments

Georgia Series: The Rendezvous

By Jens Peters

London Theatre Blog is pleased to present a series of seven reviews, written by director/dramaturg Jens Peters, of productions at the Marjanishvili State Drama Theatre (Tiblisi, Georgia) as part of…

Dec 16 2008 | View Comments

Tombstone Tales and Boothill Ballads

By Stephe Harrop

“Are you on your own? Would you like to sit here?” The last time I heard those words I was about to come in for the combined attentions of the…

Nov 21 2008 | View Comments

Hard Times

By Stephe Harrop

Hard Times is one of those novels where everyone knows the start (tyrannical schoolmaster Gradgrind and the definition of “horse”), but no-one seems to know the ending. Icon Theatre’s production…

Nov 13 2008 | View Comments

State of Emergency

By Matt Boothman

A married couple live with their son in a wholesome gated community. The neighbours are polite, there are facilities for the whole family, and at night the streetlamps play violin…

Nov 12 2008 | View Comments

Euripides’ Alcestis, a not-quite-tragic Greek tragedy, centres upon a wife’s self-sacrificing decision to die in her doomed husband’s place. Ted Hughes’ version of the play is a visceral and uncompromising…

Nov 7 2008 | View Comments

Cloudcuckooland

By Stephe Harrop

In Aristophanes’ The Birds, a city in the clouds is the background to an ambivalent satire on utopianism and realpolitik. Cloudcuckooland, a musical for children, re-imagines Aristophanes’ comedy as a…

Oct 30 2008 | View Comments

The Day They Banned Christmas

By Jens Peters

“If everyone is out looking for a myth, how can they find reality?” This sentence occurs towards the end of Christopher James’ new play at the Courtyard. On the surface,…

Oct 27 2008 | View Comments

Later – Paines Plough

By Matt Boothman

Making new writing accessible is Paines Plough’s business. Later is a new writing ’salon’ in which playwrights curate playwrights to showcase work in progress, previews, experiments and rehearsed readings. At…

Oct 19 2008 | View Comments

Tongue and Groove

By Stephe Harrop

Annamation are a trio of wise women, with the voices of angels and a taste for low comedy. In their current show Tongue and Groove, fantastical, sometimes terrible tales are…

Oct 13 2008 | View Comments