The Lift Festival is currently going on at the Southbank Centre:


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All in all, as is usual with the Royal Shakespeare Company, there was far far too much acting going on. The actors attempted to liven up "the boring bits" by unneccessary pieces of business - acting out and literalising every figure of speech. Their accents wandered all over the highlands and lowlands, occasionally taking a short holiday in ( Read more... )

A woman after my own heart.

I went to see Women Of Troy at the National the other day. It isn't very good. I blame Euripides. swisstone has some more useful thoughts on the production.

I have more to say about what I saw last night: the British premiere of Purgatorio by Ariel Dorfman at the Arcola ( Read more... )

A list of things I've seen recently (for my own benefit):

Shlomo with Teddy Thompson and Martha Wainwright at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
Sub Co banquet and bhangra fundraising night at the Walthamstow Assembly Hall.
Small Metal Objects at Stratford Station.
A Disappearing Number at the Barbican.
Requiem at the Queen Elizabeth Hall (again ( Read more... )

Sometimes it seems like I spend half my life in the Barbican. Obviously I only spend a few hours there but I was back again for Maly Drama Theatre's production of King Lear. For some reason whenever I go to see productions with surtitles I end up with restricted seating. This wouldn't have been too bad except the surtitles were fairly poorly ( Read more... )

I went to see a version of Kafka's Metamorphosis at the Lyric. It was put on by the Icelandic company Vesturport who also did Woyzeck last year. I was ambivalent about that but apparently it was pretty popular since the Barbican brought it back again this year. Since this was at the Lyric it was a co-production with David Farr. As with Vesturport ( Read more... )

I went to see Tom Stoppard's new play, Rock And Roll, the other night. At heart it is a political dialectic between Jan (Rufus Sewell) and Max (Brian Cox) about the relative merits of socialism. Max is a Cambridge don and old school Communist while Jan is a doctoral student who returns to Czechosolvakia after the revolution. Appropriately enough ( Read more... )

coalescent (and posse) went to see The Royal Hunt Of The Sun the other week. He didn't like it. I went to see it last night. I did ( Read more... )

Went to see 4.48 Psychosis tonight. One of the blurbs from the critics says "Suicide note? 4.48 is much more than that". It isn't though. However sharply observed it is it remains a personal document. I couldn't help but feel sympathetic to the actors who have to put themselves from the wringer every night ( Read more... )