Category: Theater Reviews

In its first West End revival since premiering in 1996, “The Cripple of Inishmaan” achieves a perfectly pitched balance between the play’s comedic moments and the more brutal aspect. It manages to have you creasing with laughter one minute and stunned into silence in the next.

Peter Ustinov’s The Moment of Truth was last produced professionally in 1951. Exploring warfare and its relationship with politically devised propaganda, the text is both entertaining and insightful and one that should be capable of resonating with an audience of today similarly to one of half a century ago. Unfortunately, in the hands of The New Actors Company, this isn’t quite achieved.

Arriving second in Jamie Lloyd’s highly anticipated Trafalgar Transformed season at the Trafalgar Studios, The Hothouse doesn’t relax the intensity set by its predecessor, the apocalyptic Macbeth starring James McAvoy. Shocking and at times offensive, The Hothouse depicts the sinister workings inside an undefined mental institution. Yet despite the outrageously immoral practices and some utterly unforgiving characters, this revival of one of Pinter’s early plays is unrelenting in its comic intentions.

One thing that can certainly be said for “Smack Family Robinson” is that it is not for the faint hearted! Set entirely within the family’s lounge, the play centres upon the Robinsons, a drug dealing, money laundering family full of community spirit. F-bombs and mild threats fly easily from the mouths of the parents who are spread luxuriously across white leather sofas, beer and wine in hand, casually informing their children of the adult channels’ password.

The buzz surrounding current West End production, Our Boys is hardly surprising. Of the six cast members, one is a Potter film alumnus (Matthew Lewis), another, an ex-Doctor Who companion (Arthur Darvill) and a third, the lead in a prime-time ITV drama as well as the husband of an ex-Doctor Who companion (Laurence Fox). Whilst this is surely an appealing factor for a vast number of the audience members, myself included, it certainly doesn’t distract away from the performances in this comic and yet simultaneously tragic play.