Thursday, April 23, 2015
In the hands of Declan Donnellan as director, very little can go wrong. I've been many times to the Barbican and elsewhere to see his Cheek By Jowl company perform Shakespeare, Chekhov and o…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 04:58AMSunday, April 19, 2015
While many theatres are staging election-related plays in the next three weeks, the National Theatre has shown a flash of genius by reviving a work that confronts all the big questions which…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 09:35AMFriday, April 17, 2015
Do any of these headlines ring a bell? HORROR AS IMMIGRANTS BARBECUE LLAMA AT PETTING ZOO WHITES IN MINORITY BY 2020 NOW PAEDOPHILES IN BURQUAS STALK OUR KIDS WHITE SUICIDE BOMBER IN BLACKBU…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 05:47AMWednesday, April 15, 2015
Today's reports of hundreds of migrants drowned off the Italian island of Lampedusa lend a horrifying topicality to Anders Lustgarten's new play at the Soho Theatre. But while applauding the…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 02:49PMFriday, April 3, 2015
I'm tempted to call this production at Southwark Playhouse a revival, but it isn't. It's the world premiere of an unperformed play by Michael Hastings, who died in 2011. While the play has o…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 11:51AMThis is the most audience-friendly Philip Ridley play that I've seen. That's not because of the subject matter, which is every bit as disturbing as in his other plays; nor has it anything to…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 10:55AMThursday, April 2, 2015
Framing a story on stage can be a way of bridging the gap between performers and audience; but the play-within-the-play, though a very powerful device, can be overdone. Shakespeare's framing…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 07:27AMWednesday, April 1, 2015
South Africa's Isango Ensemble delivered the outstanding production of the 'Globe to Globe' international series in 2012 with Venus and Adonis, which they brought back to Shakespeare's Globe…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 10:29AMSaturday, March 28, 2015
'They've done away with King Hildebrand!' my companion the Gilbert & Sullivan Expert (GSE) whispered to me in shocked tones as she read the programme at the Finborough Theatre. It was tr…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 09:56AMSunday, March 22, 2015
Multitudes at the Tricycle theatre had its last performance yesterday, and I saw the penultimate show in the afternoon. It's a debut play by actor John Hollingworth, set in Bradford in the n…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 01:49PMSaturday, March 21, 2015
I have often complained to my family that our Christmas festivities furnish no worthwhile material for drama. Nary a cross word is exchanged; nobody complains about their presents; no skelet…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 05:36AMThursday, March 19, 2015
It took me a while to tune in to Zinnie Harris's new play at the Royal Court. While I was mesmerised by Maxine Peake's extraordinary performance in the leading role, I was turning the dial t…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 03:59PMSunday, March 15, 2015
I've written before about the 'Donmar Effect' which makes every play staged in this intimate West End venue seem twice as good as it really is. But Closer is a play that's so well written th…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 03:19PMMike Bartlett's new play at the Almeida is a disorienting and uncomfortable experience in several ways. It's physically claustrophobic for the audience, the visual and auditory experience is…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 02:53PMWednesday, February 25, 2015
Farinelli and the King is a delicious 18th century confection of words and music that provides a perfect vehicle for Mark Rylance's first appearance on the candlelit stage of the Sam Wanamak…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 03:52AMSaturday, February 21, 2015
This is a very sharp satire on the world of television by Dan Davies, whose play Is Anything Broken? wowed audiences at Player-Playwrights a couple of years ago and went on to the Camden Fri…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 04:51AMSunday, February 1, 2015
What would I do if a Russian bank offered to part-fund a play of mine set in Russia, as part of a London-Moscow theatre festival? If I were to refuse the funding, it might mean none of the a…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 06:41AMThursday, January 29, 2015
This 90-minute stage production at the Young Vic, coming to a close this weekend, has bowled over just about everyone who has seen it, including those like me who are discovering 1927's work…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 10:14AMThursday, January 22, 2015
Brain scientists will love Tom Stoppard's new play, and it's a feast of ideas for the intellectually curious. But in dramatic terms it's a disappointment. Seeing Stoppard's first hit Rosencr…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 04:43AMMonday, January 19, 2015
Dominic Dromgoole's production of The Changeling in the Sam Wanamaker theatre has the same power and intimacy as his version of The Duchess of Malfi a year ago. It's a robust, though fairly …
SOURCE: John Morrison at 10:03AMWednesday, December 17, 2014
Yes, I'm all shook up. Rupert Goold's Las Vegas-themed production of the Merchant won't appeal to people who disapprove of Elvis, but I loved it. I found it one of the most entertaining nigh…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 07:14AMFriday, December 5, 2014
Post-war vintage cars like the Ford Popular and Austin A30 have a certain appeal to motorists jaded with more contemporary models, but you wouldn't want to drive one every day. Emlyn William…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 11:26AMWednesday, December 3, 2014
Well, it didn't work for me. That's a polite way of expressing my opinion of this new play by Alistair McDowall, which has garnered rave reviews all round. I'm allergic to sci-fi fantasy, ha…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 06:57AMWednesday, November 26, 2014
Blood. How useful is it to a theatre director staging Jacobean revenge plays? John Ford's play ends with a scene that makes the end of Hamlet look like a vicarage tea-party. So is it best to…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 07:52AMThursday, November 6, 2014
Sam Yates. Never heard of him? Neither had I until I saw his cracking revival of Ayub Khan Din's East is East last night at Trafalgar Studios. This is is his first West End show, but he's cl…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 06:03AMThursday, October 30, 2014
There's a strong sense of place and time and social context in Chekhov's plays which make them difficult to adapt convincingly to a modern setting. That's why I'm generally lukewarm about ve…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 12:54PMSunday, October 26, 2014
Harriet Walter 'Mad' Frankie Fraser When Phyllida Lloyd staged Julius Caesar at the Donmar two years ago, reinventing the play by placing it in a women's prison, I welcomed the absence of ha…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 05:30AMThursday, October 23, 2014
'Melodrama' is often used by me and by most theatregoers as a pejorative term. Today the word suggests a form of drama that relies on over-intense emotions, improbable plots and thinly drawn…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 09:39AMThursday, October 16, 2014
'FRIENDS, series 11. The one where Phoebe and Joey organise a creative writing group.' That's my review of Theresa Rebeck's comedy at the Hampstead Theatre. I kept it short because good crea…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 09:34AMSaturday, October 11, 2014
The first play in this cycle by Rona Munro about 15th century Scottish monarchs whetted my appetite for more. Now I've seen parts two and three, I would really like to see all three of them …
SOURCE: John Morrison at 02:07PMTuesday, October 7, 2014
Max Stafford-Clark's fertile imagination as a theatre director provided the initial suggestion for this new play by Richard Bean, just as he provided the initial spark for Timberlake Wertenb…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 05:48AM 
