The Star's critics ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARTIN HALL, MICHAL BONCZA, ANGUS REID reviews Holy Cow, One to One: John and Yoko, King of Kings, Panda Bear in Africa
Latest editorial
A self-confessed epic mash up
Romeo and Juliet rehashed 30 years on is full of disparate ideas and feels like a production on steroids, writes SIMON PARSONS
kabuki
PATRICK JONES recommends a vital anthology from Afghan and Iranian poets where the political and personal fuse into witness-bearing and manifesto-making
WILL STONE is impressed by Hania Rani who is already making a name for herself in the male-dominated world of modern classical music
MIK SABIERS enjoys the theatrical feminist six piece who have a lot of fun that the audience feeds off as the set rolls on
New releases from Ibex Band, Lucy Dacus, and Various Artists
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by characters so un-nuanced as to be unreal, a stereotypical plot and a conceptual vampire
WILL STONE appreciates an artist who can swerve from industrial noise to clubby trance pop without missing a step
A Night at the Kabuki
Sadler’s Wells
A FANTASTICAL reworking of Romeo and Juliet set amongst ancient warring Japanese clans accompanied by strains of Queen’s A Night at the Opera is the self confessed epic mash up created by writer and director Hideki Noda.
The two protagonists are recreated 30 years on, desperate to recapture the past, fill in the missing pieces and alter their tragic fate, yet their frequently comic intrusions into the story of their brief love affair inevitably change nothing.
The visual spectacle with spinning beds, stunning costumes, dramatic tableaux and vast floating sheets on a stage of spinning doors set below white battlements and a cast of 26 is truly mesmerising but the overall effect before the interval where the original tale of the star-crossed lovers is rehashed is of a production on steroids. Rarely does the volume dip, movement cease or the rapid Japanese delivery ease up.
More from this author
SIMON PARSONS is discomfited by an unflichingly negative portrait of motherhood and its trials
SIMON PARSONS applauds an insightful state-of-the-nation play that explores the growing class divide in South Africa
SIMON PARSONS applauds a tense and thoughtful production that regularly challenges our political engagement and prejudices
SIMON PARSONS questions whether a dark take on Shakespeare’s Seasonal comedy is in harmony with the original text