SIMON PARSONS is discomfited by an unflichingly negative portrait of motherhood and its trials
Sympathy for the devils
‘There's outrage aplenty in this production but we never quite get to the dark night of the soul,’ writes WILL STONE
PAUL FOLEY recommends an extraordinary double bill that packs a punch and leaves you reeling
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a play about AI that results in a deadening disconnect for its audience
SIMON PARSONS applauds an insightful state-of-the-nation play that explores the growing class divide in South Africa
MATTHEW HAWKINS pays tribute to the performance artist and costumier, Leigh Bowery
SIMON DUFF reviews a new composition by German composer and pianist Florian Weber that blurs the line between where improvisation ends and composition begins
New releases from The Jim Mullen Quartet, Caroline Kraabel/John Edwards, and Matthew Muneses/Riza Printup
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
Almeida Theatre
TENNESSEE Williams’s favourite play is a masterpiece of richly drawn characters, open to seemingly endless interpretation.
Set on a cotton plantation in the Deep South, the original 1955 production had a white cast performing as the family of wealthy landowners with black actors playing servants.
Since then productions have featured an all-black cast and those set in the modern era complete with mobile phones and iPads.
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'Witty and highly entertaining without being didactic,' writes JAN WOOLF
MARY CONWAY relishes the revival of two classics for the naked expression of truthful thoughts and class anger
MARY CONWAY evaluates a polemical play whose actors, rather than the writer, introduce the humanity and the light and shade
SIMON PARSONS marvels at a production of Williams’s early masterpiece that transforms the play into a symbolic slow dance of tensions, fears and desires