Leopoldstadt Wyndham’s Theatre until October 30th 2021 Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt would have been better as a TV mini-series rather than this sprawling, over-populated two and a quarter hour play without an intermission. It is a long watch and although eminently worthwhile, feels too much like a history lesson.
plays
Mustard is the only English thing in the rural Irish home of the young protagonist, named as E, of writer-performer Eva O’Connor’s one-woman show. Review by Barbara Lewis.
The Reichstag is Burning …matches songs, ranging from the 1920s to the near contemporary, with the crucial stages of Hitler’s ascent to dictatorial power, not least the burning of the Reichstag. Black Box Live at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe by Hartstone-Kitney Productions.
Covid Lockdown Breath Machine, Online. The Edinburgh Fringe has always been the place to push at the limits of what theatre is. This year, that is truer than ever as the uncertainties of COVID-19 have driven a digital shift.
Oleanna, by David Mamet. Arts Theatre. Review by Graham Buchan. David Mamet has had a substantial forty-year plus career writing plays and films which drill into the deeper recesses of the American psyche with unrelenting precision.
An “absurdly normal” love story and it admits the appalling truth that all love stories, not just the high romance of Romeo and Juliet, are essentially tragic: they end in loss and when Alzheimer’s strikes, the cruelty is exaggerated because a once charismatic personality disintegrates.
At the start of 2020, Southwark Playhouse commissioned a group of playwrights to write short plays. The aim was for them to be performed on stage by the Elders Company, the playhouse’s drama group for anyone aged 65 and over, but then lockdown came along.
If you can embrace it, lockdown’s shift from the real to the virtual is a liberation that makes anything possible.
![Susannah De Wrixon and Kwaku Fortune crop[4837]](https://londongrip.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Susannah-De-Wrixon-and-Kwaku-Fortune-crop4837-180x125.jpg "Susannah De Wrixon and Kwaku Fortune crop[4837]")
Before lockdown, Bewley’s Café Theatre in the bustling heart of Dublin was the place to grab a short lunch-time play, a bowl of soup – and maybe even chat up a stranger. For now, those days are gone, but Bewley’s has joined forces with online events company The Lock Inn to open the tiny venue to a potentially limitless audience.
The Dirty 30 II: Electric pay-per-view. Review by Barbara Lewis. Instead of loud applause and cheers, “you were spectacularly fabulous,” pops up on the side of the screen from an online viewer, as the imaginary curtain goes down on the Degenerate Fox theatre’s online adaptation to the times we’re in.
Ghost Light, National Theatre of Scotland film. A theatre never goes completely dark, even in lockdown: a single light bulb, known as a ghost light, carries on glowing like a sanctuary lamp.
The Wife of Willesden. Adapted by Zadie Smith from Chaucer’s ‘The Wife of Bath’. Kiln Theatre, London. Until 18 December 2021. Review by Carla Scarano.
Zadie Smith’s brilliant adaptation of ‘The Wife of Bath’ from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales triggers a rethinking of women’s roles in society.
By Carla Scarano • plays, theatre, year 2021 • Tags: Carla Scarano, plays, theatre