Three decades after the miners’ strike of 1984, families in northern England are riven because relatives crossed the picket line.
plays
Either ultra-topical or else historic with contemporary resonance are the smart choices of subject matter for any playwright seeking to thrill an audience. The building of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world’s tallest structure, falls somewhere in between, given that it opened in 2010 and the maltreatment and suicides of its construction workers are old news.
Adaptations of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol began around 30 years after his death and proliferated during the 1930s and 40s with a wealth of radio productions, notably one featuring Orson Welles and sponsored by Campbell’s Soup.
Ex Machina/Robert Lepage: Needles and Opium Barbican Theatre, 7 – 16 July 2016
Thomas Ovans enjoys an evening at the theatre which recalls a golden age of cinema.
A trawl through an old school year book and the realisation of how many contemporaries had ended their own lives underlined for writer Pearse Elliott the truth that suicide is so prevalent it has acquired the force of the inevitable.
Margaret Hollingsworth finds herself needing to think deeply about an intentionally chaotic modern mystery play devised by the Birmingham based company Stan’s Cafe
Thomas Ovans is impressed by Roger Owen’s absorbing and lucid introduction to the work of the Welsh dramatist Gwenlyn Parry
The Donmar Warehouse stages Josie Rourke’s own take on Coriolanus, the Roman general who could not stoop to flatter the public and who pays the highest price for his `arrogance’.
How do we acknowledge the mess that Britain made in 1947 when the Indian subcontinent was carved into two countries? This is the central question underlying Howard Brenton’s caustic new play. Drawing The Line explores the moment when the line between India and Pakistan was made and British rule in India ended.
Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons has a sizeable reputation and presumably had a budget to compare for his docu-drama Trashed, on release across the globe to expose how much our society wastes and the damage that results.
Authority on literature Terry Eagleton tells us tragedy is unfashionable: “Its tone is too solemn and portentous for a streetwise, sceptical culture”. If that’s true now, it was also true in 1641 when James Shirley’s finest work was one of the last plays staged in England before Oliver Cromwell’s solemn ban on theatre.
By Barbara Lewis • plays, theatre, year 2017 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, plays, theatre