The Independent - Theatre & Dance RSS Feed

The Hypochondriac, Playhouse, Liverpool

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Roger McGough has added his own medicinal properties to Molière's The Hypochondriac, upping the laugher quotient in an elixir that's easy to swallow though you might want to hold your nose. This "McGoughiere", as Liverpool Playhouse and English Touring Theatre describe their latest co-production, is certainly a cure-all for those who like their 17th-century French comedy watered down. With plenty of farts and faeces gags, some of the rhyming couplets McGough has inflicted on Molière's prose are plain potty. But given that the playwright himself wasn't averse to occasional grammatical mistakes and mixed metaphors as well as finishing some lines with filler words, McGough's concoction may be more faithful to the original than it seems.

Everybody Loves A Winner, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Does everybody really love a winner? Three lucky audience members at Neil Bartlett's new show will find out in the game of bingo, complete with cash prizes, that features in each performance of Everybody Loves a Winner, part of the Manchester International Festival. Having mastered the bingo lingo by the end of the "early session", anyone over 18 years old is invited to turn punter, a fifty-pence ticket buying first-hand and, for many, first-time experience of the thrill of the numbers game.

Monty Python stars to stage reunion

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:20:01 GMT

Monty Python stars are to stage a major reunion for the first time in more than a decade to mark the show's 40th anniversary, it was announced today.

It Felt Like A Kiss, Hardman Square, Manchester

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

It begins even before you get inside the building. There is a big list of warnings to the audience. It will be a promenade production with stairs to climb and uneven surfaces.

English National Ballet, St Paul's Cathedral, London

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Dancers trooped through St Paul's Cathedral, climbing on stage and arranging themselves into the ethereal groupings of Les Sylphides. In conventional theatres, that preparation is hidden by curtains. Here, it was part of the show, like the summer evening light and the glitter of the cathedral's mosaic ceiling.

Out of Africa: Award-winning African plays find a new home in British theatres

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

There is, once again, something new out of Africa. A slew of award-winning and critically acclaimed plays with their roots in that continent is shaking up Britain's theatre stages with vibrant tales of death, rebellion and escaped moose.

Forbidden Broadway, Menier Chocolate Factory, LondonAshes, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Actors have always poked fun at the foibles of commercial theatre. No doubt it helps them through those gruelling eight shows a week.

The House of Special Purpose, Minerva Theatre, Chichester

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

As the television scriptwriter of Cranford, Heidi Thomas has anatomised damped-down friendships, budding romance and marital "getting along" with some finesse. And her sharp-eyed writing made more than was there, perhaps, of cultural collisions and imminent tragedy.

Nights of northern soul: Manchester's second international festival is an eclectic feast

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

When Alex Poots travelled up to Manchester in 2004 to make his pitch to direct the city's newly-conceived international festival he thought he had nothing to lose. "Before I agreed to accept the job I wanted to set conditions," recalls the softly-spoken Scot. These included complete editorial and artistic control; a "sizeable" budget; the creation of a limited festival company beyond the reach of bureaucrats or politicians and a timescale and opening of his choosing. By the time the then-creative director at the English National Opera's train was pulling back into London's Euston station, the job was his.

Edward Seckerson: The Fur Will Fly

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:39:09 GMT

"Avenue Q" - a little show with humongous appeal - celebrated its transfer to the Gielgud Theatre last night with a pool party. None of its furry friends took to the water (Trekkie Monster has a well known aversion to it - it dampens his ardour) but the humans they brought along looked like they might have been tempted had their felted and furry alter egos given them a free hand, so to speak.

Bicycle Ballet, Paternoster Square, London

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Live performance is easily affected by injury or illness, but this was the first time I'd seen a show delayed by a puncture. Bicycle Ballet is a dance for cyclists, which does make it vulnerable to flat tyres. Some brisk repair work later, all five performers were zigzagging and circling, hopping on and off bikes.

Carrie's War, Apollo Theatre, London

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Moving and tedious? Heart-warming and old-fashioned? This is hot ice and wondrous strange snow, but Nina Bawden's children's novel Carrie's War, one of her most-loved, defies the kind of plodding, literal transposition supplied by adaptor Emma Reeves and director Andrew Loudon.

Oklahoma! Festival Theatre, Chichester

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Two grimy sheets hanging over a bare stage; drab, washed-out costumes that double as work wear and dance duds – this Oklahoma! is set on the frontier state's Poverty Row.

Apologia, Bush Theatre, London

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The lead character in Alexi Kaye Campbell's new play, Kristin, is a radical art historian with a startling resemblance to Elizabeth Frink. She's played by Paola Dionisotti with a throwaway bitchy style and a voice pitched somewhere between Maggie Smith and Sheila Hancock.

Tom Tom Crew, E4 Udderbelly, London

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Time was, circus acts only ever performed under canvas. How things have changed. Australia's Tom Tom Crew are currently to be found on the south bank of the Thames, performing inside an upside-down inflatable purple cow.

Apologia, Bush, LondonEverything Must Go, Soho, LondonOklahoma! Festival Theatre, Chichester

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

So what, exactly, is an apologia? "It means a formal, written defence of one's opinions or conduct ... Not to be confused with an apology." Thus Paola Dionisotti's Kristin – renowned art historian, veteran left-wing activist and lousy mother – defines the title of her autobiography and also of Alexi Kaye Campbell's drama in which she, Kristin, is confronted by Simon and Peter, her neglected sons.

Close-up: Felix Barrett

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Few theatre companies could describe using a linear narrative as "taking a risk". But defying convention is the norm for Punchdrunk, the group behind a string of "immersive theatre" events that have already entered modern London folklore.

The heat is on: Our essential summer arts guide

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

First Night: Phedre, Ritzy Cinema, Brixton

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Dame Helen Mirren playing Phedre, the classical theatre's most ardent lover, pulsating with incestuous desire for her stepson, Hippolytus, played by the Mamma Mia! heart-throb Dominic Cooper, is the definition of a hot ticket. Naturally, the National Theatre production sold out in hours. Last night, though, those not lucky enough to have a seat at the Lyttelton Theatre had an alternative – when the live performance was beamed by satellite to 70 cinemas across the country, from Glasgow to Guernsey, and a further 200 worldwide.

Carlos Acosta: 'I hammer my body every day'

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Carlos Acosta stretches out on the sofa and yawns. Not the most promising start to an interview, perhaps – or indeed the most flattering response from the man sometimes called the Cuban Sex Missile – but I can see why he's tired. He's been up with the lark, or at least with Carol Kirkwood from BBC Breakfast, talking about his new show at the London Coliseum, and then he's been for a costume fitting for a film he's shooting in August, and now – well, now, there's this. Me, in a tiny room at the Royal Opera House, so tiny that our knees are almost touching. Lulled by his yawns, I've kicked off my shoes. Startled by his surprise, I've grabbed them back.

Dame Helen is live and in HD as National Theatre's Phèdre is beamed into cinemas worldwide

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Tonight, when Nicholas Hytner's National Theatre production of Racine's Phèdre, starring Helen Mirren, is broadcast via satellite from the Lyttelton to 70 cinemas in the UK, and 200 around the world, a 21st-century solution will be provided to a perennial question. It has been pondered by every NT director, from Laurence Olivier in the 1960s to Nicholas Hytner today: "How do we ensure that as many people as possible can see live performances that can play only to around 1,000 at a time?"

Dame Helen is live and in HD as National Theatre's Phèdre is beamed into cinemas worldwide

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Private funeral for Danny La Rue

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:40:07 GMT

The funeral of female impersonator Danny La Rue, described as a "true showbusiness legend", has taken place.

Spike Milligan: the stage version of his memoirs

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Spike Milligan is part of our collective cultural DNA, so it's nicely appropriate that, nine years after his death, the cell bank is being boosted with a national tour of a stage version of his first volume of memoirs, Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall.

Karoo Moose, Tricycle Theatre, London

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

There's a moose on the loose in the Karoo and he's coming to get you... so the villagers of Noxton right down on the Eastern Cape set out to get him first. It's like a Roald Dahl story, but with magic realism: the fate of the moose is bound up with that of his chief executioner, a village girl called Thozama who has been gang-raped by her father's drinking buddies.