The Independent - Theatre & Dance RSS Feed

Turing play stays on website indefinitely

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

The pioneering internet audio drama about the death of the Enigma code-breaker Alan Turing, is to remain available indefinitely on The Independent website.

Uncle Vanya, Old Vic, Bristol

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

The best news is that the Bristol Old Vic is up and running. The artistic director, Tom Morris, will announce his plans on Friday and the stage of the great Georgian theatre has been extended beyond the proscenium, making more sense of the exquisite architecture.

Rambert triple bill, Sadler's Wells, LondonRoyal Ballet triple bill, Royal Opera House, London

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Somewhere in Kansas lives a housewife who spends her life hunting down recipes that use only three ingredients. Twelve cookbooks are the result. The task of a ballet director is not dissimilar, in the search for the triple bill that ticks all the boxes – something piquant, something nourishing and something comforting in one sitting. Both Rambert and the Royal Ballet unveiled mixed programmes in London last week, and both showed – are we surprised? – how hard it is to strike the perfect balance.

Seize the Day, Tricycle Theatre, LondonCategory B, Tricycle Theatre, London

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Obama is in the White House, why not a black mayor of London in City Hall, argues Kwame Kwei-Armah in Seize the Day. And it is the squeaky clean, council-estate raised, insurance broker turned personable television presenter Jeremy Charles who is hand-picked by the head of an equalities commission to run for office, having broken up a street fight on camera.

On the agenda: Harry Brown; Radley; Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre; Masterchef; Ctrl.Alt.Shift

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Bartok Duke Bluebeard's Castle / Stravinsky The Rite of Spring, English National Opera, London Coliseum

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:27:02 GMT

Nature and nurture - and all the dark and unexpected places in between. Some - Duke Bluebeard's cellar - you may never want to return to; others might invoke smiles, even laughter. English National Opera's audacious double-bill turns expectation on its head and springs so many surprises that to write about it at all - and it isn't an easy event to capture in words - runs the risk of giving the entire game-plan away. So stop reading now if you want to keep that element of surprise intact and know that the five-star rating has as much to do with vision as accomplishment. It isn't a perfect evening - the dance half is controversial to say the least - but you come out of each "event" feeling, well, just about everything.

Phillips gets job on Sadler's Wells board

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Doubters might have predicted an early retirement for Arlene Phillips after she was ungraciously dropped as a judge on the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing. But yesterday she cemented what can only be described as an extraordinary career comeback when Sadler's Wells Theatre announced her appointment to its board of directors. The position will become effective with her first board meeting on 25 November.

Akram Khan: 'You have to become a warrior'

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

"In Asian culture," says Akram Khan, "you don't have a voice. You just accept what everybody says." It is, I have to say, rather hard to believe now. The darling of the dance world has a reputation for pushing the boundaries of his form, tossing in a visual artist here, a musician there, a writer there, and then maybe adding, just for fun, an actress who's never danced in her life. Hailed as "the great new hope" and "wunderkind" of contemporary dance, "a phenomenon" and "a marvel", he's an (extremely muscular) human whirlwind, leaping from project to project, and travelling the world on an endless, exhaustive, exhausting quest for new ideas, new creative partnerships, new marriages of story and feeling and form. For a man obsessed with the idea of stillness, he's remarkably bad at it. Brilliant on stage, but not so good in life.

The Diary: Paul Auster; Jerry Moffat; Punch magazine; Penny Woolcock

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

A very English playwright: The return of Alan Bennett

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

In one of his less felicitously phrased essays, the youthful Clive James once described the poet WH Auden, who had succumbed to premature old age in his ill-judged Oxford retirement, as a "fag at bay". Alan Bennett's eagerly anticipated new play, The Habit of Art (which opens on November 17 at the National Theatre), confronts Auden and the audience with a second "fag at bay", the composer Benjamin Britten. Back in the Thirties, the pair had been collaborators and emotional intimates, with Auden laying down the law on the inner protocols of getting laid and the need to unbutton, psychologically as well as sartorially, in order to do so.

Outrage as Jesus portrayed as transsexual woman

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:02:09 GMT

The creator of a controversial play which depicts Christ returned to earth as a female transsexual has accused critics of misinterpreting her work. Nearly 300 people picketed the opening night of Jesus, Queen of Heaven at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow this week, part of the city’s publicly funded annual Glasgay! arts festival.

Spring Storm, Royal & Derngate Theatre, Northampton

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

It's a troubling April down on the Delta, where the river is rising, and the blood too. "The crape myrtle's been out a week," says the genteel Mrs. Critchfeld. "I always start to wear white when the crape myrtle's out." Her daughter, however, worries she may never wear get to wear white and toss a bouquet. One of Tennessee Williams's high-strung beauties who are half spinster, half sexpot, Heavenly Critchfield is sleeping with the virile, shiftless Dick but tempted by the rich, repressed Arthur (a nice reversal of the traditional dilemma). The quartet of restive youth is completed by the librarian Hertha Neilson, "the most sensitive and intelligent person in Port Arthur, Mississippi", where teenagers she catches necking in the stacks laugh at her and call her an old maid.

If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet, Bush Theatre, London

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

David Hare published a very penetrating article recently in which he characterised the Noughties as the decade of Looking Away, technologically, politically and morally. By a somewhat delicious irony, I found myself reading this on a train late at night while being steadily eyeballed by the young man opposite, who was giving his girlfriend the most thorough of snogs. They had moved on to heavy petting by the time we hit Didcot, his glances to check on me now fitful.

Seize The Day, Tricycle Theatre, London

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

If I were the Labour MP and former Culture Minister David Lammy, I'd be disappointed not to be namechecked in Kwame Kwei-Armah's entertaining new play about the real possibility of a new black mayor for London.

Michael Clark Company, Barbican, London

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Rock music is good for Michael Clark. His latest work, Come, Been and Gone, shown as part of bite and Dance Umbrella, returns to the music of his teens: Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, David Bowie. Even the programme is designed to look like a 7-inch record sleeve. With this soundtrack, Clark and his company gleam with purpose. It's the best thing he's done in years.

The ten biggest Broadway turkeys

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:59:50 GMT

Following the shock closure of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs and the cancellation of its companion piece Broadway Bound, we look at ten of the biggest flops to grace Broadway.

Neil Simon 'dumbfounded' after play flops

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

It was meant to be a flattering season for Neil Simon, the 82-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning father of situation comedy on the American stage and screen. His semi-autobiographical play Brighton Beach Memoirs opened to fine reviews in New York 10 days ago and next up, in the same theatre, was its companion piece, Broadway Bound.

A frightening 24 hours for thespians

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:32:11 GMT

On Halloween night an eclectic bunch of actors and writers gathered in the auditorium of London’s Old Vic theatre preparing to write, rehearse and perform six plays in 24 hours to raise cash for charity.

Mrs Klein, Almeida Theatre, London

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

You think you've got a difficult mother! Melanie Klein's daughter didn't stand a chance, from the moment she put her head out. Klein gave the girl a name that was a diminutive of her own, then psychoanalysed and wrote about Melitta for her brilliant theories in child development.

Mark Morris Dance Group, Sadler's Wells, LondonThe Sleeping Beauty, Royal Opera House, London

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

For those convinced that contemporary dance is a mystery designed to keep them out, the work of the American Mark Morris offers a riposte. "I make it up; you watch it", is the beginning and end of his philosophy, though he might have added " ... and listen, too": in a world where good, live music seems to matter less and less, his dance shows are also a very smart concert ticket.

Pains of Youth, NT Cottesloe, LondonIf There Is I Haven't Found It Yet, Bush, LondonMrs Klein, Almeida, London

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Everyone should shoot themselves at 17. So says the wild child Desiree in Pains of Youth. Penned in the 1920s and now revived by director Katie Mitchell – in period costume – this is Ferdinand Bruckner's morbid depiction of screwed-up Viennese students in Freud's era. It might well strike a chord with today's suicidal teenagers and twentysomethings, but little comfort is offered.

Life in the fast lane: Steven McRae

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Stranger phenomena may have graced the stage of the Royal Opera House than a balletic prince who takes his inspiration from motor racing, but maybe not many. Meet Steven McRae, the hot young star of the Royal Ballet who makes his debut tonight as Prince Florimund in The Sleeping Beauty. The son of an Australian drag racer, McRae, 23, has been thrilling Covent Garden balletomanes: blessed with a soaring, secure technique, flaming red hair and a disarming charm that fronts terrific drive, he is living balletic life in the fast lane.

Clare Higgins: 'I was a bit of an odd child'

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Did you have a difficult journey?" says Clare Higgins. For a moment, I see a flicker of Hecuba in her clear, blue eyes, a tiny taste of the spine-chilling froideur that has, over the years, had her winning plaudits for her performances in Greek tragedy. Moments later, when we have established that I am on the dot (have, in fact, been waiting in the cold outside) and that she has been given a time 15 minutes earlier than me and that her day will still be incredibly long, but that the earlier-than-necessary start was not, in fact, my fault, the ice melts, the eyes are sparkling and she is winsome and giggling, like the Kitty she played in a BBC Pride and Prejudice nearly 30 years ago, the one from which she still has Darcy's prosthetic nose, and the one that's still my favourite.

The Diary: Chrissie Hynde; London International Mime Festival; Marian Keyes; VOBO awards; National Portrait Gallery

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Observations: Barbican's vampire show is theatre to get your teeth into

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:01 GMT

If imitation is a form of flattery, Twilight star Robert Pattinson ought to be pleased by the posters for new teen vampire flick, Cirque du Freak, whose young lead is a dead (or should that be undead?) ringer. The continuing mania surrounding Twilight on the big screen and the HBO series True Blood on the small meant it was only a matter of time before vampires invaded other cultural spheres.