FringeReview UK
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FringeReview UK 2020
Brenton powerfully concertinas a continent’s politics and one artist’s refraction of it. Wong is outstanding
15 Heroines: 15 Monologues Adapted from Ovid
Groundbreaking. The smallest producing theatre in the West End through lockdown has become the largest.
Family Album is possibly the most disastrous production this already unfortunate play has ever sustained. More, Coward would declare it’s a travesty; of genius. Hands Across the Sea is pitch-perfect in a slightly outré version of what Coward meant.
This surely is the greatest Dream since Peter Brook’s landmark 1970 production.
Stoppard looks at society’s phantom limb ethic. Even when it’s gone it aches, and it aches to have someone opting out.
Victoria Hamilton still dominates, but Albion’s a fine ensemble piece. Goold has given Albion the air it needs: an unsettling parable on forcing an identity of ourselves.
In the most spectacular production imaginable, Lucian Msamati’s supremely crafted lead sets off the quicksilver of his rival Adam Gillen.
Supremely worth it to see a pair so famous weighing equal in their own balance, perhaps for the first time.
Barber Shop Chronicles is a breath-taking revelation for those of us who had small inkling of a world in miniature.
Nothing so convincing has been done with this legend. It deserves many revivals.
A powerful telling of the personal accounts of eight recipients of the Medal of Honour.
A Coriolanus memorable for politics sinewed with personal forces: an active interrogation of democracy. And in Josie Rourke’s production Tom Hiddleston’s someone riven by intimations of his true self
This work never loses its charge, its own rapturous arrival Spall gives the performance of his career so far.
Renders huge black experience into a narrative that bears it, because so well-constructed, so character-driven and so inhabited by Michael Balogun whose blaze of awakening is both benediction and clarion.
The acting scales cliff-edges of unreason. One remembers the scale of betrayal and loss of redemption
Frankenstein (alternate version)
The acting scales cliff-edges of unreason. One remembers the scale of betrayal and loss of redemption. Benedict Cumberbatch here is Frankenstein, Jonny Lee Miller the Creature. The alternate version aired first is still available.
In Michelle Terry’s quicksilver, quick-quipping Hamlet, much has been proved, from interpretive to gender fluidity in tragic action, that sets a privilege on being in at a beginning.
Will leave you in a heap and wonder what else Lauren Gunderson has written that comes near this.
Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
A salutary reminder of how a great musical talent and collaboration started
A superb realization of Lorraine Hansberry's unfinished masterpiece - a classic of Ibsenite proportions
Performances and play that should turn us upside down. Do make a detour for this brave. tremulously beautiful coming of love.
Epic eavesdropping casts that ultimate spell: reading ourselves by flashes of lightning.
The Almeida’s another country. They do shows differently there. A bold communing of theatre stories with the fresh poignancy of what’s happened during 2020
An enduring little classic of Englishness on the turn, out of the ideal-exhausted Seventies and on the edge of darkness.
Completeness is just one reason to cherish this clean-driven clear-headed production
Scenes with girls owns a buzz, a life, a difference about loving that gives it a sliver of unique.
Helen McCrory plumbs the erotic despair of Hester Collyer’s abandoned woman in this absorbing revival of Rattigan’s masterpiece.
I want to know what life, not just Paul Minx will do with his characters afterwards. So will you.
Intricate, fiercely intelligent, this play packs far more force than some twice its length. Sarah Lawrie’s intensity is magnificent.
This magnificent revival poses even more urgent questions. A twitch on the thread for all of us.
A fleet traversal memorable for insights the company bring during and after their performance of it
There’s a generosity here, a big hug. Theatre itself affirms the value of life to those who might yet shape it for the better.
The Albert Hall’s sovereign production, unlikely to be surpassed particularly with the special encore.
The OFS are taking flight with the best scratch nights the Elizabethans never had.
See it and you’ll never think of the Shrew without this groundbreaking stab at the dreams of men.
We’re looking at a bright Book of Hours. Barrie Rutter’s done it profound service, adding a warmth and agency that opens up this pageant. This is hopefully just the first of many such he’ll bring to the Globe.
Do catch it, and match the feelgood price with nudging theatres towards opening night.
Tells us more truthfully then any play has, the heroism that hardens, the sacrifice that endures.
First-rate theatre. In Joshua James’ Ben Gunn and above all Pasy Ferran’s Jim, we see stars rising quicker than Arthur Darvill’s superb Silver can point them out.
We’re privileged to see this rarely-performed work moulded by OFS. A play for our times.
Tamsin Greig’s extremes as Malvolia mark the first intimations of the terrible and define this production. The ground’s shifted.
Outstanding. Surely the definitive study of the dignity of physical labour, and breaking of its amity.
Bleakly funny, with flickers of tragedy, to make you see how redemptive kindness is
