Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests

issue 27 September 2008

Theatre
 
It promises to be a wonderful autumn for London’s theatre-goers. Ivanov, Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of Chekhov’s early play, has opened the ‘Donmar at Wyndham’s’ season, to superb reviews. Joining it in a quest to bring the increasingly dowdy West End into repute is No Man’s Land, Harold Pinter’s 1975 masterpiece, revived at the Duke of York’s with Michael Gambon and David Bradley assuming the roles of Hirst and Spooner initially taken by the great knights, Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud (and, 17 years later, at the Almeida, by Pinter himself opposite Paul Eddington).
 
The Norman Conquests, the three-parter with which Alan Ayckbourn conquered the West End three decades ago, is being staged at the Old Vic. The major opening at the National Theatre is Oedipus, with Jonathan Kent directing a cast including Ralph Fiennes, Alan Howard and Clare Higgins in an adaptation by Frank McGuinness of the Sophocles tragedy. Also at the National, Howard Davies directs Gethsemane,



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