Theatre

A short history of applause – and booing

A dank Tuesday evening in a West End theatre. The auditorium is barely two thirds full. The play is nothing special – certainly not spectacular. Your neighbour is struggling to stay awake. The reception, however, is tumultuous. The audience is on its feet, squealing, whistling and whooping as though someone has just found the cure

The art of the panto dame

There is nothing more panto than a dame. The grandmother of today’s dames is Dan Leno (1860–1904), a champion clog dancer and music-hall performer, not much taller than Ronnie Corbett. He was preceded by others, notably James Rogers, who in 1861, in Aladdin,played a character called Widow Twankey, named after a cheap and revolting tea.

The acting rescues it: National Theatre’s Othello reviewed

Crude eccentricities damage the potential brilliance of Othello at the National. Some of the visual gestures seem to have been approved by crazies from the neo-fascist fringe. The Moor is first seen doing a work-out with a punch bag but he doesn’t strike the bag, he grabs a broom handle and uses it to perform

The UK Drill Project, at The Pit, reviewed

The UK Drill Project is a cabaret show that celebrates greed, criminality and drug-taking among black males in London. It opens with a septet of masked performers, sheathed in dark Lycra, singing a rhythmic poem while pretending to fire guns and stab people with knives. These sad young rappers are desperate to look scary because

Worthy of Wilde: Eureka Day, at the Old Vic, reviewed

Eureka Day is a topical satire set in a woke school in America. An outbreak of mumps has led to calls for a vaccination programme that will prevent the school from being quarantined and shut down entirely. The script, written in 2018, has acquired new layers of meaning since the Covid terror. It opens with

A masterpiece: Rose, at Park Theatre, reviewed

Look at this line. ‘I’m 80 years old. I find that unforgivable.’ Could an actor get a laugh on ‘unforgivable’? Maureen Lipman does just that in Rose, by Martin Sherman, a monologue spoken by a Ukrainian Jew who lived through the horrors of the 20th century. In the opening sections, Lipman plays it like a

Rhapsodic banalities: I, Joan, at the Globe, reviewed

‘Trans people are sacred. We are divine.’ The first line of I, Joan at the Globe establishes the tone of the play as a public rally for non-binary folk. The writer, Charlie Josephine, seems wary of bringing divinity into the story too much, and he gives Joan a get-out clause to appease the agnostics. ‘Setting