Theatre

TIM WALKER reviews Noises Off at the Garrick Theatre, and reminisces on the play’s former glory When it’s done correctly, Noises Off, Michael Frayn’s comedy about life backstage, should look like a perfectly-choreographed ballet. Actors need to pass on props – such as plates of sardines, telephones and suitcases – to one another with split-second […]

TIM WALKER says ‘Master Harold’… and the boys is a long burn production in a time of inpatient theatregoers. For most of the 100 minutes that Roy Alexander Weise’s production of ‘Master Harold’… and the Boys runs, there is a ‘least said, soonest mended’ approach to the issue of apartheid in South Africa in the […]

Aoife Duffin delivers a haunting mixture of fragility and defiance in this ‘stunning production’. Theatre is about melting the ice within, of awakening dormant cells, of making us more fully alive, more fully human, at once more individual and more connected to each other. I wish I’d written that, but it was in fact Franz […]

TIM WALKER called the performance a good-looking, good-natured, feelgood production One’s hopes for Big: The Musical were miniscule. The idea of making a show out of the schmaltzy 1988 Tom Hanks film – about a kid whose wish to be ‘big’ is granted – is of course inherently preposterous. What next: a huge water tank […]

‘A Very Expensive Poison’ is about as guttural and stereotypical as six straight shots of vodka, writes TIM WALKER Tom Brooke as Alexander Litvinenko and MyAnna Buring as Marina in A Very Expensive Poison – Credit: Archant With colour- and even gender-blind casting now commonplace in the world of the theatre, I’m not sure if […]

TIM WALKER gives a glowing review of playwright Andre Bovell’s newest ‘epic, big screen’ play. It was the playwright John Osborne who observed that it was a gift from God to be born English. Stiff upper lips, Spitfires, Scott of the Antarctic and sanctimoniousness: we’ve always been encouraged to believe that we’re superior to everyone […]

TIM WALKER reviews The Doctor at London’s Almeida Theatre Social media has helped to make identity politics an inescapable part of modern life. This has been as much of a curse as a blessing since it means we’re now required to be in an almost perpetual state of outrage over this, that and the other. […]

TIM WALKER reviews Evita at Regent’s Park Theatre and gives the performance five stars. Stage performance of Evita at Regents Park Theatre. Photograph: Marc Brenner. – Credit: Archant Jamie Lloyd’s revival of Evita is played out on a stage taken up entirely by a staircase that leads up to the rusting capital letters E, V, […]

It’s a case of all aboard for murder as Eastenders star Samantha Womack plays an embittered, unemployed Rachel Watson. Duke of York’s, London, until August 17 In essence, The Girl on the Train is a creaky, old-fashioned whodunnit with ideas above its station. And, yes, a brilliantly clever pun was just intended there. Fans of […]

Even when staging a musical like Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! there’s a perilously thin dividing line between magnificence and naffness says TIM WALKER. A lot of the problem is that there can be few, if any, punters who haven’t now heard all of the big numbers in a sturdy old classic like this at least […]

TIM WALKER reviews The Night of the Iguana at the Noel Coward Theatre, London. “Oh God, please can’t we stop now?” wails Lia Williams as a downtrodden artist towards the end of James Macdonald’s production of The Night of the Iguana. It was a sentiment I suspect a fair proportion of the first night audience […]

TIM WALKER’s take on the ‘mind-numbingly slow and boring’ Captain Corelli’s Mandolin at Pinter Theatre, London. I have neither read Louis de Bernières’ romantic novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, nor have I seen the film version, which starred Nicolas Cage and Penélope Cruz. This clearly put me at a distinct disadvantage as I attempted to make […]

Holey Moley! It’s a miracle Theatre at its very best is miraculous, or at least it amounts to the realisation of what seems impossible. Certainly, Luke Sheppard, the director of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾, must have been either brave or mad to have wanted to try to stage Sue Townsend’s much-loved […]

TIM WALKER gives his take on the comic play Present Laughter The laws of the land and the social mores that prevailed during most of Noël Coward’s life meant that he had – in common with a great many other playwrights, such as Terence Rattigan – to be subtle when it came to addressing the […]

TIM WALKER reviews Bitter Wheat at Garrick Theatre One imagines Harvey Weinstein must be flattered that John Malkovich should now be playing a character so obviously inspired by him on the London stage. Sure, he would probably have preferred it if the star hadn’t felt the need to don a fat suit, but, other than […]

‘On the surface, this is an incredibly stylish piece of theatre’. TIM WALKER gives four stars to the Chichester Festival’s Plenty. If playwrights like Noel Coward and Terence Rattigan wrote plays that largely show Great Britain as she likes to see herself, David Hare has a habit of writing about her as she really is. […]

Bold, challenging theatre which encapsulates the joy and misery of that crazy thing called love. Kiln Theatre, London, until July 6 “All you need to know about A Doll’s House is a woman walks,” says Suzannah, the bohemian actress played by Sirine Saba in Samuel Adamson’s new play, Wife. Ibsen’s classic hastened the march towards […]

TIM WALKER speaks to Michael Longhurst about the Donmar Theatre’s revival of Europe – and why he is keen that it sends a very political message. “This country has been sitting on a powderkeg for too long. A spark was bound to catch. He said he’d tighten up on immigration controls. After all… feelings were […]

TIM WALKER’s latest stage review says a career revival for aging teen idol Matthew Broderick has failed to launch. What does Matthew Broderick, the fresh-faced, teen-idol star of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, do when he gets older? He makes an attempt at relaunching his career on the West End stage. I’m not quite sure if […]

Tim Walker reviews stage show Anna. The peculiar acoustics of the Whispering Gallery, directly beneath the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, mean it’s possible to randomly eavesdrop on the conversations of strangers, even if they are some distance away. Ben and Max Ringham, the sound designers of Anna, achieve the same effect in this startlingly […]

TIM WALKER reviews Orpheus Descending at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London. I’m on a theatrical bender without end, and, take it from me, I’m on the hard stuff. I’ve downed three Arthur Millers in quick succession and now it’s time for a shot of Tennessee Williams, who is, quite frankly, right up there with […]

TIM WALKER reviews Arthur Miller’s best-known play Death of a Salesman. Musicals and comedies have traditionally always been in demand during bleak times, but London would appear to have come to the view that it’s beyond cheering up and is bingeing on Arthur Miller, the theatrical equivalent of a bottle of Bruichladdich with a Mogadon […]

Tim Walker reviews stage show Small Island. A white couple find themselves the parents of a black baby and they’ve not adopted him. This sounds like the start of an awful racist joke, but it’s what happens towards the end of Small Island, and, given the setting is post-war Britain, there’s nothing remotely funny about […]

In this week’s stage review, TIM WALKER, reviews All My Sons at the Old Vic. ‘I just want everybody to be happy,’ trills Jenna Coleman, playing the love interest in All My Sons. This being an Arthur Miller play, that was always going to be at best a forlorn hope. Indeed, the sense of despair […]

Top Girls is a play that fails the test of time, writes TIM WALKER. The National Theatre rightly sees that it has a responsibility to keep alive old and more modern classics and that’s presumably why it has chosen to revive Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls. When it was first presented almost 40 years ago, it […]

Grief is the word as TIM WALKER reviews the production featuring Cillian Murphy. Barbican, London, until April 13 Just after 9/11, the Queen observed that ‘grief is the price we pay for love’. The sentiment may not have been original – a psychiatrist named Dr Colin Murray Parkes had more or less coined the phrase […]

TIM WALKER gives his review of Fiddler on the Roof at Playhouse London, which is running until September 28. Familiarity can breed contempt with even the greatest shows, so it’s just as well that Sir Trevor Nunn has thought outside of the box with his revival of Fiddler on the Roof. Even the Playhouse’s large […]

In this week’s stage review, TIM WALKER, reviews The Twilight Zone at the Ambassadors Theatre. There’s a scene in The Twilight Zone that speaks very much to our disorientating times. A man who has installed a bomb-proof shelter beneath his home is retreating into it with his family ahead of a nuclear war. His neighbours […]

In this week’s stage review, TIM WALKER reviews Tartuffe at the National Theatre. The National Theatre offers excursions to both heaven and hell at the moment. Turn left when you enter the main building and you are on your way to the former, in a once-in-a-lifetime production of Follies. Turn right and, for just the […]

Tim Walker review The Son, which runs until April 6 at Kiln Theatre, London. When I look back on my teenage years, I realise an awful lot of my time was spent fretting about how Peter Barkworth would cope with finding out that his wife Hannah Gordon was having an affair with Keith Barron in […]

Follies, National Theatre, until April 6 When the National Theatre gets a production absolutely right – and let me say immediately that’s what it’s achieved with its revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies – it lifts you in a way that no other venue in the world can quite manage. I have seen a few productions […]

David Suchet delivers great value as the eccentric Gregory Solomon, alongside Brendan Coyle. Wyndham’s Theatre, until April 27 There is a world-weariness to Arthur Miller’s plays that doesn’t normally start to have much resonance with theatregoers until they reach middle age. It’s one of the few advantages of the peculiarly bleak times in which we […]