WORTH A LOOK?: ***1/2
WHERE: Barbican
WHEN: 16/9, runs to 1/10
When prostitute Dol Common (the excellent Siobhan McSweeney) is winched so she is left hanging from the ceiling (picture above) it doesn’t feel out of place in this re-imagining of a comedy by one of Shakespeare’s contemporaries.
WORTH A LOOK?: ***
WHERE: Shaftesbury Theatre
WHEN: 15/9 (matinee), booking to October 2017
We’re sitting on the end of the third row and there’s a moment in the second act when the actress playing Diana Ross appears in the audience looking for someone to duet with and is stood directly in front of us.
WORTH A LOOK?: ***
WHERE: Found111
WHEN: 27/8, press night 31/8 runs to 8/10
This is our first visit to this venue which is a temporary theatre on the site of the former Central St Martins School of Art in Soho.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
WHERE: Old Vic
WHEN: 1st preview 15/7, press night 16/8, runs to 17/9
24 hours before we are due to attend this 1st preview we receive an email from the venue saying the show’s not quite ready, designating it the final dress rehearsal, offering us full refunds and saying our tickets are still valid.
WORTH A LOOK?: **
WHERE: Garrick Theatre
WHEN: 23/7 runs to 13/8
It’s the news every partner of a theatre lover dreads: the tickets you bought eight months earlier to celebrate a birthday are no longer valid. And you find out that birthday morning. By email.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
WHERE: Young Vic
WHEN: 29/7, runs to 24/9
Has Billie Piper won an Olivier Award for best actress? We ask because this performance as the protagonist in Simon Stone’s adaptation of Lorca’s classic about a woman destroyed by her childlessness may well bear fruit for her where The Effect failed in 2012.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
WHERE: National Theatre
WHEN: 30/7, runs to 14/10
Our last same-day multi-play event like this featured four Shakespeare plays by the Royal Shakespeare Company starring David Tennant at the Barbican over a January weekend.
WORTH A LOOK?: ***
WHERE: Dominion Theatre
WHEN: 18/7, press night 21/7 runs to 7/1/17
We first saw this Whitney Houston jukebox musical starring X Factor winner Alexandra Burke in 2014 at the Adelphi Theatre.
WORTH A LOOK?: ***
WHERE: Royal Court
WHEN 20/7 to 30/7
Escaped Alone was Caryl Churchill’s last play at the Royal Court and was memorable not least for its 50-minute run time.
WORTH A LOOK?: *****
WHERE: Menier Chocolate Factory
WHEN?: 2/7, press night 12/7 runs to 17/9
As this Fiasco Theater production of the Sondheim classic is about to begin, co-director/Wolf/Cinderella’s Prince Noah Brody tells us his wife Jessie Austrian (moving and funny as the Baker’s Wife) is pregnant.
