david-jays
Encore! Surefire shows returning for the Edinburgh festival in 2023
In the run-up to the festival, our writers will choose new productions that have caught their eye – but here’s a selection of those we’ve already reviewed
Chris Wiegand, Anya Ryan, Brian Logan, Mark Fisher, Kate Wyver, Arifa Akbar and David Jays
29, May, 2023 @1:51 PM
Once on This Island review – stirring Little Mermaid musical in colonial Haiti
A young woman offers her life to save an unworthy aristocrat in a passionately sung fable of Caribbean history
David Jays
18, May, 2023 @12:57 PM
The Circle review – love, tears and tender truths when Jane Asher comes to call
Strong emotions rule in a candid and well-judged Somerset Maugham comedy twisting romantic fates across generations of squabbling society
David Jays
07, May, 2023 @11:39 AM
The Book of Will review – friends fight to save Shakespeare’s plays
Fearing the playwright’s works will be lost to history, former colleagues enact a rescue plan in Lauren Gunderson’s generous-hearted comedy
David Jays
03, May, 2023 @11:06 AM
‘It’s Shakespeare – as important as any modern piece of work’: Derek Jarman’s Blue comes to the stage
Russell Tovey, Simon Fisher Turner, Travis Alabanza and Neil Bartlett are teaming up to reimagine the director’s final film – a narrated meditation over a static blue screen – as a ‘thank you’ to the LGBTQ+ hero
David Jays
02, May, 2023 @10:00 AM
‘I’m no white man in a toga’: Thalissa Teixeira on having a stab at Brutus
The actor, better known as a TV cop, is portraying Julius Caesar’s assassin in a first for the RSC. She reveals why she’s been studying revolutionaries, from Mexican Zapatistas to Welsh nationalists
David Jays
13, Mar, 2023 @8:00 AM
Grenfell: System Failure review – sobering unpicking of a tragedy
Writer Richard Norton-Taylor and director Nicolas Kent’s almost anti-theatrical play uses residents’ testimonies and gives the bereaved a much-needed voice
David Jays
24, Feb, 2023 @12:01 AM
‘Is it antisemitic? Yes’: how Jewish actors and directors tackle The Merchant of Venice
Tracy-Ann Oberman’s Shylock, who has been relocated to 1930s Britain, is inspired by her tough great grandma – while Henry Goodman felt shame after losing himself in Shakespeare’s most notorious character
David Jays
22, Feb, 2023 @5:28 PM
Duet for One review – Kempinski’s combative probe into parental tensions
Tara Fitzgerald plays the former violinist in a restaging of Tom Kempinski’s play that pits patient against doctor in a furious battle of wills
David Jays
17, Feb, 2023 @9:55 AM
A razzle-dazzle rector, theatrical cats and Christmas cards from Judi Dench: inside the Actors’ church
The Rev Simon Grigg, a former stage director, welcomes our writer to St Paul’s in Covent Garden, where the stars worship
David Jays
10, Jan, 2023 @5:09 PM
‘She’s writing in a state of emergency’: Lillian Hellman’s thrilling Watch on the Rhine
As Hellman’s 1941 play is revived at the Donmar Warehouse in London, director Ellen McDougall and dramaturg Emma Jude Harris explain how it remains a call to arms
David Jays
12, Dec, 2022 @8:00 PM
Orlando review – Emma Corrin is glorious in a giddy, heartfelt show
In Neil Bartlett’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s wild-goose chase through time, Corrin shines as the hero who falls asleep as a man and wakes as a woman
David Jays
05, Dec, 2022 @11:59 PM
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