Read more about the article REVIEW: The House of Shades, Almeida Theatre (2022)
THE HOUSE OF SHADES by Beth Steel ;
Director Blanche McIntyre ;
Set Designer Anna Fleischle ;
Costume Designer Liam Bunster ;
Lighting Designer Richard Howell ;
Sound Designer Gregory Clarke ;
Video Designer Isaac Madge ;
Movement and Intimacy Director Polly Bennett ;
Casting Director Annelie Powell ;
Associate Set Designer Liam Bunster. ;
Dialect Coach Esi Acquaah-Harrison ;
Fight Director Kevin McCurdy ;
Costume Supervisor Natasha Prynne ;
Associate Fight Director Sam Behan ;
Assistant Director Emily Ling Williams ; Almeida Theatre ; London, UK ; 7th May 2022 ; Credit and copyright: Helen Murray ; www.helenmurrayphotos.comCast ;
Gus Barry ;
Anne-Marie Duff;
Beatie Edney;
Kelly Gough ;
Michael Grady-Hall ;
Emily Lloyd-Saini ;
Carol Macready ;
Stuart McQuarrie ;
Mark Meadows ;
Daniel Millar ;

REVIEW: The House of Shades, Almeida Theatre (2022)

Anne-Marie Duff plays the matriarch of the family over half a century.  She has born three children with the youngest Laura (Emma Shipp) still at school. Her husband Alistair is a trade union shop steward and tells us that in 1965 half the working population are in a trade union.  In 2017 this percentage had fallen by more than half to 23.3%. In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher has demolished trade union power with legislation against secondary picketing and the defeat of the miners’ strike in 1984/5. 

Continue ReadingREVIEW: The House of Shades, Almeida Theatre (2022)
Read more about the article REVIEW: Hamlet, Young Vic (2021)
Cush Jumbo as Hamlet (Photo: Helen Murray)

REVIEW: Hamlet, Young Vic (2021)

Cush Jumbo's soliloquies are deep and thoughtful, every word heard as they should be.  This is the third time I recall the Young Vic choosing an excellent Hamlet but giving him a problematic production.  There was Peter Brook's curtailing Adrian Lester's Hamlet to just Hamlet's lines in the play.  There was Ian Rickson's setting of Martin Sheen as Hamlet in a psychiatric ward with Gertrude as a fellow patient and Claudius as the consultant psychiatrist.  We walked through an installation of the back of a hospital with a dispensary before seeing the play.  The last really successful, all round Hamlet I remember at the Young Vic was Paul Rhys's 1930s European royalty in 1999.

Continue ReadingREVIEW: Hamlet, Young Vic (2021)