Read more about the article REVIEW: The Tragedy of Macbeth, Almeida (2021)
James McArdle as Macbeth and Saoirse Ronan as Lady Macbeth

REVIEW: The Tragedy of Macbeth, Almeida (2021)

What Yaël Farber has constructed is a Macbeth full of action and visual, visceral excitement. Still moments are rare as there is almost always something to watch.  Along with the audience are the three Weird Sisters (Diane Fletcher, Valerie Lilley and Maureen Hibbert) who watch from the back of the smoky stage throughout the play when they are not speaking their ominously accurate predictions.  The programme explains that the histories of the Wyrd sisters "are a reformed patchwork of myths and narratives…. who hold all destinies in their hands."

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Read more about the article REVIEW: Les Blancs, Olivier National Theatre (2016)
Sheila Atim as The Woman (Photo: Johan Persson)

REVIEW: Les Blancs, Olivier National Theatre (2016)

This production is spellbinding and its momentum stays with me occupying my thoughts, whirring like the revolving stage. The text, finalised by Lorraine Hansberry's former husband and literary executor Robert Nemiroff, would bear much further study to grasp all its themes and nuances. Written from her viewpoint in the 1960s by American playwright Lorraine Hansberry, the original person to be described as "young, gifted and black", her unfinished play Les Blancs, examines an unnamed African country on the brink of revolution and independence from colonial rule. Lorraine Hansberry was in her mid thirties when she tragically died of pancreatic cancer.

Continue ReadingREVIEW: Les Blancs, Olivier National Theatre (2016)
Read more about the article Review: The Crucible, Old Vic (2014)
Cast in The Crucible (Photo Johan Persson)

Review: The Crucible, Old Vic (2014)

The South African born director Yael Farber, after an award winning Mies Julie brings her dark touch to Arthur Miller's iconic play about prejudice, politics and hysteria The Crucible. Set in the 17th century in Salem, the witch trials were a matter of record, probably driven by greed for land confiscated from witches but as Miller was writing he was thinking about the trials in twentieth century America, the witch hunt for Communists that were instigated by Senator McCarthy.

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