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Blithe Spirit, Gielgud Theatre
reviewed for The Spectator, 19 March 2014 If you’d asked me before this week, I’m afraid I’d have guessed Angela Lansbury had already reached the spirit world. I’ve always imagined her eternally inhabiting the mid-twentieth century, as the prim but decidedly experimental home front heroine...
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Gender segregation: radical speakers cannot demand an audience that fits their prejudices
written for The Spectator, 14 December 2013 listen to ‘Kate Maltby vs Fatima Barkatulla on gender segregation’ on audioBoom I spent much of Tuesday afternoon shivering outside the offices of Universities UK. I was there to protest their publication of guidelines which suggest segregated seating of...
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Richard II, Donmar Warehouse
reviewed for The Spectator, 14 December 2011 Thanks to some mistake of history, Shakespeare’s Richard II has never quite been recognised as one of those roles against which the great actors are measured. But it takes a virtuoso to bring Richard to life: like all the toughest roles, he’s a heap of...
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Luise Miller, Donmar Warehouse
reviewed for The Spectator, 20 June 2011 Something is rotten in the state of Württemberg. Well, not quite Württemberg, because the young Frederich Schiller didn’t quite dare to express directly his criticisms of his first patron, Karl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg. Instead, he set this searing attack on...
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Two Ados
Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare’s Globe; Much Ado About Nothing, Wyndham’s Theatre reviewed for The Spectator, 2 June 2011 Like most Shakespeare comedies, Much Ado About Nothing is often performed as a garden party fantasy of Merrie England – so it’s a treat to see two major...
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Terminus, Young Vic
reviewed for The Spectator, 13 April 2011 No one can accurately imagine Hell. In Terminus, a magical paean to the art of storytelling, playwright Mark O’Rowe wisely does not try. The one soul in his universe who does manage to escape the place, finds himself, like Old Hamlet, unable to unfold its...
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