Cindy Marcolina - Page 30

Ronan Raftery plays chess world champion Boris Spassky in Ravens: Spassky vs Fischera??a??a??a??a??a??a??, beginning this week at Hampstead Theatre. The Cold War is taken to the chess board as Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer prepare for battle. Raftery told us what we should expect from this game of epic proportions.

After joining Jamie Lloyd in his Doctor Faustus at the Duke of York's Theatre and featuring in his Pinter at the Pinter season, Tom Edden is jumping back on stage with the director to star alongside James McAvoy in Cyrano. His credits name-check long-running shows like Les Misérables and Matilda, as well as plays of the likes of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui at the Donmar and Amadeus at the National Theatre. We caught up with him to chat all things Cyrano and what makes Lloyd such a special director.

Tess' Christmas day has always been a bit different from other people's. Her mum is a doctor and her dad is a paramedic, so her family rarely manage to gather on the 25th of December to celebrate. This year - like every other - she's helping her grandmother and her uncle set up their big dinner while they all wait for her parents to come home from the hospital. To kill time as they finish off with the last touches, they swap their usual stories and share their christmas cheer.

When Anthony Neilson's Penetrator debuted in Edinburgh in 1993, it offered a grim reflection on the male psyche at the end of Thatcher's mandate. The Gulf War and the violence it brought for the boys who fought it made its way into the flat of two young men in their early 20s as their damaged old friend.

Vivian has just received her first Academy Award nomination. When an actress comes forward to accuse her 82-year-old actor father who's suffering from degenerative dementia of sexual assault, her career and personal life threaten to crumble. Her half-sister Margo, an influencer who's quite involved in the promotion of the #MeToo movement, becomes only the tip of the iceberg.

Sam (Pedro Leandro) arrives at Nick's (Edward Stone) for their date after they met online. Their rendez-vous is unlike many others: if all goes well, Nick is going to eat Sam. Stone and Leandro write a dark, twisted, and delicious play inspired by the Rotenburg Cannibal. Fiji accompanies their two characters while they spend their first and last weekend together, as they re-discuss their boundaries and what they expect from the meeting.

Sometimes theatre can go very wrong for a lot of reasons. The audience are required to take a leap of faith, suspend their belief, and put their trust in the performers on stage. Some shows require a lot from the people who watch them, some don't. Land Without Dreams demands a level of openness that it's never able to fulfill. The piece works well on paper. On stage, not so much. Besides making a bunch of promises that aren't kept, the piece is, regrettably, inconclusive and inconsequential.

Back in May 2015, news broke that the Turkish State Intelligence were shipping weapons to Syria. Can Dündar was the editor-in-chief who decided to take a risk and publish the story, he was arrested in November on the grounds of espionage and being members of a terror organisation. His unlawful imprisonment kick-started an intellectual resistance movement and garnered him worldwide support.

Alexander Wright has just moved his immersive version of The Great Gatsby into the newly refurbished Immersive LDN in Mayfair. We got a chance to ask him what makes a great immersive show, how to take care of the wellbeing of the audience, and the fascination the surrounds the jazz age.

Diana Son's play Stop Kiss debuted Off-Broadway in 1998. The jarring tale of a horrific homophobic crime feels as relevant as ever, as it was only this past July that a lesbian couple was violently attacked on a night bus in London. Callie and Sarah meet and unexpectedly fall in love. Instead of being as cute and fumbling as it should always be, their first kiss triggered an assault that will change their lives forever.

It's January 1979 and Britain is getting closer to the brink of collapse. It's time for some of the most trusted government advisers to gather together and take the reins of the nation to try to save it from itself. Parabolic Theatre take their audiences back to a moment that's far too similar to today to leave them unscathed. With the economy about to crash, the unions threatening to strike one after the other, and civil unrest steadily climbing to dangerous heights, the future of politics is in the hands of the public - and Parabolic make sure that it feels real from start to finish.

The final installment of the Royal Shakespeare Company's season in London sees Artistic Director Gregory Doran's Measure for Measure coming into town. The choice of play is momentous, as it's historically the Bard's only active denunciation of men's unfair treatment of women. Doran sets the piece in a turn-of-the-Century Vienna that's torn between the lasciviousness of its brothels and strict ideals of conservative purity.

Hampstead Theatre sees the world premiere of Chinonyerem Odimba's Unknown Rivers, directed by Daniel Bailey with profound trajectory. A new play about friendship, mental health, and motherly love, it follows 19-year-old Nene (Nneka Okoye) as she struggles after a horrifying incident.

Former Artistic Director of The Other Palace and full-time producer Paul Taylor-Mills opened a new theatre back in August. Well known for his productions of cult musicals, he's now brought a new version of High Fidelity to his own Turbine Theatre. We jumped on the phone to have a chat with him right after press night to hear about his job as a producer and the noise that surrounds his shows.

High Fidelity was first a book by Nick Hornby, then a film starring John Cusack and Jack Black, then a rather unfortunate Broadway musical with a score by Tony Award winner Tom Kitt. The action was set in London, then Chicago, then Brooklyn. The music in it has also varied according to dubious reasons throughout the different takes. A new, revamped version of the show has now come to Paul Taylor-Mills' Turbine Theatre with touring beau Oliver Ormson as the leading man.

Kelli O'Hara was briefly back to London on Sunday the 10th for a two-show day at Cadogan Hall. The last time the city embraced her was in the guise of Anna in The King and I at the Palladium, which marked her West End debut and the chance for audiences over the pond to appreciate a performer who's been making waves in the US since the start of her career. Her comeback saw two solo concerts that blew the roof off the Hall.

Two sisters are struggling to survive past their traumatic childhoods. From the moment social services take them away, their bond becomes the only important thing in their lives. Kathryn O'Reilly writes the story of a disintegrating relationship where the culprit is the same love that once united. Directed by Lucy Allan, Poisoned Polluted presents harsh and disconcerting vicious circles that look and feel real.

Intrigue, passion, rejection, deception, and incurable illnesses populate Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well. One of his most famous problem plays, it essentialy sees Helena chasing after her beloved Bertram in pursuit of love. Director Tom Littler scales down the narrative and assembles a cast of six to present an exceptionally instinctive and nostalgic production. He places the action in a cryptic era, using music as a vehicle and memories as the main narration instrument.

The modern world has always seen a fascination surrounding F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby and the licentious partying, wealth, obsessive passion, and excess he painted have seeped into the 21st Century cultural landscape as a beacon of intellectual decadence. This hedonistic view of the Jazz Age and racket - no matter how historically inaccurate at times - lends itself well to an immersive experience, and pushed Alexander Wright's production based on the original material to achieve the title of longest running immersive theatre show. After debuting in London at The Vaults in 2017, it moved around a bit before settling into a bespoke venue in Mayfair last month.

After staging three other plays by Martin McDonagh, Tower Theatre are now tackling the playwright's phenomenal first play, and start of the first of two trilogies, The Beauty Queen of Leenane. After premiering in Galway in 1996 it went on to have multiple transfers in London, a stint on Broadway, and to win a multitude of accolades.