Clive Davis — Theater Critic

Orange is the New Black star Lorraine Toussaint gives a weighty performance as Pat. Wilson is brave enough to highlight the class divide which ensures that middle-class black Americans often know as little about ghetto life as their white neighbours. Yet a convoluted storyline flits from one improbable twist to another. Themes pile up, bullet point-style.

Blanchett remains such an icily charismatic presence that you’re reluctant to look away even when the pace sags, as it does in the final hour. Her co-star Nina Hoss — who played Blanchett’s wife in the classical music film psychodrama Tár — makes an indelible impression too. Still, as the overlong Bergman segment wafts towards its conclusion, it’s the crispness of the images of the two women projected on to a compact screen that holds your attention rather than the script itself.

Fall’s production, first seen at Stratford East in 2024, is so deftly crafted that the best of the dialogue sounds freshly minted. Tamzin Outhwaite’s bored, vampish wife steps out of the shadow of Alison Steadman, who gave us an unforgettable Bev half a century ago. When we first see Outhwaite she is dancing away on her own, working on her Travolta moves under a glitterball. Here is a manipulative woman intent on turning her lounge into her own private catwalk. Her guests and her poor husband, Laurence (Kevin Bishop strikes just the right aggrieved tone), become her props; she moves them around with expressions of fake bonhomie, topping up their glasses all the while.

Ayckbourn piles up the misunderstandings on a set that represents the overlapping homes of the Fosters and the Phillipses. The two couples flit in and out, oblivious of each other. Breen keeps the physical humour sparking along, just as he did in his hyperactive, open-air version of The Comedy of Errors at the RSC. Telephones occupy a central role in the plot. Younger audience members will no doubt be baffled by the reference to something called the speaking clock.

Frankie O’Connor exudes menace as Begbie, the thug who spends his life looking for faces to punch. Finlay Paul’s Tommy wins our sympathy as his life falls apart. If you’re a fan of the movie, you’ll be glad to hear that Lou Reed’s anthem Perfect Day makes the cut. And you may also be relieved to learn that the infamous toilet scene isn’t quite as graphic this time around.

Could Bette Midler have saved Beaches? Probably not. Four decades ago the Divine Miss M brought sassiness to a Hollywood weepie about friendship, ambition and the Grim Reaper. Watching the musical version at the Majestic turned out to be an oddly unaffecting experience. The songs by Mike Stoller (one half of the vintage partnership of Leiber and Stoller) are pleasant enough and, as Cee Cee Bloom, Jessica Vosk nailed one vocal after another. The dialogue, sadly, was alternately wooden and saccharine.

Could Bette Midler have saved Beaches? Probably not. Four decades ago the Divine Miss M brought sassiness to a Hollywood weepie about friendship, ambition and the Grim Reaper. Watching the musical version at the Majestic turned out to be an oddly unaffecting experience. The songs by Mike Stoller (one half of the vintage partnership of Leiber and Stoller) are pleasant enough and, as Cee Cee Bloom, Jessica Vosk nailed one vocal after another. The dialogue, sadly, was alternately wooden and saccharine.

Some productions are so much fun that they can, paradoxically, make you feel a little bit anxious. The feast of in-jokes crammed into the opening quarter of Schmigadoon! leaves you wondering if the laughter can keep flowing at such a preposterous rate.

Some productions are so much fun that they can, paradoxically, make you feel a little bit anxious. The feast of in-jokes crammed into the opening quarter of Schmigadoon! leaves you wondering if the laughter can keep flowing at such a preposterous rate.

As co-producers, Barack and Michelle Obama bring a touch of presidential prestige to the revival of David Auburn’s Pulitzer-winning Proof at the Booth. But it’s a strangely underpowered affair, a soft-spoken Don Cheadle bringing little light and shade to the role of an ailing mathematics pioneer whose depressed daughter (Ayo Edebiri) suddenly claims to have come up with a groundbreaking paper. That thinly rendered McGuffin stretches credibility to breaking point. At the performance I saw, the audience, eager to be won over, laughed and applauded at the most innocuous of lines.

At the Winter Garden, Joe Mantello’s production of Death of a Salesman drops Nathan Lane’s Willy Loman into what looks like a gigantic, dimly lit warehouse. It’s hard to generate a sense of domestic intimacy in such cavernous surroundings. Lane just about wins the battle, although it’s Laurie Metcalf as Willy’s wife, Linda, who commands more attention, not to mention the glossy Chevrolet that rolls onto the stage at the start of proceedings.

At the Winter Garden, Joe Mantello’s production of Death of a Salesman drops Nathan Lane’s Willy Loman into what looks like a gigantic, dimly lit warehouse. It’s hard to generate a sense of domestic intimacy in such cavernous surroundings. Lane just about wins the battle, although it’s Laurie Metcalf as Willy’s wife, Linda, who commands more attention, not to mention the glossy Chevrolet that rolls onto the stage at the start of proceedings.

As for Dog Day Afternoon at the August Wilson, it’s never clear what the playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis hoped to achieve by bringing the 1970s screen thriller to the stage. Jon Bernthal brings some swagger to the part of Sonny, the bank robber originally played by Al Pacino, yet the British director Rupert Goold seems content to let the play tootle along like some inoffensive sitcom. There’s no tension in this heist; the guns may as well be made of marzipan.

eff Whitty’s book and Anna Louizos’s brownstone set offer a snapshot of a New York neighbourhood where the residents scuttle around in pursuit of elusive goals. The superb young cast, led by Noah Harrison and Emily Benjamin, manipulate a collection of hand-held puppets, designed by Rick Lyon, that are brought to life with the simplest of gestures and interact with humans including Amelia Kinu Muus’s terminally dissatisfied Asian-American wife. The American Dream hasn’t quite delivered the goods in this part of town. What Do You Do with a BA in English? is a number that tells you everything you need to know about the job market.

It is 17 years since Rosamund Pike last appeared in the West End. Films such as Gone Girl and Saltburn have distracted her from the stage. But seeing her rule over Wyndham’s Theatre with the loose-limbed aplomb she does in this reprise of Inter Alia, the legal-meets-personal drama in which she triumphed at the National Theatre last summer, you cannot help hoping this isn’t a one-off. Will she win an Olivier award on Sunday for the National production? She certainly deserves it. This is acting at its best.

Robert Jones’s shop-floor design, edged with red lights, amply fills the Coliseum’s broad space; the costumes he has created with Tom Rogers are an evocative combination of glamour and workaday. Harvey Fierstein’s book avoids overplaying the uplift. There were groans from some audience members when Price let loose some homophobic slurs but what would be the point of airbrushing prejudice out of the story?

Modern phrases such as “number crunching” are scattered here and there. As with the translation that Nick Dear provided for Nunn a quarter of a century ago, there’s a fair amount of swearing but it’s never gratuitous. Gorky directed his ire at what he saw as the fecklessness of the middle classes, yet given what we now know about the brutal system that was about to sweep them away, it’s hard to pass judgment on them. And the moments when they talk about the sense of rootlessness that haunts them even after they have risen in the world are almost unbearably poignant. This is a play that blends laughter with tears.

Modern phrases such as “number crunching” are scattered here and there. As with the translation that Nick Dear provided for Nunn a quarter of a century ago, there’s a fair amount of swearing but it’s never gratuitous. Gorky directed his ire at what he saw as the fecklessness of the middle classes, yet given what we now know about the brutal system that was about to sweep them away, it’s hard to pass judgment on them. And the moments when they talk about the sense of rootlessness that haunts them even after they have risen in the world are almost unbearably poignant. This is a play that blends laughter with tears.

Kip Williams has spiced up the sensuality of the novel a tad, and there’s an odd moment when Arthur Holmwood, fiancé of the Count’s victim Lucy Westenra, indulges in some very un-Victorian effing and blinding. Anyone unfamiliar with the novel may find the climactic chase slightly confusing, yet the snow falling from above and Erivo’s sudden eruption into an original song add genuine operatic grandeur.

The truth, though, is that while the folk-inflected songs by Mike Rosenberg (known as Passenger) are amiable enough — Chris Poon’s compact band cut a dash and the lyrics inject some surprisingly salty humour at times — Joyce’s script is oddly underpowered. It’s hard to take an interest in whether her unassuming Devon hero makes it to his destination in Berwick-upon-Tweed, where an old acquaintance, Queenie Hennessey, lies dying of cancer in a hospice. Katy Rudd’s production at the Haymarket in the West End trudges on and on, tugging at our heartstrings along the way.

It’s when the piece shifts to the present day, and the self-important academic Bernard Nightingale (Prasanna Puwanarajah) takes centre-stage that the pace begins to flag. The dominant yet unseen figure throughout the evening is that of Lord Byron, whose visit to Sidley prompts all sorts of speculation and theorizing. Continually misreading the fragments of evidence, Nightingale builds a house of cards.

Tim Hatley’s set design, with its sliding wooden-slat walls, evokes a fragile, dusty township. But while a clock hanging above the stage ticks away as we wait for the villainous Frank Miller to arrive on the noon train, the climactic shoot-out looks perfunctory. Still, the lines that Roth has added about morality and confronting rule-breakers take on new force at the start of a year when the world seems to be in meltdown.

Not so long ago, Smith wrongfooted her fans in the misfiring musical-cum-psychodrama, Opening Night, a portrait of another woman on the edge. This drama is even more audacious. It’s so cheering to see the West End can still take risks, and even more encouraging to know that Smith and co will be taking the play out of London, albeit briefly, after the run finishes.

Cole Escola’s deeply weird comedy, which re-imagines Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of honest Abe, as a frustrated cabaret artist, knocking back booze and spitting venom in all directions, has built a cult following since it began life off-Broadway. The performance I attended at the Trafalgar Theatre was greeted with some of the most maniacal cackling I’ve ever heard from a West End audience. Which is very, very odd when you consider that, deep down, Sam Pinkleton’s production is really a Saturday Night Live sketch stretched to improbable lengths.

Cole Escola’s deeply weird comedy, which re-imagines Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of honest Abe, as a frustrated cabaret artist, knocking back booze and spitting venom in all directions, has built a cult following since it began life off-Broadway. The performance I attended at the Trafalgar Theatre was greeted with some of the most maniacal cackling I’ve ever heard from a West End audience. Which is very, very odd when you consider that, deep down, Sam Pinkleton’s production is really a Saturday Night Live sketch stretched to improbable lengths.