Critique MARCH 2019 : ISSUE 94
AIR
Theatre
Shipwreck at Almeida. Photo by Marc Brenner
Y
ou are formally invited to dinner with the 45th President of the United States with Shipwreck, at Almeida Theatre until 30 March. It is an “Anne Washburn’ play [that] does something you rarely see in the theatre: it takes Donald Trump seriously rather than as a subject for easy satire,” notes Michael Billington in The Guardian.” Sarah Crompton says for What’s On Stage that “Washburn’s writing is often razor sharp and pungent. Her observation that Trump is somehow a corrective to the darkness lurking unrecognised beneath liberal assumption, is acute. But as scene follows scene, in a spiral that accelerates into increasing unreality, it is hard to avoid a sense of indulgence.” There are “multiple layers of stories and symbolism [in this] Russian dolllike work,” writes Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out. “The conversation comes back to... Could they have done more to stop him? Why did one of their number vote for him? And – in the most shamelessly meta scene – is it possible to write a play about him? 20
Tartuffe, at National Theatre until 30 April, is a “Subversive Molière update that is more talky than lolworthy,” says Lukowski again, in Time Out London. “Here, John Donnelly’s adaptation of the classic 1664 farce feels caught between updating the jokes and updating the morality. There are a lot of killer lines, but there’s also a lot of padding between those killer lines.” Demetrios Matheou observes in Hollywood Reporter that, “So many plays in the UK are being viewed through the prism of Brexit at the moment... Few have been consciously adapted with such a skilful awareness of the current mood as this exuberant, uproarious, fully ventilated new version of Tartuffe.” It is “a play for today,” believes Henry Hitchings in the Evening Standard. “Though more than 350 years old, [it] addresses subjects that are pressingly current: the spiritual neediness of the rich, the power of religious zealots to manipulate the unwary, and the slippery nature of truth. It can feel chic or impishly subversive, but in [this] fresh version,
apparently set in the present, the prevailing mood is one of farce.” “Musicals don’t come much more lowkey, wholesome or Canadian than Come from Away,” says Alice Saville, in Time Out. “[Set] in the straightforward world of the Newfoundland town of Gander... [The cast] sing their way through a set of folk-tinged songs that tell stories of the five days after 9/11, when 38 planes made emergency landings on the island’s huge, disused airstrip. And it’s all totally, soul-feedingly wonderful.” In the show, at Phoenix Theatre, Covent Garden until 25 May, “Something has happened, a catastrophe has hit, but not even near Gander... Much of the book and lyrics consist of a swollen checklist of needs when the town of Gander suddenly doubles in population with the arrival of the ‘plane people,’” explains Jordan Riefe in Hollywood Reporter. “The cosy glow of kindness isn’t a fashionable subject in theatre,” admits Henry Hitchings.” But this folksy Canadian musical by Irene Sankoff and David Hein makes no apology for its affirmative message.”
