Critique NOVEMBER 2018 : ISSUE 90
AIR
Theatre
The Wider Earth at London’s National History Museum; photo by Prudence Upton
T
he Natural History Museum in London “Is being transformed into a theatre to stage a play about Charles Darwin’s historic voyage, close to the gallery where the treasures he collected are housed”, explains The Evening Standard of The Wider Earth. “The play tells how the naturalist set sail on HMS Beagle in 1831 for a fiveyear trip that inspired his theory on evolution.” Fergus Morgan says in The Stage, “There’s a certain, old-style schoolboy thrill about this Australian import... It’s not all that sophisticated, but is staged with enough rocket fuel to see it over the line.” What the show does offer “Is an engrossing spectacle. Using techniques similar to those of the South African Handspring Puppet Company that inspired War Horse, the seven actors manipulate puppets that bring the natural world to life,” says Michael Billington in The Guardian. “There are also beautiful painterly projections... which whisk us from the rolling Shropshire hills to the 22
fiery shores of Tierra del Fuego and the teeming abundance of the Galápagos Islands. It demonstrates that Darwin was always a man of ‘enlarged curiosity.’” Of Measure for Measure, Alice Saville says in Time Out, “Games of spot the difference don’t get much more highbrow than Josie Rourke’s resolutely high concept take on Shakespeare’s play. She’s stripped the text down to a spare hour of legal power wrangling: the first time it’s set in 1604, the second in 2018.” Showing at London’s Donmar Warehouse through November, “The first half is a heavily cut perioddress version. In the second half nearly everything’s repeated, but in a gaudy present full of emails and selfies. The two main characters trade places – a gender reversal that invites thoughts about how men and women can do exactly the same thing and be judged differently,” writes Henry Hitchings in Evening Standard. Natasha Tripney observes in The Stage, “It’s a really slick production,
handsomely designed and very well acted... It seems confused in what it wants to say about women, power and justice – but then things are confusing at the moment.” Apologia, at New York’s Laura Pels Theatre until 16 December, “Is a vehicle to showcase Stockard Channing’s talents, to show the world that at 74 she... possesses depth, appeal, strength and power. She’s why I signed up to review. I’m glad I did,” enthuses David Walters in New York Theatre Guide. “An apologia, playwright Alexi Kaye Campbell reminds us, is a defense, not an apology,” pens Greg Evans at Deadline. “Channing’s Kristin Miller is an irascible, razor-edged leftist and second-wave feminist.” Concurs Ben Brantley in the New York Times, “Channing wields weapons of deflection like a master samurai... The pre-emptive put-down, the obscuring fog of abstraction, the barbed aside, the motorised monologue – such are the tools expertly deployed by someone who has trained herself to live on the defensive.”
