Hansard, National Theatre - ★★★★★ - Until November 25, 2019


It is hard not to think of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf when one encounters the sparring spouses of Hansard, but this is a thoroughly British version of that classic with an overlay of class and politics and almost nary a raised voice. The barbs come quick and fast and the quips are quite brilliant. The commentary on politics rings hilariously true and is vividly contemporary although this piece is set at a very specific moment in 1988. Simon Woods has written a thoughtful and thought provoking work. Wrapped in a dark torrent of epigrams and brittle wit, the pain and emotional cost of Margaret Thatcher's homophobic law Section 28 are personified, and the values embodied by that legislation are exposed in a way that shows how they echo in many aspects of today's political debates. Alex Jennings as Tory MP, Robin Hesketh, is simply excellent. He catches exactly the right tone and brings his character to life without falling into two-dimensional parody. Lindsay Duncan as his left-leaning, bitterly disappointed wife has the audience laughing and weeping as she gradually unravels how the pain of her husband's political decisions has inflamed the wound that led to the cleavage in their relationship. This Hansard is a far cry from its dry and often turgid namesake. It is a record of personal and social distress and decision making that shouldn't be missed.

Reviewed by J.C.

 Our Score:  ☆☆☆☆☆ 

Want to save on tickets? See our Tips page.

WHEN, WHERE, GETTING THERE:
Until November 25, 2019
Various show times available. See website below.
Lyttelton Theatre, National Theatre
Nearest tube: Waterloo
Map & Location: Upper Ground, South Bank, London SE1 9PX, UK

Most Popular

St. Martin in-the-fields: Lunchtime Concerts ★★★★ FREE

Image
Maybe the best musical value in London. The lunchtime concerts at St. Martin's are always a wonderful way to escape the hustle and bustle that is London and the sensory overload that is Trafalgar Square. This is a beautiful setting with great acoustics, and a church pew hard enough to make sure you don't nod off. Reviewed by J.C.  Our score:    ☆☆☆☆  WHEN, WHERE, GETTING THERE: Mon & Fri: 1 pm - 1:45 pm ( occasionally Tues & Thurs)  St. Martin in-the-fields, Trafalgar Square Nearest tube: Charing Cross https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/whats-on
Full Details »

Kyoto ★★★★★ @sohoplace | Until May 3, 2025

Image
Otto von Bismarck once said, "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made." The challenge for the theatre in presenting such events is that the process is not only messy, it can also be both time-consuming and tedious. However, Kyoto does the next to impossible. It takes the audience inside the procedures of developing an international climate protocol, and it manages to make the dry arguing about language and the Byzantine political strategies absolutely fascinating. Stretching over years of negotiations, it exposes the dark interests at play in a game of political chess that affects everyone of us, while simultaneously presenting the manifold complexities of developing international agreements. To focus this rather abstract and convoluted tale, playwrights Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson have honed in on the character of Don Pearlman, who served in the Reagan government and who became a lobbyist for the major oil companies known as the seven sisters. Pearl...
Full Details »

FIREBIRD ★★★★★ King's Head Theatre | Jan 9 - Feb 9, 2025

Image
The late 1970s were the height of the Cold War between America and the Soviet Union. However, set against the backdrop of this simplistically bipolar world, FIREBIRD relates a love story that ultimately questions the binaries that are often equally, naively imposed on relationships. As the impulsive, charismatic and enigmatic fighter pilot, Roman, Robert Eades puts in a performance that beautifully captures all of those qualities. He is both daring and disarming, and ultimately opaque, as he relishes taking chances both personally and professionally. Eades' presentation nicely contrasts to the more timid and grounded Sergey played by Theo Walker, and the chemistry between the two of them is thoroughly credible. In this highly charged atmosphere, Sorcha Kennedy successfully manages to hold her own in the rather challenging role of Luisa. She succeeds in creating a character who is strong, resilient and an equal force in the triangle that emerges, although we never see her intimate...
Full Details »

A Good House ★★★★★ Royal Court Theatre | Jan 11 - Feb 8, 2025

Image
When a shack appears in the midst of the upper middle class neighbourhood of Stillwater, the residents of this enclave of suburban serenity are concerned. Will the appearance of these squatters depress property values or will their mere presence lower the tone of the community? How to deal with these interlopers raises questions about the values and the prejudices of the current dwellers in this bourgeois haven. What really are the ties that bind this community, and what are the compromises one should make to be part of it? Amy Jephta thoughtfully strips away the self-deceptions and hypocrisy of all of her characters forcing them, and the audience, to realise that community is a concept based on compromise and that by definition, it means that there are others who are outsiders. The bonds that bind people together are frail and the line between the assertion of identity and bigotry is not always as clear as we might like to pretend. As the manipulative and maladroit instigators of the ...
Full Details »

Love in Action ★★★★★ Sadler's Wells Theatre | Oct 31 - Nov 2, 2024

Image
Hideki Noda's Love in Action is a wonderfully wild ride into Japanese history centred on the bombing of Nagasaki in 1945. The piece which is based on Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov centres around the trial of Tomitaro, one of the Karamatsu brothers. He is accused of murdering his father as a result of a love triangle in which he shared a mistress with his parent. The story loosely follows the Russian author's original with Tomitaro's two brothers representing two contrasting perspectives on reality, the scientific and the spiritual, but in this version there is also a deeply political allegory. This is all broadly played for laughs, and the show abounds with wacky references to Western cultural touchstones from Leonardo's The Last Supper to Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire . There are also some brilliantly loony allusions to current pop culture. Who saw a quotation from Dirty Dancing coming? It is all a delightfully manic mishmash, and just...
Full Details »

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ★★★★ Almeida Theatre | Dec 10, 2024 - Feb 1, 2025

Image
Big Daddy's birthday is a night to remember! There are some strong performances in Tennessee Williams' classic, but it does seem like an unnecessarily drawn out affair. Daisy Edgar-Jones takes on the role of Maggie the cat, and she does a lot of cat-like crawling to make sure we get it. She is matched in these feline frolics by Seb Carrington who plays the ghost of Skipper, the real love of Maggie's husband, Brick. However, the constant stage presence of Skipper's spirit does seem an unnecessarily heavy-handed way of reminding us of his haunting importance. While Edgar-Jones' portrayal manages to wring a lot of the fury and frustration out of the role of Maggie, her scenes with husband, Brick, played by Kingsley Ben-Adir, never quite rise to the emotional intensity of his interaction with Big Daddy in Act II. It is notoriously difficult to play drunk, and Ben-Adir does so in a masterful performance that is wonderfully understated. His searing, soul-baring, exchanges...
Full Details »

The Maids ★★★ Jermyn Street Theatre | January 9 - 22, 2025

Image
Jean Genet based his 1947 play, The Maids , on the real story of an infamous 1933 murder in Le Mans when an abusive mistress and her daughter were killed by their two maids. This co-production between Jermyn Street Theatre and Reading Rep, which transfers to Reading at the end of January, captures all of Genet's absurdist horror, but it wavers uneasily between the realistic and the mannered in its presentation of this narrative of brutal social stratification and existential alienation. Anna Popplewell as Solange, the elder sister in service, brings a nicely restrained menace to her characterisation, and Charlie Oscar as younger sister, Claire, does a fine job of alternating between vulnerability and volatility as the two participate in the ceremony of dressing up as their employer and acting out her murder. Carla Harrison-Hodge hits some humorous notes as the obtuse, self-absorbed mistress of the household, but it is a performance that borders on parody. It reflects the kind of in...
Full Details »

Ballet Shoes ★★★★ National Theatre | Nov 23, 2024 - Feb 22, 2025

Image
Noel Streatfeild's novel has been wildly popular since its first publication in 1936. The story of three orphan girls who end up being raised in the home of an eccentric palaeontologist, Great Uncle Matthew, has enchanted generations of young readers. GUM, as he is known, who is mostly absent, leaves the real care of the children to his ward and great niece, Sylvia, plus a housekeeper and a quirky set of lodgers. In this updated, occasionally ahistorical, theatrical version from Kendall Feaver, the National Theatre simply pulls out all the stops. With wonderfully inventive sets and the imaginative creation of sailing ships and flying fairies, Streatfeild's tale becomes an experience that should enthral any young audience members lucky enough to see it. The story has a particularly contemporary message with an almost exclusively female household forming a family of choice rather than blood. The family members also recognise and develop the very different ambitions of the young w...
Full Details »

Canned Goods ★★★ Southwark Playhouse, Borough | Jan 16 - Feb 8, 2025

Image
Erik Kahn's Canned Goods recounts the story of the false flag operation that Hitler used as an excuse to invade Poland in 1939. The "canned goods" are three prisoners who will be used to impersonate Polish soldiers who attack a German radio station, thus providing an excuse for the Reich to retaliate. The prisoners who will be exploited in this gambit are a Polish farmer, a Jewish intellectual and a German petty thief. They are, no doubt, intended to be representative of the people Hitler used to his advantage in his plan to assert the Nazi hegemony. In prison confronted with an unknown and uncertain fate, the captives' conversations take a philosophical bent, questioning the purpose of suffering, the intervention of God in human affairs and the presence of evil. These existential and political meditations, along with the exposure of Hitler's theatrical propaganda and manipulation of public opinion, are clearly intended to resonate with current world events, and...
Full Details »

The Invention of Love ★★★★ Hampstead Theatre | Dec 4, 2024 - Feb 1, 2025

Image
Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love is a palimpsest of ostensible contrasts. The first act has the reigning Oxford intellectuals (Jowett, Pater, Ruskin and Ellis) playing croquet whereas the second act shows a group of London press lords playing billiards. However, in both instances the real game is the same – power. The currency may be ideas or money, but the object is identical. Similarly, Stoppard sets up a parallelism between Oscar Wilde the rebel, who was actually a dramatic and social conformist, with AE Housman, the apparent conformist who quietly rebelled. Despite quite distinctive presentations their differences are more superficial than substantive. Housman's apparent internal contradictions are also similarly exposed as a matter of surfaces. The scientific scholar driven to perfect ancient texts and to seek the creator of love poetry in ancient authors such as Catullus, Propertius or Gallus, is himself an artist who in his poetry becomes an inventor of love. The di...
Full Details »

The City Life Magazine | Reviews & Ratings