Generally regarded as Gluck's greatest achievement in French opera, Iphigénie en Tauride premiered in Paris in 1779 and was an immediate success. Today, however, it is rarely performed, and the reasons for its neglect are probably manifold. They range from a contemporary preference for the thrillingly passionate arias of the 19th-century operatic tradition to a widespread lack of familiarity with the myths on which the work is based. Its narrative also eschews the familiar theme of romantic love in favour of an exploration of family loyalty and the complex Greek concept of fate. Gluck's opera draws on the Greek playwright Euripides' treatment of the myth of the cursed house of Atreus. In this version of the story, Iphigénie, who was to have been sacrificed to the gods by her father, Agamemnon, is rescued by Diane and transported to Tauris. There, as a priestess in the temple, she is expected to sacrifice strangers captured by the island's inhabitants. Christine Rice is...

Dorothy Kilgallen is probably not a familiar name to British audiences. She was a prominent American journalist, crime reporter, Broadway columnist and television personality who became a celebrity in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s. Speculations examines her investigations into the death of Marilyn Monroe and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The story is largely a recounting of Kilgallen's conspiracy theories surrounding these two events. Playwright Torben Betts creates the character of Flo, Kilgallen's new nanny, as a pretext for the journalist to narrate her theories. He then inserts scenes between Carlos Marcello, the mob boss, and Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of Kennedy, and between Robert F. Kennedy and Monroe to illustrate these ideas. Lee Newby's set is clever and versatile, switching between the three locations, but the production is less convincing when it comes to period detail. The mob boss, for example, has long hair styl...

When Love Never Dies opened in London in 2010, it received mixed reviews, although it ran for around eighteen months and earned seven Olivier Award nominations, including Best New Musical. However, it never captured the public imagination in the way its predecessor, The Phantom of the Opera , did. Loosely based on Frederick Forsyth’s 1999 novel The Phantom of Manhattan , its book is credited to Andrew Lloyd Webber, Ben Elton, Glenn Slater and Forsyth himself. Could it possibly be a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth? In this latest concert version, however, it is the score that takes centre stage, with some fine performances of the musical’s highlights. Jamie Muscato brings a sense of restraint and carefully shaped phrasing to the Phantom’s “’Til I Hear You Sing”, allowing the character’s yearning and anguish to emerge without sacrificing the song’s emotional intensity. Celinde Schoenmaker is a delight as Christine, her voice soaring through “Love Never Dies” with a purity and ...

In 2014, the militant Islamist group Boko Haram abducted 276 schoolgirls from Chibok, Borno State, north-eastern Nigeria. The horrific event received considerable press coverage in the West, but Theresa Ikoko’s first professionally produced play brings it to the fore with an intensity and emotional force usually absent from the nightly news as it chronicles the world’s disasters. By introducing us to Tisana, Ruhab and Haleema, she transforms an abstract act of infamy into something personal and profound. From the moment the three appear on stage in a choreographed sequence, Hannah Akhalu, Sewa Zamba and Tara Tijani establish their characters as distinct individuals. Akhalu’s Tisana is shy and tentative, an obedient child who displays extraordinary fortitude in the trials that follow. Zamba’s Ruhab is a mischievous romantic whose aspirations extend little further than finding a boyfriend, while Tijani’s Haleema is a fiercely independent sceptic who punctures both religious and romantic ...

This musical memoir recounts the horrific experiences of pianist Władysław Szpilman during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. His parents and siblings were deported to Treblinka and murdered, while Szpilman escaped deportation and later survived in hiding with the help of others, including a German officer who discovered him towards the end of the war. Often called the Polish George Gershwin, Szpilman’s story becomes a moving object lesson in human cruelty and the demonisation of minorities. Although Szpilman’s experiences are largely narrated rather than dramatised, director Thom Southerland circumvents the lack of drama that can accompany an extended recitation of events by framing the monologue as an imperfectly recalled memory and by keeping the staging visually engaging. Simon Lee’s orchestrations of Szpilman’s popular songs are also a strength. Their melodies are both touching and hummable, and music emerges as a vital component of what makes us human. Daniel Krikler gives a powerful...

Garry Starr is the comic alter ego of Australian actor, writer and performer Damien Warren-Smith. Before Garry Starr: Classic Penguins , there was Garry Starr Performs Everything , a comic look at different theatrical genres, and Garry Starr: Greece Lightning , a humorous take on mythology. The latest one-hour addition to the Starr oeuvre takes as its starting point Penguin Books paperbacks, which aimed to make literature affordable and accessible to everyone. However, the show draws only on the book titles themselves, from Moby Dick to Great Expectations , as the basis for its clowning and physical comedy, much of which revolves around Starr remaining naked throughout. The literary parody is relatively thin, with the silliness and shock value taking precedence. Audience participation is extensive, with members of the audience brought up on stage and a nude Starr body-surfing through the crowd. Ultimately, humour is highly subjective, and this broad approach may not appeal to everyone...

Born in Pakistan in 1983, Salman Toor emigrated to the United States in 2002, becoming a US citizen in 2019. In 2020–21, he had an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, How Will I Know . This was followed in 2022 by the solo exhibition No Ordinary Love , organised by the Baltimore Museum of Art and subsequently shown at other American museums. The current presentation of his paintings at the Courtauld Gallery provides a welcome opportunity for British audiences to become acquainted with his work, which explores the relationship between individual identity and the communities to which we belong. Family, friendship, race, nationality, sexuality and artistic tradition all contribute to the ways in which identity is formed and presented, but beyond these overlapping affiliations lies the elusive individual, whose sense of self cannot simply be defined by them. Yet we remain somehow distanced from the very contexts that help shape us, and Toor’s paintings leave us uncertain abou...

Danny Lee Wynter’s coming-of-age, coming-out story should resonate well beyond the particular circumstances of its protagonist. Ted is a mixed-race adolescent trying to come to terms with his sexuality in a dysfunctional family, but his struggle to find himself amid confusing role models and the expectations imposed by family life will strike a chord with anyone who has wrestled with the pressures of becoming an adult. Matters come to a head when Ted’s grandmother, the family’s emotional centre and moral compass, dies. The young man is left with Tillie, his weak-willed mother, still entangled in a relationship with her estranged, physically threatening husband, Ken, and two aunts whose own relationships reveal similarly unequal power dynamics. Although Tillie is sympathetic to her son’s emerging sexuality, she lacks the strength to challenge Ken’s insistence that Ted conform to a rigid notion of masculinity, expressed most forcefully through sport and boxing. However, Ted’s fight to be...

This is the true story of an Australian cyclist who dreamt of winning the Tour de France. In a sport plagued by drugs and cheating, he strove to run an honest race and to triumph for his country. Connor Delves, who wrote and stars in this biography, creates a portrait of grit and determination that will resonate with fans of the sports underdog genre. Think Rocky Balboa on a bicycle. It is an inspiring tale of perseverance and resilience, and Delves puts in a fine performance, most of which is on various bicycles. While we are given some of Cadel Evans’ difficult background, as his parents moved from place to place and later divorced, there is little attempt to draw an in-depth psychological portrait of the athlete. His relationship with Aldo Sassi, his coach who died before Evans achieved his goal, is also only sketched in. Nor is there much exploration of the complexities of competing at this level, the commodification of athletes or their relationships with sponsors. CADEL: Lungs on...

Written in the early second century AD, Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars chronicles the lives of Julius Caesar, who never held the title of emperor, and the first eleven emperors of Rome. Their personalities, private lives, ambitions and scandals are all on display, and although scholars may debate the accuracy of some of the accounts, they certainly make for interesting reading. In her 15-minute play Triumph , Caryl Churchill draws on many of Suetonius’ more outrageous stories about the emperors’ conduct, putting them in the mouth of a blonde press secretary who delivers her pronouncements in the now familiar style of the White House. The audience is left to draw the parallels with the behaviour of the current occupant of that landmark and his imperial pretensions. It is a clever and amusing device, but the play amounts to little more than a short skit of the kind more commonly associated with the Fringe. The principal attraction is Churchill’s name and the strength of her previous work...