Category: National Theatre

We’re big fans of the Dorfman Theatre – the smallest of three spaces within London’s National Theatre, it regularly hosts some exciting new plays. Underdog: The Other Other Brontë opened earlier in April and is another fresh and inventive original play: written by Sarah Gordon, it tells the story of the three Brontë sisters – Charlotte (Gemma Whelan), Emily (Adele James) and Anne (Rhiannon Clements) and their brother Branwell (James Phoon). Directed by Natalie Ibu, it moves at a punchy pace, with two acts of about an hour each. Stylistically…

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When Till the Stars Come Down began, we wondered whether now was really the right time for this show to be staged. Set during a family wedding in the former mining heartland of Mansfield, it initially seemed to focus on Eastern European immigration, specifically the number of Polish people who had moved to the town to seek work in its factories. This seemed to be a hot topic of political debate in the run up to the EU referendum, but the conversation seems to have moved on a bit since…

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Infinite Life is a slight, subtle play – at just over 100 minutes straight through (no interval) it breezes by with seemingly not much happening. The play is set across about 10 days: during this time we meet five women who are recuperating at a somewhat dubious health spa in California (no treatments are offered beyond relaxation, accompanied by either a water cleanse or a juice cleanse). We learn a bit about their various ailments, alongside their backgrounds and interests. Not much else really happens, although a male character appears…

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For those unfamiliar with The House of Bernarda Alba, it was written by queer Spanish playwright Federico Garcia Lorca against the backdrop of the Spanish civil war. It is considered part of his ‘rural trilogy’, alongside Blood Wedding and Yerma, detailing small town life in Spain during the 1930s. This adaptation, by Alice Birch, arrives at the National Theatre with some fanfare, boasting a stellar cast and creative team. Rebecca Frecknall (who directs London’s current production of Cabaret, and also directed this year’s celebrated production of A Streetcar Named Desire)…

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Where to start with a show like The Confessions? It’s far from a conventional play – we’re not here to see a straightforward story, a snapshot into a moment in time with everything nicely wrapped up two hours later. Instead, The Confessions is based on the life of Alice, who is the mother of the play’s writer Alexander Zeldin. We’re essentially navigating her life story here, told from the moment she graduates high school in Australia in 1943 through to a near present-day London. Alice considers herself to have lived…

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We heard really great things about last year’s production of The Father and the Assassin at the National Theatre, but unfortunately weren’t able to cover it when it played previously – so we were excited to see that it was returning to its former home. This production reunites Indian playwright Anupama Chandrasekhar with director Indhu Rubasingham, and stars Olivier-winner Hiran Abeysekera (Life of Pi) as the assassin Nathuram Godse. The story of Mahatma Gandhi (played in this show by Paul Bazely), the civil rights activist and leader of the successful…

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We had high hopes for The Effect, and thankfully this show more than lived up to expectations. Written by Lucy Prebble, one of the writers of hit TV series Succession, and directed by Olivier-winner Jamie Lloyd, it’s a brilliant, captivating observation of the world we inhabit, full of moral dilemmas. At its centre is the story of two young people, Tristan (Paapa Essiedu) and Connie (Taylor Russell), who have volunteered to take part in a new drugs trial. They live in a world which has woken up to the importance…

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Before the show begins we’re aware that this is likely to be an extremely affecting piece of theatre – there are signs around the bar area of the Dorfman Theatre (the smallest of the three spaces in the National Theatre) advising audience members that there are safe spaces available upstairs in the theatre if they’re required during the evening. Before act one begins, the actors introduce themselves – out of character – to give us some context about the play, to reassure the audience that no fire will be shown…

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