I love food, but I love cooking even more. The shopping and chopping, the stirring and serving. Cooking for other people is a pleasure, a game, an expression of care. At heart, I’m a caterer. So it was remarkably upsetting to see food repeatedly announced yet never enjoyed in Jack Thorne’s new play the end of history… at the Royal Court. Each of the three acts – set a decade apart, from 1997 to … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the hammock in The Night of the Iguana
It’s long, saggy and full of holes. But there’s more than that to The Night of the Iguana, one of Tennessee Williams’ lesser-loved plays. Though there’s never enough love for Williams’ characters, especially in this play from 1961. The defrocked priest Shannon has been craving a sojourn on Maxine’s veranda – rum-coco in hand, stretched out in the hammock, which he unfurls as soon as he … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the lighter in Venice Preserved
In the opening scene of Venice Preserved at the RSC, a rebel recruits a desperate friend to the cause. His indignation is scorching hot, so of course he pulls out a lighter, itching to burn the rotten state to the ground. In Thomas Otway’s tense, too much neglected Restoration tragedy (1682), a viciously corrupt Venice has reduced Jaffeir (Michael Grady-Hall) to ruin. He covertly married a … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the telephone in Present Laughter
Did you see that video of two teenagers baffled by a dial-up phone? Nothing is guaranteed to make you feel jurassic like watching the routine technology of your childhood appear irrefutably foreign. In an age when even buttons feel vintage – when, let’s face it, the idea of making actual phone calls rather than messaging seems pretty bloody weird – no wonder post-millennials boggle at such a … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the seeds in King Hedley II
Some props haul their own metaphors on stage with them. When King (Aaron Pierre), recently released from prison, sprinkles flower seeds over an unpromising scrub of soil outside his Pittsburgh home – well, you don’t need dramaturgical skills to wonder if the severely challenged little seeds will mirror King’s own struggle to nurture a new, post-prison life. King Hedley II, August Wilson’s 2001 … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the stuffed duck in Rutherford & Son
There’s barely a scrap of frivolity in the Rutherford home. The home of a Tyneside manufacturing family in the 1910s, it’s imposing, substantial, stuffed to the gunwhales with heavy furniture – yet you struggle to spot anything that isn’t grimly functional or solid enough to break your toe should you drop it. Whatever else it is, the house of Rutherford is not a house of fun. Githa Sowerby … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the suitcases in Death of a Salesman
What does Willy Loman sell? It’s one of the great unanswered mysteries of American theatre. 38 years the man trudges around New England, hawking the Wagner Company’s whatevers to stores without number, but what does he have in his valises? Who knows – it’s the sale, not the sold, that counts. Whatever they contain, the cases are real enough. We see them early on in the heavy-hearted revival of … [Read more...]
Property details
Rosmersholm, a desirable 19th century mansion has unexpectedly come on the market, following recent… events. Impeccably designed, it would suit a miserable man of the cloth or a radical thinker struggling with doubt and desire. Full disclosure: there is a slight problem with damp. Dimensions It’s big. Very big. We like to describe it as ‘size of a West End stage’-type big. Buyers will find … [Read more...]
Change the dance, change the world
Bob Fosse and Jerome Robbins: two geniuses who sound as horrible to work with as they were inspiring to watch. Two artists whose choreography is tightly locked into the DNA of the silver-plated shows they helped create. Unpicking their movement from those landmark Manhattan musicals is tough – Robbins’ West Side Story gangboys who stake a leaping, finger-clicking claim on the streets; Fosse’s … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the poppet in The Crucible
Last night, as a cat nestled in the crook of my arm and its paws rasped happily over my fingers, I thought: I’m just a step away from a 17th-century witch trial. None of my neighbours in this part of London has an ailing pig or a crop prone to blight, praise be. But we all have our sorrows, and all need a way to explain them too ourselves. A cat and a pact with the devil are as good as … [Read more...]