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Archives for December 2016

12 Plays of Xmas: 5 Alkestis by Euripides/Anne Carson

December 31, 2016 by David Jays 3 Comments

For most of these 12 Plays of Xmas, I can imagine how they might be staged, what tone the cast and production team might hope to achieve. But Alkestis… Alkestis is just weird. Euripides’ wrigglesome play was, according to translator Anne Carson, programmed after three tragedies in the Athenian festival of 438BC. ‘It is not a satyr play,’ she says, ‘but neither is it clearly a tragedy or a … [Read more...]

12 Plays of Xmas: 4 The Roaring Girl by Middleton & Dekker

December 30, 2016 by David Jays Leave a Comment

It’s pantomime season, which is as good a time as any to pay tribute to the fine British traditions of smutty humour, sexual confusion, homosexual panic and coming over a bit funny when you think about women’s legs. All of the above get a good working over in The Roaring Girl (1611), a Jacobean city comedy in which Thomases Middleton and Dekker fit a real-life gender renegade into a giddy mesh … [Read more...]

12 Plays of Xmas: 3 Ruined by Lynn Nottage

December 30, 2016 by David Jays Leave a Comment

I can’t remember how I missed the Pulitzer-winning Ruined when it played in London in 2010. It was at a favourite theatre (the Almeida) and starred favourite actors (Jenny Jules, Lucian Msamati). Maybe I was busy, or distracted. Maybe I didn’t feel great urgency simply because Lynn Nottage’s 2008 play sounded too much like an adaptation of Mother Courage, taking Brecht’s dogged anti-heroine from … [Read more...]

12 Plays of Xmas: 2 Birth by TW Robertson

December 28, 2016 by David Jays Leave a Comment

What does reality look like on stage? I’ll tell you what it doesn’t usually look like: a play that sets the finale in ivy-covered ruins on an aristocratic estate. Or a plot of exemplary neatness in which two pairs of brothers and sisters each fall in love with their opposite (heterosexual) number and temporarily repair the rents in the Victorian class system. I chose one of TW Robertson’s … [Read more...]

12 Plays of Xmas: 1 Owners by Caryl Churchill

December 27, 2016 by David Jays Leave a Comment

    Caryl Churchill is the presiding playwright of our era. At 78, every play she writes is an event – not because of their rarity, or a forelock-tugging spirit of sentimentality, but because each text explains our time to us, shows us the paths we are taking. She ended 2015 with Here We Go, her devastating shard about death and old age; she began 2016 with Escaped Alone, … [Read more...]

David Jays

I am a writer and critic on performance, books and film and currently write for, among others, the Sunday Times and the Guardian. I edit Dance Gazette, the magazine of the Royal Academy of Dance. I’m also a lifelong Londoner: it’s the perfect city for connecting to art forms that both look back and spring forward. [Read More]

Performance Monkey

This is what theatre and dance audiences do: we sit in the dark, watching performances. And then, if it seems worth it, we think about what we've seen, and how it made us feel. The blog should be a conversation, so please comment on the posts and add your thoughts. You know what I've always … [Read More...]

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