Robert Tanitch, Author at Catholic Herald

Robert Tanitch

Theatre: The rich barber who wants to live like Jesus

December 08, 2016

Sheppey, Somerset Maugham’s sardonic comedy, a modern morality play rooted in the 1929 slump and addressing the suffering of the poor, is successfully revived at Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond. When he was writing it in 1933, Maugham knew that it wouldn’t be popular with West End audiences, and he was right. The Christian message –

Theatre: Even 39 children can’t upstage the rock slob

December 02, 2016

School of Rock, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s exuberant new musical at New London Theatre, is based on the popular 2003 American musical-comedy movie starring Jack Black. The lyrics are by Glenn Slater; the book is by Julian Fellowes. A wannabe rock star, out of work, takes a teaching job at an elite primary school, introduces the

Theatre: Glenda’s raging Lear transcends gender

November 24, 2016

Glenda Jackson at 80 has returned to the stage after a 25-year absence to play King Lear, one of the most exhausting roles in the theatrical canon. Deborah Warner’s modern dress production at the Old Vic lasts three-and-a-half hours including a 20-minute interval. Jackson has the stamina. She makes no attempt to be a man.

Theatre: Declaring war on God and Mozart

November 10, 2016

Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus at the National Theatre is based on the legend that Antonio Salieri, composer to the court of Emperor Joseph II of Austria, murdered Mozart. This legend was created by Salieri himself on his death-bed in 1825. Deeply jealous that God should have chosen to speak through “the voice of an obscene child”,

Theatre: Harwood’s Dresser is top drawer

November 03, 2016

Ronald Harwood worked with Donald Wolfit for five years, and though The Dresser at Duke of York’s Theatre is not about Wolfit, Harwood acknowledges that the play clearly draws on that experience. Wolfit was the last of the great virtuoso actor-managers, who infamously surrounded himself with inferior actors so that he could shine all the

Theatre: Twee, maybe – but delightfully English

October 20, 2016

La Fille mal gardée at the Royal Opera House sounds very French and a bit naughty. But Frederick Ashton’s ballet could not be more English and pure. Set in bucolic England, it was, at its premiere in 1960, a pleasant antidote to all the kitchen-sink dramas on stage and film. The ballet, pretty and charming,

Theatre: Melodramatic, dated – and utterly brilliant

October 13, 2016

Charles Dickens said on its publication that A Tale of Two Cities was the best story he had written. Not everybody agreed. The novel has never been popular with critics. But it has always been hugely popular with the general reader, ever since its weekly serialisation throughout 1859. In January 1860 the story was on

Theatre: Behold a modern classic in the making

October 06, 2016

The Pulitzer-winning American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks goes back to the Greek tragedies and Homer’s Odyssey to find a format for her play, Father Comes Home From the Wars (parts 1, 2 & 3), which is set during the American Civil War. The main characters have Greek names and there is also a chorus. The artificiality,

Theatre: Old poets fight it out in no man’s land

September 29, 2016

No one who saw John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson in the original production of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land by Peter Hall will ever forget it. Such was their joint success on both sides of the Atlantic that nobody in England touched the play for nearly 20 years. Pinter is always difficult to pin down.

Theatre: Biblical drama sinks to Up Pompeii! level

September 22, 2016

John Wolfson’s The Inn at Lydda, at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, is based on an incident recorded in The Death of Pilate, which can be found in the New Testament Apocrypha. The mortally ill Emperor Tiberius (Stephen Boxer) in Rome hears about a man who is able to heal the sick; he decides to journey to

Theatre: Branagh steps into Olivier’s comic shoes

September 15, 2016

It was the unexpected casting of Laurence Olivier as Archie Rice in John Osborne’s The Entertainer which made its premiere in 1959 so memorable. Here was the foremost classical actor not only cast as a camp, sleazy, fifth-rate music-hall comedian, but also appearing at the Royal Court Theatre, home to all the angry young men.

Theatre: A roundabout return for Priestley’s comedy

September 08, 2016

JB Priestley’s Roundabout had its premiere in Liverpool 1932 and there was a production by Cambridge undergraduates in 1935; and that was it, until Hugh Ross’s present enjoyable revival at Park Theatre, Finsbury. The comedy, very light and typical of its era, is given a quasi-intellectual edge with its facile satire at the expense of

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