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Robert Tanitch

Theatre: Degenerate Art that’s lost its punch
June 09, 2016
Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera is regularly revived worldwide because of Kurt Weill’s mordant, haunting score. Five years after its hugely successful Berlin premiere in 1929 it was officially denounced by the Nazis as a prime example of Degenerate Art. It is fiendishly difficult to recreate the punch it once had. The only time it has
Theatre: An unmissable tour of the borders of sanity
June 02, 2016
Joe Penhall’s award-winning Blue/Orange at the Young Vic is the best play on the London stage and not to be missed. Matthew Xia’s revival confirms a modern classic. The acting is excellent. The setting is a NHS psychiatric hospital. A junior doctor and a senior consultant are battling over a young black African who has a
Theatre: Shaw’s not so daring in a modern setting
May 26, 2016
The Philanderer, one of George Bernard Shaw’s earliest comedies, a cynical, heartless, semi-autobiographical piece, was written in 1893 when its satire on Ibsen and the New Woman was topical. Artistic director Paul Miller at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond stages this four-act version, which Shaw was persuaded to cut at the very first production.
Theatre: Hardly a dream start for Globe director
May 19, 2016
The first Globe Theatre burnt down in 1613 and audiences had to wait a long time, until 1997 in fact, for it to be rebuilt. The whole purpose of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre was for it to be a replica of the Elizabethan theatre and for it to be as close to the original as possible
Theatre: Can’t help lovin’ dat Show Boat
May 12, 2016
Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern’s Show Boat, a milestone in the history of musical theatre, was the first musical to merge a traditional showbiz story with serious drama. Premiered in 1927, it has been revived and revised constantly ever since. The present production at New London Theatre, extremely well sung, directed by Daniel Evans, choreographed
Theatre: Pop-star Faustus hits all the wrong notes
May 05, 2016
Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe’s classic enactment of sin and damnation, seen through the cynical eyes of an atheist, was written in an era when audiences would have taken hell very seriously. Many years ago I saw a production in which hell caught fire and had to be put out by a fire extinguisher, which, while
Theatre: A conflict of duties in colonial Africa
April 28, 2016
Lorraine Hansberry, author of A Raisin in the Sun and the first black and the youngest American to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, was only 34 when she died in 1965. She did not live long enough to finish Les Blancs and her former husband, Robert Nemiroff, had to
Theatre: Extravagant Spall takes care of things
April 21, 2016
The Caretaker, which premiered in 1961 with Donald Pleasence in the lead, was Harold Pinter’s first commercial success and instantly established him as a major playwright. Since then Davies, the dirty old tramp, has been played by such actors as Leonard Rossiter, Warren Mitchell, Patrick Stewart, Michael Gambon and Jonathan Pryce. Gambon was the filthiest
Theatre: The sun never sets on star turn Glenn Close
April 14, 2016
Glenn Close played Norma Desmond on Broadway in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard in 1993 when she was 46 and she won a Tony Award. Twenty-three years on she returns to the role in a semi-staged production by Lonny Price at London Coliseum and she gets the sort of rapturous reception that most actors can
Theatre: Good reason to watch this witty love story
April 07, 2016
Neil LaBute’s plays are normally cruel, violent, cynical and misanthropic; but Reasons to be Happy at Hampstead Theatre is a sequel to Reasons to be Pretty (which was staged at the Almeida by Michael Attenborough in 2011) and is in the same gentle American key. The dialogue, though, is sharp and witty. Attenborough once again
Theatre: A dose of slapstick to relieve the pain
March 31, 2016
The Painkiller at Garrick Theatre is based on Francis Veber’s classic French farce Le Contrat, which premiered in Paris in 1969 and is probably best known in Britain as A Pain in the Ass, the highly successful 1973 film version with Lino Ventura and Jacques Brel. The comedy is set in two adjoining hotel rooms.
Theatre: Horses take the lead in Holy Week
March 24, 2016
Bartabas & Andrés Marín – Golgota, a world touring production which I caught at Sadler’s Wells, is a collaboration between equestrian trainer Bartabas, flamenco dancer Marín and four horses. They echo and respond to each other’s presence. There are not many stage roles for horses these days. I know horses that auditioned for the National
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