Arifa Akbar

6 days ago | theguardian.com | Arifa Akbar

Stephen Sondheim’s final musical is a passion project in more ways than one. An adaptation of two films by Luis Buñuel, it reflects his lifelong love of cinema. Sondheim began mulling over the idea more than four decades ago (with playwright-director James Lapine) and started working on it almost a decade before he died in 2021. This production’s programme notes speak of its development as a slow process with email exchanges between Sondheim, director Joe Mantello and book writer David Ives.

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Arifa Akbar

The warring Houses of Montague and Capulet are resurrected in the wild west, with the star-crossed lovers in cowboy boots, gingham and Stetsons. Director Sean Holmes’s high concept production might have been preposterous and, initially, the idea speaks louder than the play, but by turns it woos, bewitches and becomes irresistible. Romeo (Rawaed Asde) and his brawling compatriots wear holsters while Tybalt (Calum Callaghan) is referred to as something of a lone ranger.

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Arifa Akbar

Controversies over statues of cultural figureheads have churned in the news in recent years. The repatriation of a fictional 12th-century statue of a Chinese deity, carved in stone, forms the central dispute in Singaporean Joel Tan’s play. The Bodhisattva Guanyin reclines in the “royal ease” pose at one end of a traverse stage, designed by TK Hay, with a combination of screens and mirrors. The drama is formed of 12 distinct scenes, loosely connected around the statue.

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Arifa Akbar

It is not just heads that roll in Shakespeare’s bloodiest drama. Hands and tongues are chopped off and bodies are mutilated until they are mere meat, then cooked and fed to loved ones, as we follow the fortunes of Roman general Titus (Simon Russell Beale) after a triumphant campaign against the Goths.

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Arifa Akbar

Henrik Ibsen’s Icarus-like architect is indubitably the patrician protagonist of his play The Master Builder. The women of that play revolve around him like acolytes, from his obliging wife to an infatuated bookkeeper and, controversially, the romanticised figure of Hilda, who reminds him of “kisses” between them when he was a renowned builder and she just a child. In Lila Raicek’s modern take, his wife – clever, accomplished and angry – is the fulcrum.