Mert Dilek

Feb 21, 2024 | theartsdesk.com | Mert Dilek

Less than three years after her magnificent Macbeth, Yaël Farber returns to the Almeida with another Shakespeare tragedy. Her take on King Lear (main picture) offers a full-bodied, slow-burn version of this devastating drama, where Danny Sapani’s masterful performance as Lear sears the stage. While bringing a modern-dress aesthetic to Shakespeare’s play, Farber’s production sets great store by a poetic minimalism that foregrounds the expressive powers of her outstanding cast.

Feb 21, 2024 | theartsdesk.com | Mert Dilek

Doom and gloom, we are told, may have abounded in the classical underworld, but Hadestown suggests otherwise. Returning to London five years after its run at the National Theatre, this time with a slew of TonyAwards, this bracing musical proves its mettle as a heart-warming and atmospheric feast of deeply soulful tunes. With music, lyrics, and book by American singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell, Hadestown reimagines familiar tales from mythology through exquisite songs and eloquent stagecraft.

Feb 18, 2024 | thetheatretimes.com | Mert Dilek

A solo performance in theatre may often trap us inside a single dramatic character, taking us deep into their interiority. Or it may zigzag feverishly between an astounding range of figures and plunge us into the vast expanse of a panoramic narrative. A case in point for the latter is Kip Williams’s stage adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which has now opened at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London after a 2020 run at the Sydney Theatre Company.

Feb 4, 2024 | thetheatretimes.com | Mert Dilek

“This play is a lie,” boldly declares the poster of Sam Holcroft’s new play A Mirror, now playing at London’s Trafalgar Theatre after its initial run at the Almeida Theatre last summer. It’s a curt statement, at once provocative and revealing, cutting to the heart of this reflexive drama about theatrical censorship and the politics of playwriting.

Dec 16, 2023 | thetheatretimes.com | Mert Dilek

An American actor, an English director, and a Northern Irish playwright walk into a house in London to start working on a new production. This is not so much the opener of a joke as the tantalizing premise of David Ireland’s play Ulster American. First seen in 2018, this outrageous comedy now receives its belated London premiere in a sleek production directed by Jeremy Herrin and starring the turbo-charged cast of Woody Harrelson, Andy Serkis, and Louisa Harland.