Betrayal, Harold Pinter Theatre review - Tom Hiddleston anchors a bold, brooding revival
Jamie Lloyd locates the radical soul of a classic work
The grand finale of Jamie Lloyd’s remarkable Pinter at the Pinter season is this starry production of one of the writer’s greatest – and certainly most personal – works, inspired by his extramarital affair with Joan Bakewell.
DVD/Blu-ray: The Touch
Bergman's typically individual take on a difficult affair has flashes of vintage brilliance
The touch is not always light here. Swathes of clunking, cliché-ridden English dialogue threaten to make the star-crossed lovers look ridiculous, and one of them (Elliott Gould) can be a wooden actor at times.
Female Parts: Shorts, Hoxton Hall review - women speak out
Adulteress, mother and immigrant tell their stories in three monologues
Hot on the heels of International Women’s Day come three monologues written, directed and produced by women showing at Hoxton Hall. It’s kind of a treat, and kind of not.
Booby's Bay, Finborough Theatre review - a bit fishy
Play about the Cornish housing crisis isn't so swell
Carry on out of London past the Finborough Theatre and you hit the A4. Follow it east as it becomes the M4, take a southern turn at Bristol for the M5 and you’re in the West Country. Bude and Bodmin, Liskeard, St Austell, Padstow, Mousehole, Newquay and Newlyn. Out here are fishing villages, tin mines, granite churches, wide seas, surfers, pixies, low mental health indicators, and a great deal of unemployment.
Julian Barnes: The Only Story review - passion, pain and sorrow in Surrey
Love across the generations, from tennis-club tryst to romantic tragedy
From his debut Metroland, right up to the Man Booker-winning The Sense of an Ending, the prospect of a road not taken has haunted the mild and mediocre narrators of Julian Barnes’s novels. Like Tony Webster in The Sense of an Ending, “average at life; average at truth; morally average”, they tend to prefer, or at least settle for, a comfy seat in the stalls as life’s high dramas unfold in front of them.
Apple Tree Yard, BBC One
Dr Yvonne Carmichael discovers the cost of careless rapture in finely-drawn thriller
Only the final 60 seconds of this first episode of Apple Tree Yard could have been described as a psychological thriller. We know Dr Yvonne Carmichael is in the dock – the genetic scientist was shown handcuffed in a prison van right at the start – but we don’t know what she is supposed to have done. The remaining 55 minutes comprised a familiar tale of middle-class adultery and low-lit longing.
In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, Charing Cross Theatre
Rare Tennessee Williams rakes the marital coals
Was Tennessee Williams breaking rules, or breaking apart when he wrote this 1969 play? A bit of both, probably, and the two main characters of the rarely performed In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel face the same choices.
Love, Art and Rock 'n' Roll, Rambert, Sadler's Wells
Dancers shine in two new works and a rocking old favourite
A good triple bill should have something for everyone, so Rambert have all bases covered with their latest: rare must be the person who likes neither love, nor art, nor rock 'n' roll. In fact, it's a safe bet that most people like all of them, and so last night's programme at Sadler's Wells was something of a crowd-pleaser – no mean feat for an evening with two new works, created for this season and here receiving their London première.
The Scandalous Lady W, BBC Two
Notes on an 18th-century scandal, with visuals dominating over character
What exactly do we expect when a drama opens with the declaration, “This is a true story”? The Scandalous Lady W, based on Hallie Rubenhold’s biography Lady Worsley’s Whim, brought us some unusual 18th century marriage shenanigans that ended in one of the most scandalous court cases of the era. But, despite its central legal scenes, “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” wasn’t the order of the day.