West End Review Round Up
Read reviews for Indian Ink, Paranormal Activity and Christmas Carol Goes Wrong
Supernatural entities, Christmas classics turned on their heads and plays that'll make you think so much you'll have no choice but to pour a mulled wine (or three).
If you fancy something abit different this festive period - here are three of the shows that have got West End critics buzzing!
Indian Ink Reviews
Indian Ink at Hampstead Theatre moves between 1930s India and modern-day England, following celebrated writer Flora Crewe as her time in colonial India - including her complex relationship with a local painter - is pieced together years later by scholars trying to uncover what really happened, and what was left unsaid.
"The first production after a playwright's death is always poignant but, in this case, it is startlingly so: Indian Ink concerns literary posterity. About Flora Crewe, an Edwardian poet who travelled to India, critics get most things wrong, a crassness represented by Eldon Pike, an American academic, editing Crewe's correspondence and planning a biography that Stoppard makes clear will be disastrously false and gossipy. (He was much luckier with Hermione Lee.)" - The Guardian
"Ruby Ashbourne Serkis plays Flora with an accent that could cut diamond think Kiera Knightley but posher Bette Davis eyes and the kind of easy grace that throws back to golden age Hollywood stars. She's breezy, sexually free, with a huge smile. It's a very strong lead performance. While she romanticises India blithe about the brewing tensions of Gandhi's Salt March - painter Nirad Das loves everything English and wants to paint her in an English style." - TimeOut
"With Stoppard's death we have lost a force in theatre that was not only intellectually dazzling and witty but endlessly curious. You can feel his excitement here as he ties the pre-Raphaelites together with the Indian concept of "rasas", tonal schemes uniting all works of art. Or takes a diversion into the impact of Madame Blavatsky and her Theosophical Society on politics in his fictional town of Jummapur. Indian Ink isn't Stoppard's best work, but Kent's pleasing revival may serve as an appetizer for his modern classic, Arcadia, opening at the Old Vic next month. - The Standard
Paranormal Activity Reviews
Paranormal Activity at Ambassadors Theatre brings the cult horror film to the stage, centring on a young couple who move into a new home only to realise they're not alone, as unexplained disturbances escalate into something far more sinister and terrifyingly out of control.
"The script may be perfunctory, and some of it is deeply hammy, but its flaws are forgivable for such a dexterous production, with every technical element ramping up tension and toying with expectations. Every jump scare is earned, every trick embedded in the twisted narrative of this poor, doomed couple. And the fear lingers. When I wake at 3am to a strange light in my bedroom, I pull the duvet tight around my head, refusing to reopen my eyes and repeating to myself that it was just a play." - The Guardian
"There's some pretty jaw-dropping stuff I'd best not even obliquely describe. But on the whole it avoids manipulative jump scares in favour of unnerving moments of rug pulling, where what you assumed was happening in a scene is revealed to be horrifyingly off the mark. And the creepy atmosphere stuff is second to none, from subtle things the play of light reflected from passing vehicles creates the sense of movement in the house at night to full on: it opens in pitch darkness, with Nirvana's Lithium' raging around us, a truly weird experience, elated and suffocating at once." - TimeOut
"Winslow is used in a particularly creepy way, as we begin to distrust everything we're seeing. These tech-savvy ghosts are dab hands at controlling the TV feed and telephone. The experience depends heavily on Gareth Fry's sound design, which creates a bed of unease with blaring shocks at the very top end of West End volume limits. The story works pretty well but it's essentially an engine to spring nasty surprises on the audience. In the best tradition of spooky theatre at this time of year, it sends you out huddling in your coat before you've even left the building." - The Telegraph
Christmas Carol Goes Wrong Reviews
Christmas Carol Goes Wrong at Apollo Theatre sees the well-meaning but hopeless Cornley Drama Society attempt to stage Dickens' festive favourite, with collapsing sets, forgotten lines and escalating disasters turning goodwill and goodwill into glorious mayhem.
"The play within the play upends Charles Dickens's perennial by making Tiny Tim a towering monster and leaving Scrooge even more bitter at the end of the tale. But the backstage story delivers goodwill when megalomaniacal director Chris too cheap to turn the heating on warms to his theatrical companions and vice versa." - The Guardian
"Throughout, the slapstick is expertly handled. Tannahill's Jonathan, as Jacob Marley, ends up dragging a chair, a bed and the hapless Trevor across the stage in his chains. Later, Trevor plays a top-heavy version of the spectre he calls The Ghost of Christmas Who's About to Come, and demolishes the graveyard set. "Who cares about the review?" the cast ask after the curtain has come down on their amateur shambles, and it must be said that Mischief are probably critic proof by now. But for what it's worth, I'm a convert." - The Standard
"Libby Todd's set design and Roberto Surace's costumes are a match for the larger-than-life madness. DiCarlo, who made such a fine job of keeping all the plot lines spinning in the multi-layered Comedy About Spies, is equally accomplished here. It's no easy job to keep a production teetering on the edge of disaster. These actors know how to fail with a flourish." - The Times
