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Time Out
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Till the Stars Come Down
Packed your fascinator? Rehearsed your most attractive crying face? Well, good; over in Mansfield – by way of the Theatre Royal Haymarket – the wedding of the year is about to take place. Local girl Sylvia (Sinéad Matthews) is marrying Polish lad Marek (Julian Kostov), and the audience, some of whom are sat directly on the stage, are all invited. The ceremony plays out in real time at Beth Steel's Till The Stars Come Down, now running in the West End after debuting at the National Theatre early last year. Director Bijan Sheibani sucks you right into this world through fast-paced dialogue and artfully constructed tableaus. It is heady, hilarious and emotional; the wedding itself might be a car crash, but this imaginative production is anything but. As the lights come up on Samal Blak's set, little of the grandeur associated with getting hitched is visible. There's a huge disco ball hanging overhead, whizzing fragmented stars across the theatre, but this romantic image dissipates when it comes face to face with the realities of the working class family wedding: the electric fan, the TK Maxx shopper, the extension cord. Here, the sublime and the mundane exist in constant opposition; some characters dream aloud about the enormity of space and the universe, while others discuss their greying pubes. Matthews's Sylvia, our scratchy voiced bride, is getting ready for her big day. Buzzing with nervous energy, she is something of a supporting figure to her conversation-dominating sister Hazel (Lucy Black) and their other sibling Maggie (Aisling Loftus) who is back for the wedding after flying the nest for undisclosed reasons. The three sisters constantly oscillate, driving the chatter in turn. Unrealised tension simmers in the air – and that's all before the true liability of the lot, Aunty Carol (a scene-stealing Dorothy Atkinson), rocks up in her rollers. Alongside these hyper-realistic scenes, there are abstract set pieces where rain falls from the ceiling and time freezes still at the touch of Sylvia's fingers. The experience is deliberately disorienting. There's so much going on that Hazel's casual comment about eastern European immigrants taking her husband's job are easily missed. Quickly, they become unignorable. Asked if there will be any Polish traditions in the wedding, Aunty Carol shoots back: 'Well, we're not in Poland,' then adds: 'Not that you'd know.' Initially, xenophobia appears to be the central conflict of the show; it certainly is for Marek, who is deeply frustrated that his wife won't stand up for him against her 'backward and bigoted' family. But secrets have been buried everywhere: wedding drama clichés involving stolen kisses and affairs within the extended family are hinted at in the first act and released in the second, as the dance floor opens with Nelly's 'Hot in Herre' and everyone gets drunk and sloppy. Steel knowingly riffs on these tropes. Some plot lines are fairly predictable, but they're smartly undercut with a final act twist that leaves the audience gasping out loud. Her script is sharp and pacey and gives the funniest lines to the women, who also get the major tragic beats: the tears, the wailing, the clutching. It's a reflection of a community still reeling from the effects of deindustrialisation and the closure of the pits. At least the women can feel something; their husbands, in contrast, are spoken about in the third person and walk around like ghosts when they do arrive. In fact, the only man with any vibrancy is Marek. Bulgarian actor Kostov, who recently starred in The White Lotus and is making his West End debut, is a bright light, and throws himself with gusto into the often embarrassing action Steel's script asks of him. Given the casting of British actor Marc Wootton (and his shifting accent) in the original run was one of the main criticisms made of the show, seeing Kostov shine is a relief as much as it is entertaining. With so many different strands interwoven into the story – and Steel's admirable efforts to fully realise every character – some do get left by the wayside. I particularly found myself wondering about Maggie's past, and that the sisters' widowed father Tony (Alan Williams) was left in stasis with many questions unanswered. But perhaps, as Till The Stars Come Down teaches us, that's life. Tension has a way of coming to the surface whether we like it or not, but the endings aren't always satisfying. Steel's play ends as chaotically as it started, but with that unshakeable sadness now impossible to ignore.
Perth Now
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Sarah Snook has no 'idea' how to turn The Picture of Dorian Gray into a film
Sarah Snook has no "idea'" how to turn her stage version of The Picture of Dorian Gray into a film. The Succession star opened the play - based on the novel of the same name by Oscar Wilde - at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London's West End last year but the show has since transferred to Broadway and she won a Tony Award for the role on Sunday night (08.06.25). Cate Blanchett's production company Dirty Pictures is planning to turn the play into a movie, but Sarah has no idea who they will do it because the stage show is a "a particularly complex piece" of theatre. Sarah was asked about the film version backstage at the Tony Awards in New York, and said: "I have as much idea as you do about where that is." She went on to add: "I don't know how this gets turned into a film. It's a particularly complex piece to do as a theatre show. "I mean, dramaturgically it holds up and I think Kip [the play's director Kip Williams] would be an incredible director for that project." Sarah went on to add it "'would be a dream come true" for her to take part in the film version of the play. She added of the Tony Awards: "I didn't even know Tony season even existed! You end up seeing all of the people who are nominated with you for other shows … It's really nice because you get to meet the person who is creating art at the same time as you are." Sarah previously admitted she had a spooky encounter during the play's run at London's Theatre Royal Haymarket, which has a reputation for being haunted. She told New Yorker magazine: "I do feel like I saw one [a ghost]. I saw somebody get up, and I was like: 'Oh, cool. They're getting up and leaving. They must need to go to the toilet'. "But I look back and they were not there. They were in a very white, kind of Victorian play-dress, a big floofy white dress and a bow. I did ask the people who run the theatre, and they said that it's haunted, but they've never seen that ghost." The Theatre Royal Haymarket is said to be haunted by the ghost of actor/playwright playwright John Baldwin Buckstone, who died in 1879, and actor Sir Patrick Stewart previously claimed to have seen the spook while he was performing in a production of 'Waiting for Godot' with Sir Ian McKellen.
Time Out
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
The Deep Blue Sea
The tried and sometimes true conveyor belt between Bath Theatre Royal to Theatre Royal Haymarket continues rumble on, bringing big old fashioned productions of big old fashioned plays with big name actors. Terence Rattigan's maudlin masterpiece The Deep Blue Sea with Tamsin Greig as tragic heroine Hester Collyer follows in the wake of A View From the Bridge (Dominic West) and The Score (Brian Cox) and lands somewhere between the two. It's never much of a chore to see this play, one of the most well made of the well made plays, with its perfect substructure of unspoken feeling and roiling passion. But it's also a play that summons a long history of brilliant performances. The most recent big one, the National Theatre production in 2016 with Helen McCrory, was pretty great. As for this, it isn't bad at all. Even though there's nothing wrong with the direction by Lindsay Posner (who also did A View From the Bridge in a similarly perfectly good way) or the rundown set by Peter McKintosh, or the day-to-night lighting by Paul Pyant, not much particularly stands out either. It all does the job – all gets out of the way of the play, and maybe that's the best thing. Let the play speak for itself. Tamsin Greig takes on the role of Hester, former wife of a judge. She's now shacked up with a young and sexy test pilot and has tried to kill herself when he forgets her birthday. Across the course of a long career in lighter and comic roles, Grieg has often brought unexpected depth and warmth. Here it's the other way around: it needs depth first and comedy second, and while Greig finds a few shattering moments – and it's great to see her go to some extreme places in her sadness and her ferocity – her Hester lacks unity. She plays every interaction on its own terms: now comic, now tragic, now sharp or desperate. The result is a hundred Hesters rather than one. There isn't a note wrong from Hadley Fraser as roguish Freddy, seducer of Hester, who loves her but makes her miserable and drinks too much. Fraser's got such incredible presence. He drapes himself over the set like he's lived there forever. He's matched by a brilliantly upstanding Nicholas Farrell, Hester's high court judge husband, who offers her a sensible, reasonable and stifling life in high society. And it's a weirdly funny production of a usually sullen play. Selina Cadell finds a laugh in most of her lines as nosy housekeeper Mrs Elton. Posner often comes close to the solidity and quiet excellence of his View From the Bridge of last year, but it's not always sustained. The result is a perfectly decent production of a pretty much perfect play.
Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
The Deep Blue Sea review — Tamsin Greig is terrific, but often inaudible
There are great things in Terence Rattigan's masterpiece about a woman in postwar London who leaves her husband for an unsuitable but exciting ex-RAF man. I just wish we could hear them better. This revival, much praised at the tiny Ustinov theatre in Bath, has virtues aplenty but it hasn't scaled up fully now it is in the grander Theatre Royal Haymarket. So sometimes you think Tamsin Greig is giving a wondrous central turn as a woman paying a stiff price for pursuing passion. And sometimes you long for her to speak up a bit. • Read more theatre reviews, guides and interviews Even in row G of the stalls I was struggling to catch everything, especially for the first of the three acts,
The Guardian
09-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I'm in my early 20s most of the time… totally up for it!': Tamsin Greig on ageing, caring and learning bass guitar
Not many interviews begin with your subject telling you, gently and warmly, how they've mastered being unapproachable. But here is Tamsin Greig, on Zoom in the Donmar Warehouse's rehearsal rooms, telling me how this behaviour begins as soon as she's left the house every morning. 'I get up at 6.30 to walk the dog so that I can get out and be in the air to start turning my words over in my head. People who see me know not to come near me because I'm always muttering to myself.' Then she gets the tube ('a good place to learn my lines'), but admits she gets recognised – unsurprisingly, given her classic roles in so many shows, from Black Books to Green Wing, Episodes to Friday Night Dinner. 'But when I'm not speaking I have quite an angry face' – she raises her eyebrows slightly, impishly, as she says this – 'which I use to my advantage.' This has been Greig's recent routine ahead of co-starring in a radical new play, Backstroke, which opens next weekend at the Donmar. She plays Bo, a woman dealing with work, a struggling daughter and the aftermath of her force-of-nature mother, Beth, having a stroke. Beth is played by fellow TV-to-stage veteran Celia Imrie. 'Obviously, Celia thinks it's incredibly rude that she's been cast as my mother, but that's fair enough because she is eternally youthful,' Greig points out (Imrie is 72 to Greig's 58). Then comes her London run in Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea, which transfers to the Theatre Royal Haymarket from an acclaimed run in Bath last summer (one critic said she 'brilliantly conveys a woman calcified by misery', another that she was 'made for wit'). Then – keep up – she also stars in Happy Valley creator Sally Wainwright's new show for the BBC, Riot Women, about five middle-aged women forming a punk band, showing later this year. She plays Holly Gaskell, a retiring police officer who turns out to be 'rubbish at the bass but good at being in a band'. Greig had to learn to play the instrument for it. How was that? She grins, a little proudly. 'Well, I actually had to act a bit more rubbish than I've become.' She tried to channel Joan Armatrading, and … and … she struggles for a name. 'Come on, brain! What's her name? She's so famous!' The name arrives delicately on her tongue. 'Chrissie Hynde. Honestly. How difficult was it to remember that name when it was so easy to picture her? It'll be interesting to see if any of my lines come out of my mouth at the Donmar … ' Backstroke is another female-dominated production for Greig, with five women on stage and an all-female stage management team ('very, very unusual, and very lovely'). It's influenced by elements of the life of its writer-director, Anna Mackmin, who was brought up in a commune by a formidable woman and with whom she had no clearly defined parent-child relationship. 'I'm dealing with a human being who's very complex and wounded and an incredibly adept survivor,' Greig says. 'From the age of five, she had to develop a means of engaging with the world where she is fully alive but also had to learn to be her own bodyguard.' The play spans the characters' whole lives, including how memory suddenly intrudes in tough times, mixing in filmed sequences behind the actors, which occasionally interact with the script. Greig and Imrie play mother and daughter at different ages without costume or makeup – which means Greig has to act as a child. How does that work? 'What we're discovering is the more I use my voice but just remain faithful to the words that Anna has written, the truer the character is. At one point someone asks, 'How old are you?' And Bo says' – her voice goes softer, more precise – ''I'm pretty close to being six.' Just through the words, I'm that little girl.' Greig's childhood was not particularly privileged. Her father, Eric, who was 60 when she was born, was a stay-at-home dad (Greig said in a 2012 Observer Food Monthly interview that he was 'never able to show affection emotionally or physically', although he did bring her liquidised coq au vin to the hospital when she was seven, in an isolation ward with glandular fever). Her mother, Ann, worked as a secretary, and at one point the family went bankrupt, living in what Greig once called 'a shithole' in Kilburn, north-west London. Still, Greig loved being the middle of three sisters (Dorcas is older, Abigail younger) all born a year apart ('My goodness, we had fun'). She encountered Celia Imrie for the first time with her mother, watching Imrie playing overdramatic shop owner Miss Babs in Victoria Wood's Acorn Antiques. 'My mum was born in Leeds but left as a teenager,' Greig says, 'and then sort of transformed herself into somebody very posh and left behind her working-class roots. So when she watched things like Victoria Wood, you could see that she was smelling a different aroma. There was something there about her memories that I didn't have access to.' Greig's parents died before she was a household name – her mother in 2001, when Greig was filming the second series of Black Books, and her eldest children (of three) were two and one ('it was a very testing time'). Greig is aware that many people of her age are squeezed between caring for elderly parents and their growing children. 'And I am very glad, in a way, that I was able to be there to offer the care that I was able to give in my 30s, because so much is required of you, of your heart and your physicality and your mental agility.' She's passionate about end-of-life care. 'We can't be a fully rounded society without it.' But back to Imrie. She and Greig first crossed paths in real life when they starred in The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel alongside Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Penelope Wilton, staying in the same 'monstrously beautiful hotels – I just basically jumped on the tails of the dames'. Imrie prepared a welcome party for Greig's family (Greig's husband, actor Richard Leaf, to whom she's been married since 1997, and their children) who were due to arrive for a visit while Greig was shooting her scenes. 'She couldn't bear the idea that they were all turning up and I wouldn't be there to greet them, including my children, who were quite little then. I was so moved by her doing that. But that's who she is.' We talk about other things in our lively 40 minutes: how much Greig loved Nick Cave's recent Desert Island Discs ('I'm a real fan … he sees performing as a kind of communion with people … I feel like that with the theatre') and how some children seem frozen at younger ages since the pandemic, while others grew up fast. What age do you feel? 'I'm in my early 20s most of the time. Like, you know, totally up for it! Then I realise, of course, that after lunch I have to have a nanna nap. I mean, literally. At the Donmar, they've had to make sure that there is a room available at lunchtime for me to go and lie down.' Snoozing aside, Greig strikes me as a potential dame, given her stage and theatre credits to date and what's to come. What does she still wish for? 'To do a show on Broadway – which I've come close to a few times – and to let my face be the age that it is.' She loved watching Harriet Walter as Thatcher in the recent Brian and Maggie, she says. 'To look at an actor and think, 'You are so brilliant at what you do, and your face has got so many stories in it.' To see the life! Maybe that's my ambition, just to keep on getting older and older, challenging the industry to keep on employing me.' Backstroke is at the Donmar Warehouse, London WC2, from 15 February to 12 April
