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Aspects of Love

There is something off in the tone of Aspects of Love right from the start.

The decision to revive Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical – based on David Garnett’s 1955 novella – about a love triangle in 2023 was Michael Ball’s idea.

Ball – who played Alex in the 1989 production – returns to sing Love Changes Everything, (lyrics by Charles Hart and Don Black) this time as uncle George. He does it nobly.

There are 39 random scenes. At some point through Alex (Jamie Bogoyo) shoots former lover Rose (Laura Pitt-Pulford) in the arm. His uncle (Ball) is more concerned about his Matisse wall art. 

The majority of the book and lyrics are stupefying. At the interval I thought my drink had been spiked.

“I only have one life,”‘ drones one character. Only judderingly to add: “Not two.”

In one bit, the chaotic singing collides with the unspeakable: “George used to say you can have more than one emotion at the same time.”

The actual dialogue seems almost an afterthought, and the actors speak their lines without much confidence that they’re worth saying. And so we’re aware of the performers as performers. They’re not all sure what they’re meant to be conveying. And we’re not either.

The other overriding issue with this toe-curling production is that it borders on misogyny. Grooming is overlooked. It’s grim viewing, obviously.

Theatre is an addictively evil thing, though, so once I’d watched act 1 I knew I’d sit through the lot, just to see if something deeply significant actually happened. It didn’t, obviously.

The second half of Jonathan Kent’s production is scattered – as if it had been added to or subtracted from at random. Everything is spelled out. 

Nothing you think could possibly be worth salvaging from this abomination.

The ones who really stand out in this mess, though, are Pitt Pullford and Bogoyo. But their work doesn’t really hold together here, how could it?

They deserve better.

One of the only other things I thought, though, that really elevated the occasion beyond the sum of its parts was the 13-piece band and Tom Kelly’s lush new orchestrations. Other redeeming moments come thanks partly to John Macfarlane’s design and Jon Clark’s lighting. 

But the set, expensive costumes and people seem to be sitting there on stage, waiting for the unifying magic that never happens.

Leaving the Lyric theatre where I saw Aspects of Love, I felt the same way the women must have when uncle George dropped dead: exhausted and relieved.

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Brokeback Mountain

Yeehaw!

I had an uneasy feeling that maybe it would be better if I didn’t go to see Brokeback Mountain— but, if you’re driven to seek the truth, you’re driven.

The West End is currently overrun with movie musicals and stage adaptations, they serve a useful purpose, because they lead people to see live theatre on which the films are based. Not a bad thing in my book.

The young producers who are pushing their way up don’t want to waste their time considering scripts or new ideas that may not attract stars. For them, too, a good show is a show that makes money.

God forbid it that they should have to sit through the whole thing.

But when you see a stage show after seeing the film, your mind is saturated with the actors (Jake Gyllenhaal & Heath Ledger in this instance) and the imagery, and you tend to view it in terms of the movie, ignoring characters and complexities that were not included in it, because they are not as vivid.

This 90 minute stage adaptation is directed by Jonathan Butterell, with a functional script by Ashley Robinson.

Anyway, Young cowboys Jack Twist (Mike Faist) and Ennis Del Mar (Lucas Hedges) meet in the early 1960s when they are hired to tend a huge flock of sheep up on Brokeback Mountain.

They begin a physical affair, but then go their separate ways. Both marry women. When they cross paths four years later, they resume their relationship behind their wives’ backs. Ugh.

Brokeback Mountain, here a memory play with songs, features a live band who perform throughout. Eddi Reader, perched on a stool, delivers these mediocre bluegrass numbers by Dan Gillespie Sells. 

On the one hand, it’s lightweight, and too stifled to be boring. On the other, it’s efficient and visually engaging.

But the colour imagery of Tom Pye’s set and design is so muted that I regretted the need to look at the older Ennis (Paul Hickey) haunting the proceedings. It took precious time away from the other two’s complex performances, their hint of something passive, brooding and repressed.

Technically, the production is slovenly, and the in-the-round staging at the clinical 602 seat sohoplace doesn’t always work. There are totally dead spots in Butterell’s direction. And I was sat by the bed.

There are, however, marvelous actors here, and now and then almost all of them demonstrate how wonderful they can be, but they can’t sustain their roles or blend them without the guidance of the director, because in a show only the director, finally, can be responsible for the coming together of the piece.

Add to that, young and handsome Faist who delivers the famous speech “I wish I knew how to quit you” with raw emotion. He is a remarkably intelligent casting selection for Jack. Faist, fortunately, can wear white pants and suggest splendour without falling into the narcissistic athleticism that juveniles so often mistake for grace.

I suppose it’s a bit crude to say there isn’t enough gay sex. But we do get a quick shadow fumble of belts and zippers in a tent. Apart from one tender embrace, the show mostly left me cold.

There is a chemistry void. Still, it’s a great play for people who don’t like plays.

At worst, Brokeback Mountain becomes a desolate souvenir of the movie, an extended reminiscence.

Brokeback Mountain runs at @sohoplace, London, until 12 August

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Oklahoma! – Is the West End Ready For It?

Dream Baby Dream

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first ever musical Oklahoma! is 80 years old.

Daniel Fish and Jordan Fein’s staggeringly postmodern Broadway production, recently seen at the Young Vic, is out to test you, the house lights remain on most of the time.

Basically an anti-musical that just won two Olivier Awards.

The gorgeous re-orchestrations keeps the reworked show moving at an exhilarating canter, and the aesthetic is an intelligent treat. Panache is the pervading motif of this show, which segues into deadpan indie territory.

There is no doubt that Mr. Fish possesses a distinctive sensibility and a consistent visual style, and that instead of striking out in new directions, he tends to embroider and elaborate on familiar themes and motifs. Fish’s style may be high kitsch but the story he is reinventing is dark, elegiac and back to basics.

Throughout, we are in the hands of this ferociously talented cast; we can never relax. This dark production makes a marvelous tribute to a classic musical, turning its horrors into a series of sexual jokes and mischievous gestures. 

You can call this intellectual entertainment if you like. You can also think of it as letting the songs speak for themselves.

Arthur Darvill and Anoushka Lewis give this show about a love triangle a good, fast and raucous spirit in a fresh revival that perfectly executes its sombre and upbeat elements. It’s about warmth and territory: “Don’t take my arm too much / Don’t keep your hand in mine.”

Olivier Award winning Darvill is on gloriously wild form as cowboy Curly. On the surface there is a lot more comedy, and sexual tension. He makes it very clear that the nostalgic hankering for showtunes cannot be trusted.

This musical has nothing to do with the art of entertainment, but it has a great deal to do with the craft of art and acting, and the pleasures of performance – Patrick Vaill’s creation of outsider Jud Fry is compelling. And maybe it’s all just too good for the West End.

But those in the mood for a slick, ambitious and unnerving extravaganza can swoon and weep and giggle, too.

‘Dream Baby Dream’ emblazons the glittering T-shirt of the solo dancer during the dream ballet – closer to a nightmare. Cowboy boots drop from the ceiling ad-hoc. Dance is crucial to the show. There are two extended blackouts and stylised video projections among the woodwork.

Playwright David Hare reckons West End musicals are “strangling everything in their path”, and has said it is a “crushing defeat” to have Wyndham’s Theatre without a play. Well, I disagree.


In 2022 I called this Oklahoma! contentious. Now, though, in 2023 and at a plywood layered Wyndham’s, I declare it a deeply pleasurable immersion.

Oklahoma! runs at Wyndhams Theatre, until September 2

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Guys and Dolls, Bridge theatre – buckets of fun

Critic Kenneth Tynan described Guys and Dolls as “the Beggar’s Opera of Broadway”, which articulates how earnestly this least earnest of musicals is, and should be, taken. 

Frank Loesser’s legendary show may be a classic Broadway fairytale, but here it is, reimagined in a radically immersive production that is full of fun and intimate detail. (make sure you grab a pretzel and beer pre-show) 

So much of this perfectly calibrated machine hits the mark. 

Even the overture, played with gusto by the 14-piece swing band under Tom Brady’s baton, creates a sense of anticipatory excitement.

From the beginning, the delightful show just pulls you in. Everything is bursting with energy and full of panache. It’s fresh minted but old school and owes much to Arlene Phillips smashing choreography. It animates every scene, it’s exquisitely put together.

I especially liked Daniel Mays as crumpled and charming Nathan Detroit and Marisha Wallace a sizzling Miss Adelaide, ‘the well-known fiancée’. 

Wallace makes the often twee ‘Bushel and a Peck’ a raunchy strip tease – with carrots. As a performer, she has a special kind of chicness that takes the form of haste; she’s always ahead of everybody, and this snappy beat – this responsiveness – makes her more exciting to watch, as she was in the Young Vic’s Oklahoma! It is her show.

Elsewhere, Sister Sarah (Celinde Schoenmaker), falls hard for the smooth-talking gambler, Sky Masterson (Andrew Richardson) and they are compelling. 

As for the remainder of this large cast, they dance and sing themselves right into the top league of quality musical performances. Backed up with stunning arrangements and an expert technical team, dressed as New York cops, the actors and musicians really do justice to this outstanding score.

Powered by Bunny Christie’s effective bygone orange and scarlet 1950s in-the-round aesthetic, scenes are staged on hydraulic platforms that shift around a standing audience. There’s seating if you prefer. Stagehands jostle in the neon glow, guided by the gorgeous music, while the audience is swept along. It’s such a lifter. 

The Bridge theatre’s Guys and Dolls restored my faith in musical theatre. It’s a pure emotional high, and you don’t come down when the show is over. None of the big numbers disappoint, from the thrilling dancing of ‘Luck Be a Lady’ to an especially gold rendition of ‘Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat’ led by Cedric Neal.

Hytner’s production is a show that you can’t get out of your system.

I for one can’t wait to go again. 

Guys and Dolls

This review is dedicated to Bridge theatre PR Janine Shalom. Was she really that exacting? Yes. But she was able to laugh at herself, and I very much admired her for that.

Guys & Dolls is at the Bridge, London, until 2 September

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Shirley Valentine Proves Sheridan Smith Is Our Funniest Star

“I’m going to Greece for the sex — sex for breakfast, sex for dinner, sex for tea and sex for supper!” shrieks Sheridan Smith as Shirley Valentine in this knowingly playful revival.

The same age as Shirley, Smith performs this midlife monologue with heart-catching charm (“It’s like theMiddle East, there are no solutions”) and this classy production exhibits real affection. Smith is disarmingly good.

Sheridan Smith as Shirley Valentine

Like a wonky Samuel Beckett character, Shirley’s most responsive confidante is ‘wall’. And later a rock.

In these circumstances, any change could only be an improvement. Things really get going towards the end of act 1 as she slams the door on her marriage and sets out into the future.

Willy Russell, author of Educating Rita and Blood Brothers, once said of the latter that it was for people who don’t like musicals. Shirley Valentine is a play for people who don’t like plays, I think.

It’s entirely engaging and brilliant.

Anyway, fizzing Shirley heads for Greece where she blossoms like a flower in the sun, always playing directly to gallery. A lovely long bask in Smith’s maturing talent.

Structurally, this play is pretty much a music hall stand-up, directed with efficiency by Matthew Dunster. His production shrewdly offsets Paul Wills’ monochrome kitchen designs with pastel costumes and gorgeous beams of Mediterranean lighting designs by Lucy Carter. 

Fortunately, Smith more than delivers the goods in this swift-moving show about a woman who catches a glimpse of the life she could be living. Playfully cooking chips and egg, Shirley reveals her innermost thoughts to us, thereby endearing herself artlessly to the audience.

“Why do we get all these feelings and dreams and thoughts if they can’t be used?”, Smith says out loud – the power lies in its honesty.

Shirley’s ability to transcend the limitations of the class system is a camp joy to behold: as she conclusively tells us at the play’s end, she is now free to make her own life choices. Of course, women have moved on since it was written. Today, they know they have choices but that was only dawning on people like Shirley back then.

Reviews have been correctly brilliant. An encouraging sign that we as a community can accept the fact that they don’t make ‘em like they used to. Is this what civilised society looks like? Perhaps.

It seems to me that Russell is a writer of genuine nobility, with a rare gift and wit for humanity. (Although The Stage did label the production ‘well-worn’, but Smith is quite literally above average when it comes to the whole being-a- performer and transcending the material thing, so I’m not sure if this really proves whatever point it is I’m trying to make.)

West End Producer David Pugh’s production is a love letter to live theatre – breaking the Duke Of York’s box office record for advance bookings totalling £4million in the process – and entertaining as hell.

During act 2 on the opening night, Smith accidentally knocked a wine glass prop onto the stage.

SMASH.

Her knowing composure, and ability to stay in character during the hiccup, was astonishing reminding everyone she is, by a distance, the funniest actor in the West End right now.

“Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

And if she hadn’t been awarded an OBE already, I’d be starting a petition.

Shirley Valentine runs at the Duke Of York’s Theatre, London until 3 June 2023.

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A Streetcar Named Desire is everything you want Theatre to be

Mescal, Credit…Marc Brenner


First things first, Paul Mescal is tremendous. He makes bully Stanley Kowalski terrifying yet sensitive, while Anjana Vasan as his wife Stella is magnificent – – blind to his brutality.

Kowalski is the epitome of toxic masculinity, a character devoid of empathy and kindness.

Alas, blue-collar Stanley sees that the unexpected sister-in-law Blanche DuBois is not what she appears to be, and sets out to destroy her. Patsy Ferran excels as the disintegrating dame in director Rebecca Frecknall’s grand production of the 1947 Tennessee Williams play. 

Ferran who stepped in to play Blanche last month when Lydia Wilson withdrew due to an injury, is completely mesmerising.

Madeleine Girling’s empty raised platform, under Lee Curran’s lighting, makes the in-the-round battle for territory fully absorbing. Frecknall honours Williams in not making it easy to take sides.

This seriously unsettling production with few props barrels along: the furious jazz drum score (designed by Peter Rice) sometimes becomes intrusive and occasionally makes the dialogue hard to hear.  

But on the whole the nerve jangling a capella singing, percussion and symphonic swells work to the play’s advantage: they punctuate Stanley’s rancour and Blanches downward spiral. 

As Blanche loses first her dignity and then her mind, an audience’s emotions is left in shreds. I wept as Blanche walked from the auditorium. 

This multi-faceted show lasts around three hours, but there isn’t a moment when the drink-fuelled tension drops or focus of the ensemble lapses.

Pasty Ferran as Blanche

The Almeida’s A Streetcar Named Desire – the play’s fifth major UK revival in the last 20 years – is everything you want theatre to be: vital, challenging, intellectually alive, visually stunning, emotionally affecting.

Yet my memories of this spiky production will be of lean, sexy and pitch perfect Mescal who roars like a goaded boar – “I’m king around here.” He mimicks a tiger, in the infamous show-down scene

It’s a savage tour de force not only from Mescal and Ferran but everyone involved, and awards will follow: a west end transfer has been announced. 

So if you haven’t got a ticket, try relying on the kindness of strangers.

A Streetcar Named Desire runs at the Almeida, London, until 4 February.

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Dolly Parton’s Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol: A Festive Fiasco (bring wine)

In one of the more camp events to hit the London theatre scene this Christmas – which is saying something when Ian McKellen is in panto – Dolly Parton arrives at the Southbank with her Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol.

It’s a story we all know but this time set in Tennessee, Dolly’s much-loved mountain home, with as much ‘rootin’ and ‘tootin’ as you can shake your jingle bells at. The set and staging is beautiful, and the songs (though there aren’t many, it’s just the same handful repeated for the most part) are toe-tappingly pleasing and delivered with great gusto by a cast eager to please.

Beyond the pleasantries though, this show is not good. It is, in fact, actively bad. It is the Hallmark Movie of festive theatre productions. Despite everyone’s commitment to having a good time, this has more rough edges than Scrooge has humbugs – the accents are all over the place, the choreography is pedestrian, and the whole thing could be about half an hour shorter.

It must be said there are some wonderful turns, the acting is upbeat, and Olivier award-winner George Maguire’s flamboyant turn as Jacob Marley is a stand-out portrayal. The cast presents itself with an emphatic and infectious glee, and there are plenty of chuckles along the way.

Often, though, the story it’s trying to tell doesn’t match up with what the rest of your senses are telling you. Everyone’s dying, everyone is poor, Scrooge’s past present and future are bleak, but all of this will fly over your head when delivered with whatever darn-tooting accent has been chosen for this particular line.

At one point we were told that seven people had died and the US Army had been brought in, which almost gave the audience whiplash as they tried to marry it with the non-stop hoedown the line was sandwiched between.

“It’s two o’clock, the clock has just struck two,” says Scrooge, in just one example of a piece simultaneously over and underwritten as it tries to slam together a Dickens classic and a Parton playlist. At one point we find Ebeneezer speaking to a violin in a way one would converse with a clanger (this was the ghost of Christmas Future). I don’t know either, nobody in the audience did.

None of it works. It has the air of a fever dream. But at the heart of this ‘Christmas Carol’ message is that of love and goodwill to all men. It’s a goodwill it asks of its audience, and one it gleefully receives. It’s terrible, and yet I wholeheartedly loved it in spite of its flaws, and if that’s not the true meaning of Christmas I don’t know what is.

Ollie Cole is a journalist and broadcaster based in London. His writing credits include The Stage, Secret London, The Times, KentOnline & EachOther.

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My Neighbour Totoro is profound and inventive

To the Barbican, for My Neighbour Totoro. 

Not since Life of Pi, have I fell in love with a show so unconditionally.

My Neighbour Totoro Photo by Manuel Harlan

The RSC’s completely stunning stage version of the 1988 Japanese animated fantasy film has smashed box office records – eloquent, profound, and moving, My Neighbour Totoro benefits from wonderful music by Joe Hisaishi that says more than words ever could.

Phelim McDermott, who divides his career between opera and theatre, has pitched his production somewhere between a playful musical, a divine comedy, and a metaphysical drama. The plot centres 10-year-old Satsuki and her 4-year-old sister, Mei, in 1950s Japan befriending forest spirits. Then crisis comes as the children’s mother falls gravely ill, and all of a sudden we’re not in Kansas anymore.

Reworked for the stage by Tom Morton-Smith, here we see emotions form the fundamental arc of all narrative life. This is a production that embraces sadness and doubt.

My Neighbour Totoro Photo by Manuel Harlan

As for the puppets, designed by Basil Twist, they are the real pull of a show that broke the Barbican box-office records for ticket sales in a single day, surpassing the set by Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet.

The inflatable Cat-Bus, meanwhile, is a huge glowing feline that floats through the set’s trees with supernatural grace. It’s as bizarre, imaginative, and authentically psychedelic as anything produced in mainstream theatre. I loved the chickens and the Soot Sprites.

Just as the sensational screen to stage adaptation of Life of Pi, so this show uses puppets and drilled ensemble storytelling to stunning effect, all on Tom Pye’s malleable set that shifts scenes with effortlessness grace.

Of course, it’s easy to become blasé about the visual brilliance, both technical and artistic, of RSC’s output, but Totoro really is a treat for the eyes. Formidably inventive, My Neighbour Totoro hits an elusive sweet spot in terms of appealing to children and adults alike. 

The show has adapted perfectly well to the Barbican stage, but, in essence, it signifies a return to the Cirque De Soleil appetite for spectacle. There is a stunning moment that celebrates the British East and Southeast Asian cast representation at the end during the joyous curtain call.

My Neighbour Totoro Photo by Manuel Harlan

Make no mistake, the artistry and insight will shine on any stage; West End, New York or Hong Kong. Don’t bet against it returning to the Barbican next year.

Overall, this is a captivating world you won’t want to come home from, its beauty, warmth and ambition are panoramic.

I took my Godmother who had tears of joy streaming down her face as we exited the venue.

I may be late to the party, but I now have no hesitation in declaring myself a fully paid-up Totoro fan.

Grab a return or await the inevitable transfer.

At the Barbican, London, until 21 January

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Into The Woods, Theatre Royal Bath: be careful what you wish for

“‘Horror! Shame! Disgrace!’ laughs Terry.” runs the programme note asking what co-directors Terry Gilliam and Leah Hausman want audiences to take away from Into The Woods in Bath. 

Mm. 

The cast of Into the Woods at Theatre Royal Bath. Photo: Marc Brenner

Some evenings at the theatre make an instant impact, others lurk in your unconscious and won’t go away.

As you may recall, last year the Old Vic cancelled Gilliam’s show following unrest (he’d made contentious comments about Netflix special by comedian Dave Chappelle and the #MeToo movement) about its original decision to programme the production. 

During the pandemic, Theatre Royal Bath agreed to re-home the production.

Terry Gilliam & Leah Hausman on stage with the cast of Into The Woods

In that context, this disquieting revival becomes a riposte. With a cast of 23, the macabre musical is almost too vast for Bath’s proscenium, but it wittily (and pertinently) blends the carnivalesque and the gothic.

Anyway, in the first half of co-director’s Gilliam’s and Hausman’s slippery production, a childless couple go on a quest to lift a curse placed by a witch (Nicola Hughes). We encounter as Red Ridinghood (Lauren Conroy), Cinderella (Audrey Brisson) Jack of the Beanstalk (Barney Wilkinson), Rapunzel (Maria Conneely) and of course the Baker (Rhashan Stone) and his wife (Alex Young)– all of whom seem emotionally damaged. And even The Mysterious Man (Julian Bleach) can only raise a snarl.

In the superior second half, an unforgiving giantess inflicts mayhem on the fairy-tale community, whose survivors realise self-discovery. There’s magic in the air around Young as the childless Baker’s Wife and superb Brisson as Cinderella – they are the key to what makes this evening so beguiling, I think. 

Into the Woods at Theatre Royal Bath. Photo: Marc Brenner

Interestingly, Sondheim saw the richly atmospheric designs before he died and is said to have wholly approved. This surreal staging ingeniously mashes up the vividly dark and the popular.

Ingenious use is made of designer Jon Bausor’s Victorian toy theatre creation: a sinister cuckoo sits above the curtain, a large chicken with “Made in China” on its thigh lays a golden egg, a massive pocket watch drops from the sky, counting down hours to undo the curse. 

Into the Woods at Theatre Royal Bath. Photo: Marc Brenner

Elsewhere, Will Duke’s opulent video designs compliment the storytelling effortlessly. The ensemble is drilled. The singing is good.

It’s a heady mix: political, playful and profound.

Gilliam and his co-director Hausman make us unsure if we are to care about the characters, or if it is all just for a laugh – there is a lot of mugging off – and this can occasionally be at the expense of the more melancholy numbers. 

Furthermore, too often this rollicking production mistakes the overwrought for genuine emotion. You never really emotionally connect with any of the material. Well, except for Milky White – Jack’s bug-eyed pantomime cow. 

Still, it’s a dreamlike evening defiantly served not just by its leads but the entire top-notch, shape-shifting ensemble and a small but perfectly formed 10-piece band.

Into the Woods at Theatre Royal Bath. Photo: Marc Brenner

So, transfer Into The Woods? Only if it comes with this warning out front: ‘be careful what you wish for’.  

Into The Woods runs until 10 September at Theatre Royal Bath. 

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Review: Oklahoma! — beguiling, brave & occasionally contentious

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1943 musical is no cinch to sell to a modern audience. So fair play to Daniel Fish and Jordan Fein’s stirring Tony-winning production for shooting for something new.

Oklahoma! Photo credit: Marc Brenner

It does so by bringing bring to the stage a most wonderful selection of songs; it does so in a stark and dynamic version and an ending that needed special negotiations with the Rodgers and Hammerstein estate. 

This is a modern, edgy and disquieting take that injects adventure and sexuality into a classic musical, making it fresh-minted.

Yet, in some ways, not everything works. Some artistic choices are obtrusive and clunky. No overture?

Still, the result is a beguiling, brave and occasionally contentious 3 hours of flying corn, racial tension and lust. Lots of lust. 

Using Daniel Kluger’s plucky arrangements, the nimble 7-piece band keep things ticking over. There’s stunning dance and startling close-up video projection work.

Oklahoma! photo: Marc Brenner

Then there is the design, or rather the anti-design, by Laura Jellinek and Grace Laubacher. They set everything in a sort of sun-soaked village hall with trestle tables and the audience traverse on two sides. There is light – a lot of light. And then sudden darkness. 

For her part, lead cow girl Anoushka Lucas is a star. Her Laurey, stunning to watch is torn between guitar wielding Curly (Arthur Darvill) and shy Jud (Patrick Vaill). 

While containing the giggling frisky Ado Annie (Marisha Wallace), the “girl who cain’t say no”, tears the roof off the Young Vic with her number. 

The Oklahoma! company

Having said all that, this revisionist production is a mixed blessing, but it is a masterful reinvention that should win new fans. The American Dream wins, but at what price?

The Young Vic continues to be an essential theatrical destination.

At the Young Vic, London, until 25 June

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