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O winged Lady,Like a birdYou scavenge the land.Like a charging stormYou charge,Like a roaring stormYou roar,You thunder in thunder,Snort in rampaging winds.Your feet are continually restless.Carrying your harp of sighs,You breathe out the music of mourning. — from “Hymn to Inanna” by Enheduanna,translated from the Sumerian by Jane Hirshfield PROPHETESS ONE RISKS ANGERING the gods […] More
Some recommendations for visitors and residents who want to get the most from the city’s varied theater scene.This fall’s London theater season promises star vehicles aplenty alongside robust reimaginings of the classics and even a notable song or two. What follows is just a sampling of the city’s abundance of new openings, anticipated revivals and Off West End discoveries — something to keep everyone cozy as the nights draw in.Time-honored classicsBen Whishaw, left, and Lucian Msamati in “Waiting for Godot.”Marc BrennerWaiting For GodotSamuel Beckett’s epoch-defining tragicomedy returns with some frequency to London stages. But I’ve rarely seen it better served than by the dream double-act of Ben Whishaw and Lucian Msamati as those engaging existentialists, Vladimir and Estragon, alongside the no less memorable Jonathan Slinger and Tom Edden as the itinerant Pozzo and Lucky. The director James Macdonald brings the same gift for textual illumination to the production that has distinguished his career over several decades. Runs through Dec. 14 at the Theater Royal, Haymarket.Roots / Look Back in AngerThe Almeida Theater is reviving two English classics, running concurrently, whose kitchen-sink realism ushered in a more urgent, socially conscious school of theater in the 1950s. Billed as the “Angry and Young” season, Arnold Wesker’s “Roots” and John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger” both feature outspoken firebrands trying to make sense of the world. The two productions share a single cast, led by Billy Howle and Morfydd Clark; Diyan Zora and Atri Banerjee direct. Both shows run through Nov. 23 at the Almeida Theater.A scene from “Roots” at the Almeida Theater.Marc Brenner More
As Rufus Norris prepares to leave the London playhouse he has led since 2015, he reflects on his quest to make the theater represent the audience it serves.When Rufus Norris became the director of the National Theater in 2015, he said he had one main aim: to make the playhouse representative of Britain.Almost a decade later and as Norris prepares to leave the role, he said he had made progress toward that goal, especially by prioritizing new works. Many of the theater’s most acclaimed recent productions have centered people of color, including an adaptation of Andrea Levy’s “Small Island,” directed by Norris, about Caribbean immigrants to Britain.On Tuesday, Norris, 59, unveiled a typically diverse final season, including “Inter Alia,” Suzie Miller’s follow-up to her hit legal play “Prima Facie”; Shaan Sahota’s “The Estate,” about a British Asian politician’s downfall; and a revival of Michael Abbensetts’s “Alterations,” about immigrants struggling to establish a tailoring business in 1970s London.Norris will be hoping some of those shows transfer to Broadway, following National Theater hits like “The Lehman Trilogy” and “War Horse.”From left: Simon Russell Beale, Ben Miles and Adam Godley in “The Lehman Trilogy.” Mark DouetIn a recent interview, Norris said the demands of the job had meant he hadn’t found time to reflect on his leadership. But an hourlong exchange gave Norris the opportunity to discuss his work at the National, the playhouse’s changing relationship with New York and his plans to step away from the theater world — at least for a while. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
The duo behind the Broadway hit follow it up with a meta reflection on finding love online that is relatable and fun but lacking narrative drive.In London’s West End, two lonely singles are feeling sorry for themselves. Nancy (Leesa Tulley) and her gay, nonbinary best friend, Oliver (Jo Foster), conduct a two-hour inquest into their romantic failures while quaffing cheap bubbly on a peach-colored couch. At the same time, they bat around an idea for a musical based on these travails, which — you guessed it — turns out to be the musical we’re watching.“Why Am I So Single?” is written by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, the duo behind “Six,” the breakout hit feminist musical about Henry VIII’s wives. Running at the Garrick Theater through Feb. 13, 2025, this unabashedly crowd-pleasing — though ultimately somewhat vacuous — show goes all in on relatability and schmaltz, carrying a peppy message about friendship and self-care.The songs unpack the modern dating experience in a mélange of familiar rock and pop styles. “C U Never” is a catchy tap number about the importance of not getting too hung up on people who ghost you. During “Meet Market,” several members of the supporting cast are wheeled around in pink shopping carts to symbolize the transactional nature of online dating. “Disco Ball” is about being the life of the party while feeling lonely inside, and “Men R Trash” is self-explanatory.In “I Got Off the Plane’” Nancy and Oliver lament their love-hate relationship with the sitcom “Friends,” which they blame for popularizing an unrealistic and heteronormative view of romance — whereupon members of the supporting cast take to the stage in Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer wigs and urge the pair to get over themselves.The show, directed by Moss, has the chaotic, playful energy of a student revue, with lots of amusingly forced rhymes, tenuous puns and self-aware jokes about the metafictional conceit (“Twist my arm and call me expositional”; “before we rebuild the fourth wall …”). There is a heavy reliance on bathos that borders on the formulaic: Whenever characters pour their hearts out in song, another will immediately say something dismissive. After Nancy sings a tender ballad about her dead father — the only genuinely moving song in the show — Oliver quips, “So what you’re saying is, it was the daddy issues after all?”Leesa Tulley, center, as Nancy.Matt CrockettWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
The Crown Prosecution Service said that it had “decided that there is no longer a realistic prospect of conviction.”British prosecutors have dropped a case against Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced movie mogul, just two years after authorizing indecent assault charges against him.In a statement on Thursday, the Crown Prosecution Service said that, “following a review of the evidence,” it had decided to halt the proceedings against Mr. Weinstein.Frank Ferguson, head of the service’s special crime and counterterrorism division, said in the statement that there was “no longer a realistic prospect of conviction.”“We have explained our decision to all parties,” he added.On Thursday, a spokeswoman for the Crown Prosecution Service said in an email that the service would not be giving any further details of the reasoning behind the decision.The case dates to 2022, when British prosecutors authorized two charges against Mr. Weinstein of indecent assault of a woman in London in 1996. Under British law, it is illegal to identify potential victims of sexual assault, even after prosecutors drop a case.At the height of his powers, Mr. Weinstein, now 72, was one of the world’s most important movie producers, widely seen as able to make or break an actor’s career.In 2017, his career went into free fall after The New York Times reported that he had, over the course of nearly three decades, paid off women who had accused him of sexual assault. In the story’s aftermath, prosecutors mounted cases against him in both Britain and the United States.Last year, Mr. Weinstein was sentenced to 16 years in prison after being convicted of rape and sexual assault in California.In April, New York’s highest court overturned Mr. Weinstein’s 2020 felony sex crimes conviction, ruling that the original judge had deprived him of a fair trial. The court said that the original judge should not have let prosecutors call witnesses who said that Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them when their accusations did not form part of the case.In May, Manhattan prosecutors announced they would retry Mr. Weinstein on sex crimes charges and he is currently in the Rikers Island jail complex awaiting that case. More
The three stops in Austria on the pop star’s Eras Tour were canceled after the authorities discovered a terrorist plot targeting the concerts.Taylor Swift said Wednesday that she was devastated by the cancellation of her Eras Tour concerts in Vienna, adding that the terrorist plot that had targeted her shows there had filled her “with a new sense of fear, and a tremendous amount of guilt because so many people had planned on coming.”In an Instagram post celebrating the end of the European leg of her tour, Ms. Swift offered her first public comments about the three derailed shows, which were called off after officials in Austria said they had arrested two men accused of plotting a terrorist attack. One of the men, they said, had recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State online and had focused on the Eras Tour as a potential target.Nearly 200,000 people had been expected to attend the Vienna concerts, which were to start on Aug. 8.In her social media post published on Wednesday, Ms. Swift said she was grateful to the authorities, “because thanks to them, we were grieving concerts and not lives.”“I decided that all of my energy had to go toward helping to protect the nearly half a million people I had coming to see the shows in London,” she said of the next stop on her tour. “My team and I worked hand in hand with stadium staff and British authorities every day in pursuit of that goal, and I want to thank them for everything they did for us.”“Let me be very clear: I am not going to speak about something publicly if I think doing so might provoke those who would want to harm the fans who come to my shows,” she continued. “In cases like this one, ‘silence’ is actually showing restraint, and waiting to express yourself at a time when it’s right to. My priority was finishing our European tour safely, and it is with great relief that I can say we did that.”Thousands of fans who had been eager to spend a few hours with Ms. Swift in Vienna — including many who traveled great distances to see her — shed tears over the canceled concerts. Many others who had planned to see her the following week in London endured anxious days, worrying both about their personal safety and about whether the highlight of their summer would also be called off.But Ms. Swift’s shows went on as planned, a fact that she celebrated in her Instagram post.“All five crowds at Wembley Stadium were bursting with passion, joy, and exuberance,” she said. “The energy in that stadium was like the most giant bear hug from 92,000 people each night, and it brought me back to a place of carefree calm up there.” More
Fans at Wembley Stadium said they trusted British security officials to keep them safe and cheered loudly when the pop star came onstage.When Taylor Swift canceled three concerts in Vienna last week after officials there foiled a terrorist plot, Swifties soon expressed fears about the pop star’s next shows, in London.Would Swift go ahead with the concerts at Wembley Stadium? Given that the pop star once said her “biggest fear” was a terrorist attack at one of her shows, some fans had doubts. Was it even safe to attend?When Swift did not comment on the thwarted attack in Vienna or the upcoming London gigs, fan anxieties only grew.Yet when the singer took the stage on Thursday evening, worry gave way to excitement at the chance to see Swift perform during the European leg of her globe-spanning Eras Tour. As Swift walked onstage singing “It’s been a long time coming” — a refrain from her track “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” — the sold-out crowd cheered deliriously.She then launched into “Cruel Summer.”In the end, despite the interest in the Austrian plot, Swift did not refer to it even obliquely at the London show. Instead, she played an almost identical gig to the others on her Eras Tour, a joyous three-hour-plus spectacle featuring hits, costume changes and, at one point, a fake moss-covered wood cabin. For most of the concert, the 90,000 fans sang along to every word, including when she was joined by Ed Sheeran for an acoustic medley.In interviews before the show, more than a dozen fans, including many from the United States, all said they felt safe attending the event. Kyle Foster — wearing a Kansas City Chiefs jersey like Swift’s partner, Travis Kelce — said he had flown from North Carolina with his partner and two daughters for the show.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
Critics slammed the idea of “restricting audiences on the basis of race,” but at a recent performance, Black spectators praised producers for creating a safe space.Elaine Grant was pleased with the scene unfolding outside the Noël Coward Theater in London on Wednesday night.Unlike most nights at the theater in the West End, there was a sea of majority Black faces laughing and jovially chatting in a line that snaked around the block before a performance of Jeremy O. Harris’s “Slave Play.”Grant, who works in the arts, had organized a group of more than 100 people, mostly Black women, to see the show. “A lot of the people that I work with don’t necessarily go to the theater a lot,” she said, and so it was important for them to be in a space where they could feel safe experiencing a range of emotion.This was a “Black Out” performance, an idea Harris first announced for his play’s Broadway 2019 run, in which he invites Black audience members to attend a specific performance, to experience and discuss art away from the white gaze. Joaquina Kalukango, an actress in the show’s New York run, told the Times in 2020 that she felt on those nights that she was performing to an audience “that fully understood the story and understood where these characters were coming from.”In London, the mood on the theater steps was upbeat and there seemed little concern that when this “Slave Play” transfer — including two Black Out performances — was announced in February, it drew the wrath of some British commentators, and got caught up in ongoing debates over race in British cultural institutions. Even the office of the prime minister at the time, Rishi Sunak, chimed in, saying, “restricting audiences on the basis of race would be wrong and divisive.”Harris responded to the widespread criticism on social media, addressing what he called a “moral panic” among parts of the British public.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
