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Critic's choice: top 5 plays
By Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard 05.12.06
Top draw: Amy's View
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Felicity Kendal's poignant turn, a horrifying plant and a riveting interview with David Frost are among the current West End treats, says Nicholas de Jongh.
Little Shop of Horrors
Menier Chocolate Factory, SE1
Witty, slick and always eager to entertain, the cultish charms of Little Shop of Horrors are on full display at the Chocolate Factory. The B-movie plot, centred around a flesh-eating plant discovered by shop boy Seymour, is only there to be undermined and the actors assiduously extract giggles from the hoary gags. Sheridan Smith is the audience's favourite, provoking laughs at will as Seymour's ditsy love interest - yet it is the animatronic plant that inevitably dominates the show. (020 7907 7060). Until 25 February. Kieron Quirke
Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks
Haymarket, SW1
This romantic comedy by American playwright Richard Alfieri does just what it says in the title and a bittersweet, little bit extra. Claire Bloom, casts the years aside as lonely American Baptist minister's widow Lily Harrison. She is drawn into the arms and later into the heart of the gay, retired chorus boy, Billy Zane's sardonic, wisecracking Michael Minetti. The unbelievable sunset finale, as the couple dance together, resolves their relationship in a gush of escapist sentimentality that I fear I found quite irresistible. (0870 4000 626).
Booking to 3 March.
Frost/Nixon
Gielgud, W1
Peter Morgan's Frost/Nixon won the Editor's Award at the ES Theatre Awards for its serious-minded excitement and black comedy. Premiered and praised at the Donmar in August, this will-he-admithedunnit has also won a $3.5million deal for the movie version. No wonder. Morgan offers a riveting, psychologically astute dramatisation of the high-wire process by which chat-show host David Frost forced a TV admission from President Nixon that he broke the law and concealed evidence of his his criminality. (0870 950 0915). Until 3 February.
Drunk Enough To Say I Love You?
Royal Court Downstairs, SW1
What shock appeal Caryl Churchill's latest flight into theatrical fantasy generates!
Stephen Dillane impressively plays diffident, charming Jack, as in Union Jack, who becomes sexually captivated by Ty Burrell's rivetting, hunky, fearful Sam, as in America's Uncle Sam. Churchill makes this special relationship of control and submission serve as a scathing analogy and critique of Blair's attitude to America in an astonishing piece of theatre. (020 7565 5000). Until 22 December.
Amy's View
Garrick, W1
With a blast of dramatic irony, Peter Hall's emotionally charged revival of David Hare's Amy's View arrives when the serious West End play is being declared an endangered species. Responding to a similar fear current in the play's Seventies setting, Felicity Kendal's fluttery actress Esme articulates a passionate belief that theatre is no dying art, even though she ceases to find a role in it for years. In Esme's final incarnation as a penniless, lonely actress in 1995, she achieves a sensational poignancy. (0870 890 1104). Booking to 17 March.
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Reader views (1)
Review: Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks.
This play was very good. Billy Zane and Claire Bloom are talented actors and they took you on a journey of friendship with humour and a tinge of sadness. Don't read the reviews/synopses of the show before you see it as it will spoil the twists in the story. Some people might find it a bit slow as only two actors, but I really enjoyed.
- Daniella, Stanmore
