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An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
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Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Kieron Quirke's rating
Reader rating
Dir: William Oldroyd.
Cast: The Young Vic
Description: William Oldroyd directs Frank McGuiness' adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's portrayal of the darker side of family life.
Trains: Tube: Notting Hill Gate 
Phone: 0207727 9007
Scary stuff: past actions come back to haunt in Ghosts
Syphilis and theatre have always gone together. Shakespeare jokes about it. Chekhov and Shaw campaigned against it. Wilde might have had it. But Ibsen's Ghosts, which is revived splendidly in Anna Mackmin's close-packed and subtly acted production, remains the syphilis play.
Back in the late 1800s, its depiction of that disease scandalised Europe. Nowadays, the shock factor has waned, and we see the play instead for the brilliant, progressive reinvention of tragedy it is.
There are wide-screen TVs larger than the frame of the living room in Lez Brotherston's set, which still manages to suggest an opulent, yet suffocating home in a tiny space. Its owner, Mrs Alving, has given all to prevent her son Osvald turning into the dissolute father she married for show. It proves futile - Osvald's infection with his father's syphilis is a metaphor for the deceits his mother has committed for propriety's sake, which now must return to haunt her.
Niamh Cusack's Mrs Alving is superb: an iron lady with a fluttering heart, whose passion for new, free thinking has been mindfully diverted into kindly, indomitable domestic efficiency. Finbar Lynch as Pastor Manders matches her. His smooth manner and committed piety make us believe this man has been the inspiration for both Alving's dutiful repression and her most destructive passions.
The younger cast don't fare quite as well. Christian Coulson's Oswald has a cold conviction which is interesting, but no remnants of the "joy of life" remain in this supposed Epicurean. Nor can we believe his attraction to Sarah Smart's Regine: too broadly comic. Their later scenes feel less nuanced than the rest, but by then Ibsen's clockwork plotting has us hooked.
• Until 17 Feb (020 7229 0706).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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