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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
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Nicholas de Jongh's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Howard Davies.
Cast: Ciaran Hinds, Stephanie Jacob, Rory Kinnear, Pamela Merrick, Michelle Dockery
Description: Peter Flannery's adaptation of Nikita Mikhalkov and Rustam Ibragimbekov's screenplay about a Russian revolutionary on the brink of Stalin's Great Purge. Starring Ciaran Hinds, Stephanie Jacob and Rory Kinnear. Directed by Howard Davies.
Trains: Tube/BR: Waterloo 
Phone: 0207452 3000
Website: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk
Looming menace: Ciaran Hinds as the Russian general and Michelle Dockery as his much younger and woebegone wife in the Lyttelton production
Imagine the spectre of Joseph Stalin glowering over some dacha in the countryside, where the long, hot summers of the leisured classes, beloved of Chekhov and Turgenev, are still in vogue as late as 1936. But the Cherry Orchard is over. The three sisters have realised they will never live in Moscow and Uncle Vanya is dead.
The extraordinary fascination of Burnt By The Sun, skilfully adapted for the stage by Peter Flannery from Nikita Mikhalkov’s 1994, Oscar-winning film of the same name, lies in the way it exploits a Chekhovian milieu and fills it with people who behave as if lost in the life of a 19th century estate.
Howard Davies’s production, with the distracting sumptuousness of Vicki Mortimer’s show-off, revolving stage-design for the dacha, makes it feel for the first few moments as if we remain in Chekhov country. Then two low-flying aircraft sweep ominously over the languid scene and we adjust our clocks to the Stalin era.
Mikhalkov and fellow script-writer Rustam Ibragimbekov, with Flannery following on, are fuelled by bitter ironies. They set Burnt By The Sun at the illusory high point of Stalin’s regime in 1936, when his new constitution was proclaimed as the quintessence of democracy in Britain and America. But the dictator’s Great Terror loomed just around the corner, though no one would know until 1992 how many hundreds of innocent thousands were murdered. Flannery shows how Burnt By The Sun’s two principal characters, who stand on opposing political sides, have been caught up, corrupted and destroyed by Stalinism before it has reached its zenith of evil.
As in an Ibsen play, the present catastrophe springs directly from revelations of secrets and betrayals in the past — the political and personal entwined, sexual desire the unacknowledged goad.
Ciaran Hinds’s fiftyish, sturdily assertive General Kotov, decorated hero of the Russian revolution with a Stalinist moustache, offers hospitality in summer to the family of his much younger wife, Maroussia. One morning the past comes rushing into the present. It arrives in the form of Rory Kinnear’s Mitia, Maroussia’s very long-lost lover, whose disguise of long hair, dark glasses and beard is swiftly discarded but leaves concealed the true, terrifying reason for his return.
Davies’s production develops far less of an atmosphere than Mikhalkov’s wonderful film, whose lyricism was slowly undermined by notes of menace, violence and fear. Davies’s style is too theatrically spectacular — complete with a Young Pioneer Band and a staging reliant on the slightly synthetic vivacity of Kotov’s numerous house guests.
Kinnear’s vehement Mitia does not quite bear enough of an anguished or despairing soul to Michelle Dockery’s movingly woe-begone Maroussia, who learns why he vanished from her life. But how could Flannery’s version compare — when the climactic unfurling of the air ship with Stalin’s physiognomy looms like an oppressive giant in the sky. And Davies’s deathly finale, though no match for the original, brings down the hammer-blows of fate with shocking nonchalance.
Burnt By The Sun brings Russian history into riveting close-up.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Rarely do I find myself sofar from the consensus views of the critics but this is one of those occasions and I am forced to ask myself , what am I missing? For me its a 5/10 with a slow first half thats rates as second hand Chekhov and a pacier second hafor sure but one that doesn't achieve the thrilling heights suggested by some reviews. And as has become typical under Nick Hytner's regime there are annoying elements of over theatricality with children carrying flags and meaningless parades across the stage. Nothing wrong with the acting of the central characters at all I just feel its a play that's a lot less than the sum of its parts.
- Neville Harris, London
We saw Burnt by the Sun Monday in previews during our visit to London.
I thought the acting was excellent and the drama crescendoed to a deadly showdown in Act II. Act I did remind me of Chekhov, even the family characters were Chekhovian, longing for a past before the Revolution. BUt Act II was all about Stalin, and I thought it was horrible and true. This is what he did. I thought Kinnear and HInds were excelllent.
- Linda Relias, wilmette, illinois, USA
Although awarded by several critics, I don't think the present production justifies 4 stars. Had the flaws been solved there's no doubt that 5 stars could be achieved.
- Hopefully next time.
- Agnes Dewhurst, LONDON
Utterly disagree with the Standard's review. I found the production clumsy and stagey; the tone too comedic (and too uniform throughout); the script embarrassingly obvious in places (featuring clunkily embarrassing lines like "The NKVD. What, the political police?"). Whereas the final denouement should be a heartbreaking revelation - as in the film - on stage everything had been played for laughs so much (for some inexplicable reason), that the ending seemed unconvincing and left me cold. Ciaran Hinds is wasted for most of the production, hovering in the background while the ensemble players witter interminably. I think this adaptation is a huge misjudgement.
- Louise, London
