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New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
Nicholas de Jongh's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Douglas Hodge.
Cast: Jonathan Pryce, Ann Reid
Description: Douglas Hodge directs Athol Fugard's drama about love, guilt and retribution. Starring Jonathan Pryce and Ann Reid.
Trains: Tube: Covent Garden 
Phone: 0870060 6624
Website: www.donmarwarehouse.com
Incestuous undertones: Dimetos (Jonathan Pryce) and Lydia (Holliday Grainger)
A heavy load of symbols is deposited in Athol Fugard’s Dimetos, which caused spasms of incomprehension, when it premiered in London in 1976. Why, it was asked, had Fugard, whose plays famously dealt with people enduring the inhumanities of apartheid, turned his attentions to an impenetrable, pseudo-Greek tragedy about incestuous desire in some remote, nameless back-water? Was there not something escapist and irrelevant about the writing of Dimetos at a time when the World Community gazed at South Africa and did nothing?
Douglas Hodge’s emotionally fraught revival, in which Jonathan Pryce plays Dimetos with a cryptic, brooding intensity, helps provide partial answers. This elusive play strikes me now as an over-veiled political allegory about liberal inertia or detachment in the face of grim personal and political circumstances. Fugard suggests how some people retreat from the world, shielding themselves from the betrayals and crimes they have perpetrated.
Designer Bunny Christie creates a primitive environment in which it looks as if modern conveniences are unknown. Dimetos, a brilliant engineer who has retired from the world to live with his niece, Lydia, to whom he seems far too close, and Sophia, Anne Reid’s poignant servant who nurses a hopeless, sublimated passion for him. A preludic, groaningly symbolic scene, in which Holliday Grainger’s shrill Lydia rescues a horse trapped in a well, gives way to plainer speaking. When Alex Lanipekun’s Danilo appears, eager to persuade Dimetos that his country needs his vision, the engineer persuades him to stay for reasons that yield catastrophic consequences: I had to avert my eyes from the spectacular, real-seeming horror on stage.
Years later, Danilo having realised unbelievably late how far Dimetos bears responsibility for that catastrophe, returns in an effort to stir his conscience. At this point Lanipekun’s inappropriate performance, delivered in a bellowing rant, contrasts with Pryce’s restrained sense of anguish. But Fugard’s obscure, symbol-laden final scenes, the atmosphere over-clouded by nightmare, mysterious stench and Dimetos’s wild attempts to use his hands to assert his creative power, serve to emphasise how far Fugard’s play is like its hero ploddingly weighed down with symbols and arch poeticisms at the expense of direct engagement with life.
Until 9 May (0870 060 6624).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
An absolute stinker which is shockingly miscast in the younger roles and gives no hope to the more famous actors.
- Joesmith, LONDON
A highly absorbing production, agonizing at times, with a master actor in the lead role. But the play raises more questions than it answers. "Why?"
is the dominant response of the theatregoer. Why did Fugard write it and to what conclusion does he lead you? Sit down afterwards with some similarly puzzled friends and have a discussion. It will be lively.
- Rob Behr, Williamstown, MA USA
