Churchill theatre, Bromley James M Cain’s hard-bitten novella gained bleak power on screen but this version, giving Mischa Barton her UK stage debut, loses its flinty edge The West End’s woeful High Noon showed how hard it is to put a western on stage. How about another rugged American genre, the film noir? James M Cain’s cynical, gripping 1936 novella was sharpened for the 1944 movie by director…
James Earl Jones theatre, New York There’s a strong emotional pull to this fact-based story of injustice, but on stage it’s all a little too polite to truly soar If the meat and potatoes of Death of a Salesman comes at too high a ticket cost, one needs venture only a few blocks south and a half-block east to get a (slightly) more affordable version of standard-issue Broadway fare. The Fear of 13,…
Director Ferzan Özpetek captures the loves and lives of a group of seamstresses working on a fictional 18th-century period drama If we are being honest this comedy-drama set in a costume atelier in 1970s Rome is a little light on the comedy, while the drama is decidedly on the melo end of the scale, even a bit absurd at times. But there’s something about it that is irresistible, especially if you…
