Lyric Hammersmith

Yasmina Reza’s ‘God of Carnage’ is a quintessential ‘00s artefact, up there with MySpace, ‘The Wire’ and the first Strokes album. It’s one of two massive, global hits enjoyed by the French polymath, following on from her gargantuan ‘90s smash ‘Art’. The original, Matthew Warchus-directed, English-language productions of both plays were so of a piece with their eras that neither has had a major revival up to this point (the original ’90s production of ‘Art’ came back a few years ago and felt… dated). I imagine Reza would probably write ‘God of Carnage’ a little differently today. But Nicholai la Barrie’s first revival is a very fair production, that adds a few subtle, modern touches without trying to actually get away from the essence of the writing. Reza’s story concerns two middle-class couples who are meeting to (in theory) politely discuss the fact that the son of Alan (Ariyon Bakare) and Annette (Dinita Gohil) recently used a big stick to knock out a couple of the teeth of the son of Veronica (Freema Agyeman) and Michael (Martin Hutson). It is, in many ways, an exquisitely wrought study in passive aggression. If the couples were a little happier in themselves, the play would end after five minutes. However. Under her ostentatiously cheerful facade, bougie writer Veronica is clearly seething, both at the incident and her feckless husband Michael, whose superficially practical exterior conceals both a craven lack of backbone and a blithe selfishness that has just led to him

Traditionally the Lyric Hammersmith’s panto is the edgiest in town, with comic and former regular villain of the show Vikki Stone going in all guns blazing with 2021’s Boris-bashing ‘Aladdin’. She’s back on writing duties for ‘Cinderella’, the 2023 panto, in which Tilly La Belle Yengo will star as a ‘boss-lady’ Cinders who has her own stall at Shepherd’s Bush Market, where she’s happened upon by a disguides Prince Henry who is instantly smitten. The ensemble includes Olivier-nominated Emmaual Akwafo as Lady Jelly Bottom, following on from his fine turn in last year’s ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’.

This review of the show is from 2014. Raymond Briggs's 'Father Christmas' returns to the Lyric for Christmas 2023, as it does every Christmas. This Lyric Christmas staple brings Raymond Briggs’s ‘Father Christmas’ to enchanting life. The author of ‘The Snowman’ is known for his beautiful depictions of the season – and this adaptation by theatre company Pins and Needles is equally charming. Zoe Squire’s hand-painted set has an old-school appeal to it, complete with gorgeous wooden animal puppets by Max Humphries. Santa’s sleigh is a spectacle: his huge reindeers gallop through the dry ice that slowly fills the stage. And the twinkling fake snow gives a truly chilly atmosphere. In an original twist, Kate Adams performs the music and sound effects live on stage, perched in an attic-style room above the action. She rattles maracas when Father Christmas (Vic Llewellyn) shakes salt on his breakfast, whistles when the kettle boils and becomes a well-spoken radio voice reporting snowy weather. In the spirit of the book it’s based on, Llewellyn – who’s the spitting image of Briggs’s drawing – is a rather grumpy Santa, moaning about the ‘bloomin’ cold’ and ‘bloomin’ chimneys’ as he performs his Christmas duties.  All good, but although you’d hardly expect a complex plot in a play for the under-sixes, the complete lack of storyline means it’s not really going to be that stimulating for accompanying adults and older children. A large section of the play is simply Father Christmas’s morni