Get us in your inbox

Search

Young Vic

  • Theatre
  • Waterloo
  • Recommended
Young Vic_CREDIT_Philip Vile.jpg
© Philip Vile
Advertising

Time Out says

This edgy Waterloo theatre has a formidable artistic reputation

The Young Vic more than lives up to its name, with its slick modern exterior, buzzing bar, and a forward-looking line-up that makes it feel metaphorically as well as literally miles away from London's fustier West End houses. Under current boss Kwame Kwei-Armah, who cut his teeth on the New York theatre scene, it's thriving, with a renewed focus on connecting with the Southwark community that surrounds it, and on championing works by people of colour.

Kwei-Armah is building on the legacy of the theatre's longtime artistic director David Lan, who stepped down in 2018 after 18 years in the job. During that time, he oversaw a major renovation which created the current box office area from an old butcher's shop (you can still see traces of the original tiles), spruced up the theatre's fully flexible 420-seater auditorium, and added two smaller studio spaces, the Maria and the Clare. And he presided over an eclectic programme with a striking international focus. 

The Young Vic's popular Cut bar and restaurant is perma-busy with crowds drawn by its bright, airy set-up and central location. But it's just the most public-facing part of the theatre's many efforts to get people through its doors. The Taking Part team puts on parallel productions devised by local residents, building on a community focus that's been present from the theatre's earliest days. It started life as a youth-focused offshoot of the National Theatre in 1969, then housed in the Old Vic down the road, and its current breeze-block building was hastily thrown up in 1970. It was only designed to last for five years, but after a full-on refurb and with an impressive artistic legacy to hold onto, it looks all set to last for another half century. 

Details

Address:
66
The Cut
London
SE1 8LZ
Transport:
Tube: Waterloo
Do you own this business?
Sign in & claim business

What’s on

Nachtland

  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Comedy

What would you do if you found an ‘original Hitler’ in your late father’s attic? That’s the essential premise of ‘Nachtland’, and while you suspect an Anglo playwright might have turned in an acerbic but conventional dining room comedy, German writer Marius von Mayenburg has created something more difficult and confrontational than that. It begins with siblings Nicola (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) and Philipp (John Heffernan) bickering over the right to tell their late father’s story. She’s withering and highly strung, he’s blithe and a bit feeble. Their pass-agg back and forth over their deceased dad is fairly innocuous… until Nicola’s husband Fabian (Gunnar Cauthry) finds a painting in the attic, wrapped in brown paper.  Nicola thinks the watercolour of an Austrian church is kitschy rubbish and wants to throw it out. Or she does until they see the artist’s signature - A Hitler - and it becomes obvious who the artist was, something confirmed by Jane Horrocks’s sinister Nazi art dealer Evamaria.  The siblings start to see Euro signs - but Evamaria tells them they must prove the provenance of the painting and its connection to the family if they want to really rake in life-changing sums. So they set about establishing their family’s Nazi connections with aplomb - much to the horror of Philipp’s Jewish wife Judith (Jenna Augen), whose objections to the whole affair are met with withering disdain and low-level antisemitism from Nicola. It’s weirder than all that sounds: things start t

Advertising
You may also like
You may also like
Bestselling Time Out offers