★★★★

“refuses to pass judgement, leaving instead a residue of discomfort that invites reflection on where one has turned a blind eye”

A Thing of Beauty confronts head-on a discomfiting question: should artistic brilliance be allowed to exist independently of moral responsibility? Writers Wendy Oberman and Jonathan Lewis have created a gripping drama in which ambition and manipulation battle truth and integrity, and the audience is caught squarely in the firing line.

Set in October 1972, the play imagines an in-depth BBC interview with Leni Riefenstahl. She was a highly-accomplished German filmmaker during the Nazi period. Her revolutionary techniques inspired George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, yet her legacy was permanently over-shadowed by her service to Nazi ideology.

Imogen Stubbs is magnetic in her portrayal of a woman whose charm, vanity and self-justification coexist in uneasy balance. Referring to herself in the third person throughout, Leni simultaneously elevates her achievements and distances herself from the uncomfortable truth they represent. It is hard to feel much sympathy, despite her protestations about a difficult childhood and an all-consuming creative drive. That she achieved such creative dominance within a regime that prescribed domesticity for women adds a further uncomfortable layer, one the play leaves the audience to sit with.

Tony Bell is a convincing Harry, the BBC interviewer who must maintain professional focus whilst simultaneously confronting his own demons. He is, by turns, vulnerable to Leni’s considerable charms and fiercely critical of her motives. The interview becomes an electric psychological duel: intimate, taut and genuinely unsettling.

The ensemble of Tony Boncza, Harry Bradley, Thomas Craig, Sophie McMahon and Harry Rundle provide a compelling dramatic frame; their on-stage presence as waiting crew members sharpens the sense that everyone here has something to conceal. The production’s most pointed observation is that Leni is far from alone in placing ambition (dressed up as art) above everything else.

Juliette Demoulin’s spare set is stripped back to essentials, letting the verbal exchanges carry full weight. Mark Dymock’s lighting shifts with quiet precision between the clinical and the conspiratorial, while Simon Slater’s understated sound design steadily deepens the creeping unease. Director Jonathan Lewis, who also co-wrote the piece, keeps pacing taut throughout, resisting the temptation to over-signpost the ethical questions and allowing their implications to surface with admirable restraint.

That restraint is ultimately the production’s defining strength. A Thing of Beauty refuses to pass judgement, leaving instead a residue of discomfort that invites reflection on where one has turned a blind eye, sidestepped the truth or been complicit. Produced by Denise Silvey for Cahoots Theatre Company, this assured world premiere offers no comfort, only the unsettling recognition that history’s most beautiful images may conceal its most troubling truths.

LAST AND FIRST MEN

The Coronet Theatre

★★½

“visually arresting and conceptually intriguing”

First and Last Men is a contemporary dance work inspired by Olaf Stapledon’s 1930s science-fiction novel of the same name. The production draws heavily from Jóhann Jóhannsson’s film and score, originally created as a cinematic meditation on the novel. Projected behind the performers are stark black-and-white images of vast concrete monuments and drifting mist, while Tilda Swindon’s measured narration recounts the story of humanity two billion years into the future – the last men attempting to communicate across time at the edge of extinction.

The visual and sonic world is undeniably powerful. The monumental structures – Yugoslav spomeniks filmed like relics of a forgotten civilisation – dominate the stage. They are imposing, beautiful, and melancholic. The score swells with a sense of cosmic inevitability, and Swindon’s voice carries intellectual and emotional weight. In many ways, the film and narration are more compelling than the live performance unfolding in front of them.

Adrienne Hart’s Neon Dance brings the last men to life through dancers Fukiko Takase, Kelvin Kilonzo and Aoi Nakamura. In Stapledon’s vision, these future beings possess telepathic abilities and an evolved consciousness. Onstage, however, they appear less like higher forms of life and more like stylised extensions of the backdrop. The costumes by Mikio Sakabe and Ana Rajcevic are simple yet effective, at times resembling moving monuments themselves – sculptural forms that echo the concrete giants on screen. This visual parallel is striking and arguably one of the production’s strongest theatrical ideas.

Yet the choreography (by Adrienne Hart, Makiko Aoyama and the dancers) does not rise to the same level of invention. The movement is repetitive and often feels empty, circling the same gestures without deepening or expanding the narrative. Instead of embodying the epic scale of extinction and evolution, the dancers frequently seem to fill space rather than transform it. The sense of doomsday is established from the outset and remains static throughout. There is little tonal shift, no development, no contrast – only a continuous atmosphere of solemnity.

Despite the dancers’ technical precision and control, the choreography does not add new layers of meaning; it rarely matches the scale or intelligence of the source material. The most affecting moments occur when the movement stills and the audience can fully absorb the film’s haunting imagery and the gravity of the text.

There is ambition here – a bold attempt to translate speculative philosophy into physical form. What remains, however, is a production in which the cinematic elements overshadow the live performance. The monuments linger in the mind; the choreography feels like carefully composed, yet ultimately empty imagery.

First and Last Men is visually arresting and conceptually intriguing, yet it feels static and underdeveloped. For a work about the end of humanity and the vast arc of time, it paradoxically feels emotionally narrow – a beautiful but monotonous meditation that struggles to justify its choreographic presence.

Tag Archives: thespyinthestalls

A THING OF BEAUTY

★★★★

Theatre at the Tabard

A THING OF BEAUTY

Theatre at the Tabard

★★★★

“refuses to pass judgement, leaving instead a residue of discomfort that invites reflection on where one has turned a blind eye”

A THING OF BEAUTY

Theatre at the Tabard

Reviewed on 26th February 2026

by Elizabeth Botsford

Photography by Matt Hunter

A THING OF BEAUTY

A THING OF BEAUTY

A THING OF BEAUTY

LAST AND FIRST MEN

★★½

The Coronet Theatre

LAST AND FIRST MEN

The Coronet Theatre

★★½

“visually arresting and conceptually intriguing”