Game of Thrones' Natalie Dormer is spellbinding as Anna Karenina

Natalie Dormer 's ability to combine fire and ice, nestling strong emotions within an impassive demeanour, is glimpsed to spellbinding effect in this period-dressed staging of Tolstoy's 1878 masterpiece Anna Karenina. The Game of Thrones star's transfixing turn as the titular heroine, the wife of a government official who risks everything by falling for the wealthy army officer Vronsky – played in this version, directed and adapted by Phillip Breen, by Seamus Dillane – is reason enough to catch the Russian classic on the Chichester main-stage this summer. But Breen's fleet, bustling approach – turning a heavyweight tome into a near three-hour whirl of incidents – risks upstaging its strong cast; the momentum becomes a distraction in itself.
Tolstoy's epic affords a rich, sweeping view of Russian society on the cusp of modernity, saliently taking in the philosophical and reformist concerns of the landowner Levin (well played here by Dormer's real-life partner David Oakes). Yet on paper and in this production, it's still dominated by the impetuous Anna.
It's ideal casting for Dormer. On screen, she has excelled at women forging their own path in patriarchal societies (Anne Boleyn in The Tudors, Margaery Tyrell in Game of Thrones). And her Anna is forceful but vulnerable: she drips disdain for her dully respectable husband (Tomiwa Edun's Karenin) but stirs our compassion in making a clandestine visit to the young son she has been forbidden from seeing.
She could triumph as one of Ibsen's heroines – the miserably married Hedda Gabler, or the restive then fugitive Nora in A Doll's House. Breen encourages these Ibsen-oriented thoughts with Max Jones's cluttered design which suggests a child's nursery invaded by perturbing dreams.
Tolstoy's famous opening line – 'All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way' – has made it into the final cut but the script often feels like a galloping resume, with the dialogue inclining towards declaimed soundbites. Naomi Sheldon's Dolly (Anna's unhappy, cheated-on sister-in-law), left aggrieved and exhausted by the demands of child-bearing, even vents a modern explosion of expletives.
The propulsive and cursory approach leaves the novel's profound and wry psychological interiority on the shelf. No sooner has a milieu been created than it's disassembled. Paddy Cunneen's pleasing compositions, performed by three Japanese musicians, add to the kaleidoscope of moods, with wistful waltzes, nagging strings and accordion wheezes. A train-whistle screech becomes a doomy motif too.
Amid the teeming theatricality, Seamus Dillane (son of Stephen, another Game of Thrones alumnus) doesn't get enough chance to smoulder as Anna's seducer Vronsky. Instead of going to bed, the pair chastely paw at each other upright, the jilted Karenin forming part of the tableau.
Elsewhere, amid the ensemble lurks Les Dennis, whose comic skills are harnessed to play a garrulous old servant. At one point he gamely simulates a carriage ride using a rocking-horse. The ostentatious device indirectly sums up an uneven evening that strives to blend accessibility with dashes of avant-gardism. Laudably ambitious, but over-loaded.

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Sky News

40 minutes ago

• Sky News

From niche to a billion pound industry: How immersive events have taken over

While cinemas are struggling and London's West End has witnessed a significant escalation in ticket prices, creatives behind immersive experiences say their sector is experiencing "a gold rush moment". From shows built around obvious fan bases - such as Mamma Mia! The Party - to those working with established intellectual property, including Squid Game: The Experience, the UK has proven to be a world leader when it comes shows that make audiences feel part of the action, rather than just observers. Little Lion Entertainment are the team behind two shows currently running in the UK: Pac-Man Live in Manchester and the Crystal Maze Live in London. Its CEO Tom Lionetti told Sky News: "There has been a real boom in the experience economy… It kind of feels like a bit of a gold rush moment in this industry. "It's not nascent anymore, it really is a big industry and it's getting bigger. "West End theatre is incredibly expensive at the moment and even cinema can be expensive for what it is, so I think it's about caring about the experience … you've got to consider value for money these days." Their Crystal Maze show challenges ticketholders to climb through tunnels and collect crystals just like contestants on the '90s programme. And it's one of the longest-running immersive shows in the world, still going strong in London 15 years after the concept was first staged. "The genesis really was this idea of breaking the fourth wall," Lionetti says. "I was an actor and I come from a theatre background, but what we were really intrigued with was giving people agency so you become the star of the show." Last year, according to the Gensler Research Institute's 2025 Immersive Entertainment & Culture Industry Report, the global market for immersive entertainment was valued at £98bn - and it's projected to reach £351bn by 2030. Despite times being financially tough post-pandemic, while cinemas have been struggling to put bums on seats, the continued popularity of experience events could indicate consumers are being a little more choosy about what they spend their hard-earned wages on. Our eagerness to show off on social media could also account for some of what's driving the boom, as well as the isolating nature of how technology-dependant we've become. As Secret Cinema's senior creative director, Matt Costain, explains: "Whether it's competitive socialising or immersive experiences, people are look for something that offers them more… and this is an example of an activity where people can come together and have a sense of community." Secret Cinema - which combines live performance and film screenings - has been staging events for 15 years now. In that time, they've partnered with major studios from Marvel to Netflix. Their latest offering will run from August see them bring Grease's Rydell High to life. Costain says: "When we first started this was niche, film fans who wanted to dress up and keep a secret… but immersive has moved mainstream and we've found ourselves one of two or three companies who've been in it since the beginning. "Part of our job as artists is to help people remember that they really love to play." He jokes that those "who find it the most difficult to get started" are invariably the ones "at 11pm with their tie tied around their head and dancing on a table". While there are many shows working with established intellectual property (IP), there are also some hugely creative original works also being produced - Storehouse being one of those. For 16 weeks, attendees at Staged in Deptford, which was once the archival store for Rupert Murdoch's News International, will be guided through a story that takes place inside a 'digital memory palace' that supposedly houses every story, message, memory, and meme since the dawn of the internet. Produced by Sage & Jester, its lead producer Rosalyn Newbery explains: "You're not moving into a theatre with infrastructure, put it this way, we literally had to bring electricity to the venue, bring power to the venue, bring water to the venue, none of that was there for us… it's a big old job and there's a lot of detail that you can't take for granted." Over 7,000 crew worked more than 57,000 hours to build the set. Getting a show of this size and scale off the ground is a feat in itself. As creative director Sophie Larsmon says: "There are a lot of people trying to get these projects off the ground and there are a lot of projects that never see the light of day…because of the hoops that have to be jumped through for licensing and financing. "It takes huge amounts of creative effort, I've seen a lot of projects where quite late in the process the green light is taken away." While some creators might struggle to access support because the work doesn't fit into traditional cultural boxes, it is certainly an industry that's worth shining a spotlight on. As Larsom says: "The UK has always led the way in developing this form… I think people are cottoning on to the fact that this is a sector [that's] going to be a big revenue earner for the UK."

The Guardian

an hour ago

• The Guardian

Cats review – Andrew Lloyd Webber's tired show has run out of lives

There are musicals, and then there's Cats. Andew Lloyd Webber's show is often the one held up as a bewildering example by non-believers. People dress as cats in leg-warmers and sing children's poems, and it's a hit? The baffling body horror of the 2019 film didn't do much for the show's image, either. It was the 80s, loyalists say, it was a different time! But Cats is back, and theatre producers would prefer we just buy a ticket and live in the past. Cats is perhaps best now as a fond memory, where you can forgive its wilted structure, stop-start pacing and tired stereotyping (don't even try to count how often a female cat is there to sigh and swoon over a male one). There, you can enjoy how the score is drenched in 80s synth and peppered with pastiche, with hints of jazz, music hall, rock and a little opera (one of Lloyd Webber's great loves); it is catchy as all get-out. Memory, the plaintive cri de coeur by fading glamour cat Grizabella, was a genuine chart hit, lingering in jewellery boxes and hold music. And Gillian Lynne's original choreography, oddly sexy and determinedly feline, lives on in plenty of giggly shared stories between friends of sexual awakenings and Rum Tum Tugger. To bring it back, unchanged – as is happening now in Sydney – feels like a return to the worst of the megamusicals craze: cashing in on a known quantity even after its cultural cachet has faded. The production now playing at Sydney's Theatre Royal is a 40th anniversary celebration of the first time the musical made it to Australia (featuring Debra Byrne, Marina Prior, and John Wood) and it's like time has stopped. There are no surprises. It's even back in the same theatre. There are a few joyful moments – the best of them featuring Axel Alvarez, who plays 'the magical' Mr Mistoffelees, the cat with a light-up coat who delivers his magic through ballet, including a dazzling number of fouettés. His astonishing ease and classical technique is the very best of what Cats can be. Mark Vincent is perhaps at his stage best as the beloved Jellicle leader Old Deuteronomy, Tom Davis is a joyful, all-in Skimbleshanks (that's the railway cat), Todd McKenney pleasingly hams it up Gus the Theatre Cat, and Gabriyel Thomas, tears in her eyes as she sang Memory, earned ringing cheers as Grizabella. The cast and creative team are producing beautiful work – those full-ensemble dance formations brought forth applause every time the cast found themselves moving together as one – but what a shame it's all in service to the same old Cats, which can't hide its flaws with novelty any more. Even worse is that you'd never know it in Australia, but internationally, Lloyd Webber – who the Pulitzer-winning critic Andrea Long Chu described as the force that 'set Broadway on its current path of chintzy commercial nihilism' – is facing a generational shift. Cats lasted in the West End for 21 years and Phantom on Broadway for 35 – and the artists who grew up with these silly, thrilling works are mining them for new meaning and contemporary beats, testing how much they can speak to this moment. In the UK, Lloyd Webber's Starlight Express (about trains – it is Cats on roller-skates) has returned in a completely new production – with the train Greaseball now played by a woman with queer undertones. An upcoming production of Phantom of the Opera is running a guerrilla marketing campaign that has theatre influencers breathlessly reporting on every incident. Jamie Lloyd brought a blood-soaked Nicole Scherzinger to a cool Sunset Boulevard, netting three Tonys in the process; he's now reimagining Evita with Rachel Zegler, who sings Don't Cry for Me Argentina on a balcony to crowds outside the theatre. And, heartbreakingly for those of us a world away, Cats has been revolutionised in New York, refashioned in the underground ballroom scene built by queer and trans people, where speaking those secret Jellicle names and claiming identities has a new, deeper resonance. It's hard not to feel left out. In Australia, nostalgia rules, and we've had a parade of paint-by-number Lloyd Webbers keeping our best employed but our creative cups empty. In the past year or two, we've had a faithful but tough-to-watch Sunset Boulevard starring a miscast Sarah Brightman; a straightforward Jesus Christ Superstar, and an outright offensive Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. When it comes to plays, Australia is leagues ahead with new productions that interrogate, elevate, and subvert old works; with musicals, especially on main stages, we tend to defer to the tried-and-true. There are pockets brimming with ideas – the Hayes Theatre in Sydney has been home to some of the best – but we have to let old shows run their course if we want to give space to new artists and new perspectives – and bring in new audiences. Can't we give Cats a new life too? Cats is on at Theatre Royal, Sydney until 6 September; then touring to Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane

Daily Mail​

an hour ago

• Daily Mail​

Russell Crowe reunites with Superman son Henry Cavill for reboot of another beloved action franchise

Russell Crowe is reuniting onscreen with Henry Cavill, more than a decade after they acted with each other in the Superman film Man of Steel. The 2013 superhero movie starred Henry in the lead role and Russell as his biological father Jor-El, who saves his son's life just before losing his own. Now, fans will be able to see them back onscreen in a remake of the 1986 action fantasy picture Highlander, which launched a franchise of the same name. In the original Highlander, Christopher Lambert played Connor MacLeod, a 16th century Scottish warrior who discovers he is immortal unless his head is severed. He gets initiated into the secret world of immortals by the virtuoso swordsman Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez, memorably portrayed by Sean Connery. A reboot starring Henry as MacLeod was announced in 2021, and now, after years of development, Russell has been cast as Ramírez, according to Variety. The original Highlander emerged as a roaring success in 1986, leading to the 1991 sequel Highlander II: The Quickening, which flopped disastrously. However the series staggered on for the 1994 release Highlander III: The Sorcerer, a direct follow-up of the first film as if the events of the second never happened. There was also a TV series from 1992 to 1998, followed by the 2000 film Highlander: Endgame, which was a sequel to the show rather than to the previous movies. In 2021 it emerged that the original movie was being remade with Henry in the lead, back when he was still starring as Geralt of Riva on the Netflix medieval fantasy series The Witcher, before his departure and replacement by Liam Hemsworth. The new film will be directed by Chad Stahelski, who helmed all the John Wick movies, and will have a script by Michael Finch, who co- wrote the fourth John Wick picture. Russell first met Henry long before they ever worked together, back when the latter was a teenager at boarding school in the English countryside. The encounter took place when Russell was filming his 2000 drama Proof of Life, starring him and Meg Ryan, at the Stowe School - where Henry was a student along with Russell's onscreen son Merlin Hanbury-Tenison. Russell recalled that 'during a break in the shooting,' he caught sight of a rugby union game and noticed 'one kid on that field who was very fluid and in control.' The teenager 'came over to have a chat, but all his questions were about acting, and there was just this smile in his eyes but there was something dead serious behind that smile,' Russell said on The Graham Norton Show in 2013. 'So instead of not answering the questions or whatever - 'cause you get asked these questions a hundred thousand times - I told him the truth in the brief moment that I had with him, and put it in front of him that it's a challenge that's up to him. Nobody's gonna give it to you,' Russell remembered. 'A couple of days later, I was putting a package together for the kid who'd played my son, because I figured the greatest thing if you're at boarding school must be unexpected mail, and I thought: "I'll put one together for that other bloke," and I'd remembered his name because he'd been very clear when he said it,' he shared. His note to Henry was the saying: 'A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,' which Russell interpreted as meaning: 'If you want it, you go and get it.'