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Extra.ie
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Extra.ie
FILM REVIEW OF THE WEEK: The Surfer starring Nicolas Cage
Lorcan Finnegan's The Surfer is a sun-scorched psychological trip masquerading as a B-movie beach thriller. Brutal and hypnotic, the film traps its protagonist – and its audience – in a dreamlike purgatory of sweat, sand and simmering male rage. With lurid colours, looping structure, and deliberately disorienting atmosphere, The Surfer channels the existential entrapment of Luis Buuel and the surreal logic of Finnegan's own Vivarium . But where Vivarium boxed its characters inside suburbia, here the trap is wide open: a beach that might as well be hell. Nicolas Cage plays the titular Surfer, a nameless, middle-aged man who claims to have roots in the area, yet is treated like a trespasser the moment he sets foot on the golden sands of Lunar Bay. Bullied by a cabal of locals led by Julian McMahons smirking Scally (parts beach bro and corporate sociopath who smiles like a shark all teeth, no warmth), the Surfer is repeatedly humiliated, gaslit, and physically assaulted. But he stays. Because beneath the farce and cruelty is something quietly desperate: a man clinging to a dream he cant let go of. Nostalgia is the true villain here. The Surfer isn't just longing for a return to place, but to a time when his family was still intact. His fixation on reclaiming his childhood home is a symbol of that delusion. He believes that if he could buy the house and ride the waves again, everything will fall back into place. But these obsessions with the house, beach and his own romanticised past are what drove his wife and son away. His relentless pursuit of success, ownership and legacy, has left him alone and untethered. The tragedy is not that the Surfer has lost those close to him, but that he continues to chase an idealised version of their relationship, instead of accepting what its become – and showing up for them as he is, not as he was. What makes The Surfer stick isn't its visceral tone or Cages red-faced performance (though both are noteworthy). Its the feeling that youre watching someone be erased, inch by inch. There's a looped sense of stasis – like Buuel's The Exterminating Angel – where time stretches and bends but nothing truly changes, except perhaps the level of psychological damage. Time warps. Days blur. Dehydration and exhaustion distort reality. The protagonist is haunted – by a mysterious older man, by glimpses of a lost son, and by visions that flicker and vanish before we can get a grip on them. What follows is a sunburnt descent into madness. Cages character loses everything – his dignity, his car, even access to clean water. He lingers around the beach like a ghost of his own past, baking in his own desperation. Visually, The Surfer is rich with texture and menace. Finnegan and cinematographer Radzek Ladczuk render the Australian coastline as eerily hostile. Heatwaves ripple through every frame; colours are oversaturated, borders blur, daylight is punishing. The air feels thick with menace. Cage is, unsurprisingly, electric. He pitches the performance somewhere between tragic and deranged, veering from wide-eyed optimism to pathetic rage, often within the same scene. As ever, he finds the operatic in the absurd. Hes both delusional and heartbreakingly sincere. He wants his home, his wave, his version of the past – but the film quietly questions whether any of that ever really existed. The idea of poisonous nostalgia also permeates through the toxic, anti-outsider bravado of Scallys surf gang. Their obsession with violence and purity, expressed via threats, intimidation, rituals and faux-philosophies, is both cartoonish and credible in its Make This Beach Great Again vibes, and McMahon plays Scally with a charming menace that holds the film together. The fact that the gang are so irredeemable and violent, yet still don't puncture the Surfers idealised image of the beach, shows how myopic he has become, as well as the weakness of those who choose to align with oppressive forces to feel comfortable. If The Surfer falls short, its in its hesitance to fully explore the emotional depth of its central character. Though the film hints at themes of grief, legacy, and the crushing weight of unfulfilled dreams, it often prioritises tension and confrontation over delving into these complexities. Yet, this very ambiguity reflects the Surfers internal struggle torn between the person he was, the person he believes himself to be, and how the world perceives him. Finnegan crafts a lean, eerie, darkly funny film that lingers long after it ends. If Vivarium boxed us in, The Surfer lets us wander – sun-struck and sand-blasted – until we realise we've been trapped all along. In cinemas now. Watch the trailer below:
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Here We Are, National Theatre, review: Stephen Sondheim musical is more Severance than sing-a-long
Here We Are review and star rating: ★★★★ Stephen Sondheim's final musical is nothing like his most famous works – in fact, it's barely a musical at all, but perhaps we shouldn't be surprised. As Here We Are writer David Ives remarked, the legend relished in challenging his loyal followers with reinvention. 'Sondheim makes people crazy in all kinds of interesting and different ways.' An absurd comedy about a bunch of rich Americans who try to go for brunch but can't seem to get served, Here We Are is a barmy satire with the existential trappings of a Beckett play. Proferring a message about overconsumption, it is certainly no gentle nostalgia vehicle like Old Friends, the blast through Sondheim's most famous tunes that scored a five-star review from City AM in 2023. Inspired by Luis Buñuel's absurdist films The Exterminating Angel and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, after Sondheim died aged in 2021 aged 91, there was controversy over whether the piece should be staged at all. Would this super experimental show dent Sondheim's legacy as perhaps the 20th century's greatest composer and lyricist, the man behind Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd and Into The Woods? Unlikely: the reality is that even if Here We Are ruffles the feathers of Sondheim purists, it wouldn't be the first time. Many of his shows didn't do big box office numbers or become classics for years after release. We meet a highly-strung group of yuppies, including a plastic surgeon, an ambassador and an industrialist. Wealthy central couple Leo and Marianne Brink, played by Rory Kinnear and Jane Krakowski, struggle to land a brunch booking for their group, and things go awry when the six friends become entangled with the radical left-wing group Prada – 'not the shoes' – and are taken down an absurdist rabbit hole not dissimilar to the Apple TV show Severance, where dream sequences become indistinguishable from reality. As a satire on wealth, Here We Are has some hilarious and pertinent bits, including the lady cloning her dogs so her fluffy friends are with her no matter which country she's in, and the insufferable chef who goes from serving French Deconstructionist cuisine to Post-Deconstructive, where 'everything is actually what it is.' Ives finds his biting point in how desperately out of touch these people are with reality. 'I want things to be what they seem and not what they are,' groans one character in one of the show's many interesting meta parts. It also works as a fascinating physical piece. Choreographer Sam Pinkleton, alongside director Joe Mantello and set and costume designer David Zinn spent seven years in development to orchestrate this frankly incredibly weird show, in which characters speak and move in time with Sondheim's accompaniment, like characters in an old black and white movie. Much of the comedy is mined from Fawlty Towers-style farcical faffing – but on a grand, complex scale. It's the type of tomfoolery that might look silly but is pulled off vanishingly rarely. As for Sondheim, he must have loved Ives' script. As for his ditties, they serve as a function to enable the story rather than existing to entertain us in and of themselves. Songs including Here We Are (Overture), The Road and Waiter's Song are more a final reminder of the legend's skill at employing music to bolster the plot rather than songs that stand alone. One audience member who sat near me joked that the songs and accompaniments were stitched together from bits of music he'd left on his cutting room floor from other productions, but I don't think that's necessarily a criticism. They add to the production's bags of natural charm. In the main, it's just refreshing to see something this surrealist and bonkers getting a mainstream staging. Here We Are plays at the until 28 June Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
Time Out
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
The 10 best new London theatre openings in May 2025
May is here and with it the London open air theatre season gets into full swing. The Globe kicks things off with a cowboy-themed Romeo and Juliet followed shortly thereafter with a rare revival for a modern play – Arthur Miller's peerless The Crucible. Over in Regent's Park and new theatre boss Drew McOnie gets his tenure off with a bang as he bags the much anticipated UK premiere of Broadway comedy musical Shucked. But it's another musical that's the month's big talking point: the National Theatre will host the UK premiere of the late great Stephen Sondheim's final musical. The best London theatre openings in May 2025 What is it? Here We Are is the final work by the greatest composer of musical theatre in history – that is to say, Stephen Sondheim. It is, plot wise, a mash up of two surreal class satire Luis Buñuel films: The Exterminating Angel and The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoise. Joe Mantello's premiere production played a season off-Broadway already and now transfers here with a starry new cast. Why go? Because it's Sondheim. When is the next time you're going to the premiere run of a Sondheim musical? Never, that's when. New York reviews were warm – FWIW the main fault cited is that he didn't quite write enough songs before he passed away – and the cast is insane, including the likes of Rory Kinnear, Jane Krakowski and Martha Plimpton. National Theatre, now until Jun 28. 2. What is it? One of the more unexpected musical theatre success stories of the last few years, Robert Horn, Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally's Shucked announced itself on Broadway with an ad campaign that solely revolved around puns about corn. It went on to be a rip-roaring success and is now a spectacularly impressive get for the first season from new Regent's Park Open Air Theatre boss Drew McOnie. Why go? By all accounts it's incredibly funny, probably the first great US comedy musical since The Book of Mormon. Although the plot is notionally meant to be hidden under a veil of corn puns, it basically concerns a corn-obsessed rural community that has no contact with the outside world. But when their crop starts to fail, they must send two representatives to the big city to try and work out what the hell is going on. Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, May 10-Jun 14. Buy tickets here. 3. Shakespeare's Globe: Romeo and Juliet / The Crucible What is it? Sun's out, guns out, Globe's open: the iconic outside theatre's summer season is upon us and the first two shows open this month. It begins with Sean Holmes's take on Romeo and Juliet; next out of the traps is Ola Ince directing The Crucible, a very rare opportunity to see a classic modern play at the iconic theatre. Why go? Because the Globe has never been about boring trad Shakespeare and this looks like a thrilling couple of shows. Holmes's take on Romeo and Juliet is Wild West themed – we literally need say no more. Meanwhile Arthur Miller's awesome Salem Witch Trials/Red Scare allegory is one of the greatest American plays ever written and getting to see it at the stunning Globe should be a real treat. Shakespeare's Globe; Romeo and Juliet now until Aug 2, buy tickets here; The Crucible May 8-Jul 12, buy tickets here. 4. 1536 What is it? Ava Pickett's award-winning drama is set in – you guessed it – 1536, and parallels the lives of its three female protagonists with that of Anne Boleyn, the queen of England who will meet her violent end that year. Why go? Although Pickett is mostly known as a TV writer, the fact is that the Almeida rarely misses when it comes to new plays, and the crack team behind 1536 is hugely promising, with big name Lyndsey Turner directing a cast of the excellent Liv Hill, Siena Kelly and Tanya Reynolds. Almeida Theatre, May 6-Jun 7. 5. Mrs Warren's Profession What is it? A now pretty rare revival for George Bernard Shaw's classic morality play about an aspiring young female lawyer who attempts to befriend her estranged mother, unaware of her past as a prostitute and present as a brothel madam. Why go? Two words: Imelda Staunton. The national treasure has starred in two excellent Dominic Cook-directed musicals recently – Follies at the NT and last year's Hello, Dolly! – and this time they join forces for a third time and their first straight up drama. She'll play Mrs Warren; her own daughter Bessie Carter will play daughter Vivie. It'll be interesting to see if the play stands up still, but if anyone's going to sell it to us, it's Staunton. Garrick Theatre, May 10-Aug 16, buy tickets here. 6. Giant What is it? The biggest new British play of last year, Mark Rosenblatt's morally knotty Roald Dahl drama triumphantly transfers from the Royal Court to the West End. Why go? It's a slightly old fashioned but brilliantly written play that examines Dahl's public flirtation with antisemitism in the early '80s and comes away with no easy answers. The headline event is John Lithgow as the charming, cantankerous, slippery Dahl, reprising the role that just won him an Olivier. Harold Pinter Theatre, until Aug 2, buy tickets here. 7. An Oak Tree What is it? The last show at the Young Vic for a while should be a good 'un: it's the twentieth anniversary revival for Tim Crouch's seminal performance piece An Oak Tree, the work with which the one-time jobbing actor reinvented himself as a metatheatrical provocateur par excellence. Why go? It's an unsettling classic that remains fresh on stage because one of the performers has never done it before: a different guest each night is cast in the role of a grieving parent who has decided to track down the end-of-the-pier hypnotist who killed their child in a car crash three months earlier. It is a complicated and powerful work that's as much about Crouch's right to create this sad drama as it is about the drama itself. Young Vic, May 7-24, buy tickets here. 8. The Fifth Step What is it? Provocative writer David Ireland's Alcoholics Anonymous satire debuted at the Edinburgh International Festival last year, giving a striking return-to-the-stage role to its star Jack Lowden. Now it's back for a West End run with Martin Freeman providing some heavyweight backup: he stars as recovering alcoholic James, the deeply flawed sponsor to Lowden's new-to-the-programme Luka. Why go? That's a pretty damn tasty celebrity cast and if you like Ireland's scabrous comedies – or are in the mood for something decided non-PC – then you'll probably have fun. Maybe not one for AA devotees, though. @sohoplace, May 10-Jul 26. 9. The Deep Blue Sea What is it? Terence Rattigan's masterpiece about Hester, a suicidal woman who has left her stultifyingly old-fashioned husband and must now decide if she wants to live or die. Why go? It's a deeply haunting and beautiful play, dealing with themes far darker and sadder than Rattigan's frothy reputation suggests. This Lindsay Posner-directed production transfers from Theatre Royal Bath, where it attracted great notices for Tamsin Greig's performance as Hester. Theatre Royal Haymarket, May 7-Jun 21, buy tickets here. 10. The Comedy About Spies What is it? The hit factory that is Mischief theatre – best known for long-running West End hit The Play That Goes Wrong – pumps out another surefire smash with this '60s-set spy farce. Why go? Mischief are as edgy as sponge, but if you like a good old fashioned English farce with proper jokes, proper laughs and zero smut then get yourself down.
