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We’re spoiled for choice this month as Tom Hollander’s on stage in Tom Stoppard’s fantastic play Travesties and is also appearing on BBC One (FX in the US) in the dark and mysterious Taboo. According to IMDb (usually OK but treat with caution) he’s to be in all the remaining Taboo episodes as the slightly unhinged chemist Dr George Cholmondeley.

Next week the DVD of A Poet In New York (Region 2, Europe), in which he plays Dylan Thomas, is released.

Travesties has transferred to the Apollo Theatre after its sold out run at the Menier Chocolate Factory at the end of last year – it (re-)opened yesterday and will run until April (it’s in previews until opening night, 15th February).

“At the centre of Patrick Marber’s precise, energetic revival is the superb Hollander: it takes a certain calibre of comic actor to handle the demented gear shifts of the play, and he nails them all, as Carr careens from fanatical old crank to vain British establishmentarian to flailing Casanova.” Time Out review (of Menier run)

“It’s impossible to do full justice to the cast but Freddie Fox shines as the insolent Tzara, Peter McDonald is spot-on as an ineptly dressed Joyce (even magicking a rabbit from his hat), and the sung-through showdown between Clare Foster’s Cecily and Amy Morgan’s Gwendolen, a barbed conversational exchange familiar to Wilde lovers but here reprised as if in some demented dream, is alone worth a wait in the returns queue. A West End transfer must be on the cards – anything less would be a travesty.” Telegraph review (of Menier run)

“Political and artistic revolutions collide in a sprightly revival, directed by Patrick Marber, highlighting the emotion as well as the erudition of this brilliant play” Guardian review (of Menier run).

Tom’s appearance in Taboo has been rather well received in reviews and on Twitter –

“Taboo knows how to use Hollander perfectly. There’s perhaps no one in the realm better at playing pissed-off bureaucrats: Witness Hollander’s uniformly excellent turns in movies of varying quality like In the Loop, Mission: Impossible–Rogue Nation, Valkyrie, and the Pirates of the Caribbean series. But that’s entry-level Hollander. Tier One Hollander. He can play a grumpy government official in his sleep. The really good Hollander is Inebriated Hollander. Drunk Hollander. Characters like Corky, the extra-sozzled hired gun on The Night Manager. Or the British prime minister in Rogue Nation, but only after he takes a tranquilizer dart to the neck and starts slurring his words. And Cholmondeley in Taboo, friends, is Tier Two Hollander: inebriated and endearing, menacing and beguiling.” The Ringer.

“Tom Hollander was a welcome addition to the cast this week (isn’t he always?).” iNews

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