
The three-time Pulitzer prize-winning playwright had an extraordinary career trajectory that saw him conquer critics and alcoholism to win more trophiesPerhaps the most remarkable achievemen…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:00AM[SHARE]G is for The Goat, L is for lizards and U is for umbrella … As A Delicate Balance returns to Broadway, dip into our guide to the great American playwrightAfter being born " on 12 March 192…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:10PM[SHARE]From Dan Brown to Graham Greene, the papacy has long proved fascinating to writers. Mark Lawson examines the mysteries around this powerful figure and the church he leadsThe first duty of a …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:08AM[SHARE]After his success with E4's Glue, Thorne is returning to the theatre with Hope, a drama at the Royal Court about local government budget cutsDespite having been up late last Monday night at …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:48PM[SHARE]Soho theatre, LondonMaria Alyokhina's dramatisation of artists targeted by Putin is most powerful when it evokes the dark political farce of PinterThe arrest and imprisonment of the Russian …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:55AM[SHARE]John Osborne's classic allegory The Entertainer is back. But the UK is now so fragmented that no modern playwright could pen a drama to sum up who we areKenneth Branagh, whose career has oft…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:02AM[SHARE]Screenwriters often find themselves in a straitjacket " but comedy shows written for the theatre have free rein to be as foul-mouthed and foul-minded as they like. The world needs more of it…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:36AM[SHARE]From the Brexit vote to the US presidential race, the tumult of the year's news shows how nimble " or lucky " artists need to be to stay relevantMost would agree that timing is vital to the …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:34PM[SHARE]As previews of the West End show reveal its gasp-inducing illusions, hanky-inducing scenes and Harry as a 40-year-old dad, the producers behind the darkest ever Potter project discuss secrec…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:26PM[SHARE]As she prepares to appear in the Young Chekhov trilogy, the star of Last Tango in Halifax and W1A talks about playing outsiders, growing up surrounded by white faces " and how it feels to be…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:09PM[SHARE]A lifetime achievement in musical theatre acknowledges Lansbury's prolific career spanning seven decadesPeople like to pass landmark birthdays in meaningful places, so it seems right that Da…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:43PM[SHARE]Life with Father, about a sexist patriarch and submissive wife, holds the record for the longest-running non-musical play in New York. Now, 75 years after it premiered, Mark Lawson…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:51PM[SHARE]Minerva, ChichesterMark Hayhurst's play about a court-martialled first world war soldier is sharply intelligent and emotionally joltingThe canon of first world war drama is already vast. Mar…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:34PM[SHARE]With gift for solitude, and dialogue, prolific award-winning scriptwriter is unusually natural collaborator for Harry Potter playTelevision and theatre playwrights who spend a lot of time al…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:18AM[SHARE]Wales Millennium Centre, CardiffThe singer has co-authored a fascinating update on Hans Christian Andersen, pitting her sea nymph against marine pollution and malign capitalismWhile church m…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:07PM[SHARE]The playwright was a commercial success, but his works could only have been created in subsidised venuesPeter Shaffer obituaryFew writers achieve the lucrative double of writing an internati…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:49PM[SHARE]Shakespeare's Globe, LondonAoife Duffin is an electrifying Kate in Caroline Byrne's splendid Irish version, which injects touches of Yeats, Wilde and Beckett Shakespeare's comedy of Petruchi…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:15AM[SHARE]St James theatre, LondonAn attempt to adapt the Oscar-winning film for the stage cannot disguise its origins sufficiently enough to work as theatreIgnoring the biblical warning against putti…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:43PM[SHARE]Criterion, LondonThis thrillingly inventive piece about bed-hopping gem thieves is a slapstick delightThe financial prospects of young actors are probably only studied by economists as a hor…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:45AM[SHARE]Revivals from Arnold Wesker's heyday prove the enduring quality of his work, where autobiographical detail went hand in hand with experimental stagecraftCelebrated playwrights often seem to …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:10AM[SHARE]With a sexually confused Putin and a Bond villain Blair, Corbyn the Musical has some pretty broad caricatures " but it's even-handed in its politics. And it's not the first musical to take o…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:55AM[SHARE]Victoria Palace Theatre, London Director Stephen Daldry made amusing artistic virtue of legal necessity and Sir Elton John savoured the show's success Even before sampling the refreshments a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:33AM[SHARE]Dench deserved to break records for her psychologically probing in turn The Winter's Tale, and Rufus Norris saw his vision for the National Theatre validated. But the Oliviers still need to …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:52AM[SHARE]On May 8 1956, John Osborne's Look Back in Anger premiered at the Royal Court in London. It shocked the theatre world, some acclaiming it as the voice of a new generation, others damning it …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:13PM[SHARE]The storyline is contrived around a string of pop hits in this homage to the photo-stories and problem pages of the classic teenage girls' magazine Aimed at a largely female audience with o…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:15PM[SHARE]Moving The Maids from France to the US adds a powerful racial subtext to Genet's original, while Anouilh's Welcome Home, Captain Fox! fares less well when set in America. Not all plays benef…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:10AM[SHARE]In 400 years since his death, only a few playwrights " including George Bernard Shaw and Edward Bond " have turned the Bard into a characterThe 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death is be…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:00AM[SHARE]Denise Gough has been horrifying audiences " and scoring rave reviews " for her portrayal of an addict in People, Places and Things. The Irish actor talks about being one of 11 siblings, sno…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:03PM[SHARE]David Peace's modern classic The Damned United is being staged in Leeds, a city with no great love for its subject: charismatic, alcoholic football manager Brian Clough. Mark Lawson on the f…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:14AM[SHARE]Best actor nomination for Farinelli and the King comes hours after winning Academy Award for best supporting actorThe "double O" category in Britain has traditionally been associated with Ja…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:43PM[SHARE]Between them, two current stagings of Ibsen and Chekhov classics offer audiences five intermissions. While some see an art form reasserting itself, the move comes with a number of hitchesA r…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:18AM[SHARE]

