Friday, May 24, 2013
Swan, Stratford-upon-AvonNo one any longer has to make a case for this once-despised play. But, whether it is viewed as a neo-Senecan study in stoic acceptance of grief or a Tarantino-like e…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:47PM[SHARE]Thursday, May 23, 2013
Bush, LondonWe're used to seeing plays that take a swipe at American liberal guilt. But Ayad Akhtar's Pulitzer prizewinner adds an extra dimension to the subject by exposing the dangers of d…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:21PM[SHARE]Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Southwark Playhouse, LondonThis peripatetic theatre finds its third home in a converted warehouse near Elephant and Castle. But, although the space is attractive and the production lively, I…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:29PM[SHARE]Monday, May 20, 2013
Wyndham's, LondonThis is the play that in 1967 gave Alan Ayckbourn his first West End hit. Seeing it again after all these years, in Lindsay Posner's witty production, I was reminded of the …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:00PM[SHARE]Sunday, May 19, 2013
Riverside Studios, LondonIt is not often that a curtain speech is the highlight of a show, but at the end of this bio-play about the once-famous cabaret artist Hutch, his son, Chris, paid&nb…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:15PM[SHARE]Friday, May 17, 2013
Royal Court, LondonThe 2004 Perrier award winner Will Adamsdale clearly has a comic following and, as we saw in the National's Detroit, is a creditable actor. But this show, which he wrote w…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:25PM[SHARE]Thursday, May 16, 2013
Park, LondonMany years ago Keith Dewhurst wrote a Guardian column arguing that theatre had to move away from city centres to areas where people actually lived. In London the shift away from …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:24PM[SHARE]Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Young Vic, LondonThere are no rules in theatre. Updating a classic can sometimes work brilliantly, as with Benedict Andrews' Three Sisters at the Young Vic last year. But David Harrower's ne…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:40AM[SHARE]Thursday, May 9, 2013
Trafalgar Studios, LondonHarold Pinter was, among many other things, a comic writer; and I would distrust any Pinter evening that didn't make us laugh. But, richly pleasurable and boundlessl…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PM[SHARE]Tricycle, LondonLeanne Best received glowing notices when she first appeared in Frank McGuinness's demanding one-woman play, at the Liverpool Playhouse in June 2012. The praise was richly de…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:58AM[SHARE]Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Arcola, LondonWhy do we know so little of Alexander Ostrovsky? He was the father of Russian drama and a palpable influence on Anton Chekhov, yet his plays get only scattered revivals. So, ev…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:57PM[SHARE]Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Duke of York's, LondonIt's a well-known fact that Peter Nichols's play, which first appeared in 1981, forms part of an unofficial trinity of dramas about infidelity: it came after Pinter's B…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:00PM[SHARE]Sunday, May 5, 2013
The Cut, HalesworthQuirky, original voices are rare in a conformist age. But Thomas Eccleshare, whose Pastoral is one of five new plays at the core of this year's HighTide festival in the Su…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:10PM[SHARE]Friday, May 3, 2013
Shakespeare's Globe, LondonI've seen Prospero played as a benign schoolmaster, colonial overlord and Faustian necromancer. But Roger Allam brings something new to the party by suggesting tha…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:48PM[SHARE]Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Soho Upstairs, LondonI first came across Cat Jones's 60-minute play when it was submitted for one of the playwrights' bursaries annually awarded by Pearson. I'm happy to say that this story …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:56AM[SHARE]Barbican, LondonTheatre-makers are constantly trying to recapture the shock of August Strindberg's once-revolutionary 1888 play. In Mies Julie, currently at the Riverside Studios, it is done…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:58AM[SHARE]Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Minerva, ChichesterWith the Festival theatre closed for renovation and Chichester resembling a building site, it seems appropriate to kick off the season in the Minerva with a piec…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:00PM[SHARE]This year's Tony nominations presage a battle of heavyweight musicals. However, theatre does exist beyond the big-ticket song-and-dance showsTwo heavyweight musicals are engaged in a slugfes…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:49AM[SHARE]Friday, April 26, 2013
Donmar Warehouse, LondonWhy, 16 years after its premiere, does Conor McPherson's play still grip us? After all, it seems to consist of little but people telling ghost stories in a …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:31AM[SHARE]Tabard, LondonHave we lost our taste for historical melodrama? Apparently not, since this Chiswick theatre pub was packed on a hot afternoon for a rare revival of this curious play by Patric…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:29AM[SHARE]Thursday, April 25, 2013
Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon"Can one desire too much of a good thing?" asks Rosalind. Maybe not. But, although Maria Aberg's new production of As You Like It is a joyous, b…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:02PM[SHARE]Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Orange Tree, LondonFantasies of flight fuelled the life and work of Somerset Maugham. They are also the governing theme of this compellingly cruel 1930 comedy, which forms a fascinating comp…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:56AM[SHARE]Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Olivier, LondonTo call this production eagerly awaited would be an understatement. Ever since Adrian Lester gave us a taste of the Moor, when playing the 19th-century American actor Ira Aldr…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:30PM[SHARE]Belgrade, CoventryChekhov's Platonov, written when he was 20, is an untidy beast that several writers, including Michael Frayn and David Hare, have successfully tamed. But this new version, …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:10PM[SHARE]Friday, April 19, 2013
Swan, Stratford-upon-AvonPlays, like musicals, often depend on a moment of ecstasy. One occurs at the end of Tanika Gupta's drama, when Abdul Karim, the aged Queen Victoria's Hindi teacher, …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:41PM[SHARE]Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Hampstead Theatre, LondonHoward Brenton's most recent play, 55 Days, dealt with the imprisonment, trial and execution of Charles I. His new one could easily be called 81 Days since it cover…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:04PM[SHARE]Lyttelton, LondonMaxim Gorky takes up where Anton Chekhov leaves off. Written in 1905, shortly after what would become known as Bloody Sunday, when peaceful protesters were shot down by…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:13AM[SHARE]Monday, April 15, 2013
Jermyn Street, LondonI suspect this 1927 comedy by Frederick Lonsdale had its influence on Noël Coward's Private Lives: the clipped dialogue, the dance for two couples and the tiptoeing e…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:13PM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
