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]Sunday, April 14, 2013
The Shed, LondonDurable tables emerge from workshops. So too does Tanya Ronder's ambitious new play, which spans six generations of a single family and opens the National's inviting new temp…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:53PM[SHARE]Friday, April 12, 2013
Barbican, LondonHow do you recapture the shock impact of Alfred Jarry's 1896 play, with its savage portrait of a grotesque monster? Given that Jarry's play started as a schoolboy prank aimed…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:43PM[SHARE]Wednesday, April 10, 2013
In 10 years, Hytner has given the National a sense of purpose, large new audiences and great drama. Who can succeed him?It's no great surprise to learn that Nicholas Hytner will be leaving t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:03AM[SHARE]Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Phoenix, LondonMusicals these days tend to batter you into submission. This one, winner of eight Tony awards and based on a 2006 low-budget movie by John Carney that I have deliberately avoi…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:01PM[SHARE]Monday, April 8, 2013
Old Red Lion, LondonIt's a good bet that not many British theatre-goers are intimate with the work of Maurice Maeterlinck (1862"1949). Yet in his day this Belgian playwright and sy…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:41PM[SHARE]She had little time for culture " and once hailed Andrew Lloyd Webber as a great British export. But Thatcher dominated playwrights' imaginations, along with so much elseMargaret Thatcher ma…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:44AM[SHARE]Friday, April 5, 2013
Trafalgar Studios, LondonThis first play by Dermot Canavan is about two Preston sisters who, having grown up together, inexorably grow apart. What might once have been a modest memory-play t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:00AM[SHARE]Thursday, April 4, 2013
Rose theatre, KingstonTen years ago Richard Bean wrote this black comedy about a drug-dealing family living in leafy suburbia for Live Theatre Newcastle. Now it has been relocated to Kingsto…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:39PM[SHARE]Wednesday, April 3, 2013
The Print Room, LondonI was wrong about Brian Friel's play. Seeing it for the first time at the Almeida in 1994, I took it to be an arid replay of Friel's Faith Healer: again two men and a w…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:44PM[SHARE]Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Finborough, LondonIt's always fascinating to see famous writers' early work. But the real value of this 100-minute, 1972 radio play by Caryl Churchill, which draws heavily on Frant…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:37AM[SHARE]Friday, March 29, 2013
Almeida, LondonIt's an old rule that dramatists need to show a measure of sympathy, even to dislikable characters. But, although this 1949 Rodney Ackland adaptation of a Somerset Maugham sho…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:37PM[SHARE]Thursday, March 28, 2013
Royal Court theatre, LondonDominic Cooke bows out at the Court as he came in, with a new play by the American writer Bruce Norris. And what a play! It's a three-hour extravaganza with 20 act…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:01AM[SHARE]Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-on-AvonHamlet always reflects the spirit of the age. Where the 1960s gave us a rush of politicised productions, today the emphasis " as in 2011's Young V…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:17PM[SHARE]Tuesday, March 26, 2013
There's Kristin Scott Thomas, yet not her co-star Lia Williams. And a best new play list that omits one of the year's best new plays. What's going on?We're nearly there. The announcement of …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:10AM[SHARE]Monday, March 25, 2013
Noel Coward, LondonJudi Dench and Ben Whishaw were last professionally united as M and Q in Skyfall. They now come together again to play the real-life inspirations for Lewis Carroll's Alice…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:00PM[SHARE]King's Head, LondonThere's a big back-catalogue of movies, musicals and operas based on Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris. This, however, is the first public staging of the unfinished Lionel…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:32PM[SHARE]Thursday, March 21, 2013
Prince of Wales, LondonStrip away all the hype surrounding this hit Broadway import and what do you find? A mildly amusing musical, with some knowingly parodic songs, that takes a few pot sh…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:00PM[SHARE]Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Old Vic, LondonThe case for Terence Rattigan has been steadily made over the past decade, and this revival of his 1946 play is only likely to advance the cause. But two things make Lindsay P…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:47PM[SHARE]Tuesday, March 19, 2013
The Old Rep, BirminghamRobin French, Birmingham Rep's writer-in-residence, isn't the first to update Ibsen's Hedda Gabler: in Thomas Ostermeier's Berlin Schaubühne version, seen at the Barb…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:00PM[SHARE]Monday, March 18, 2013
Orange Tree, RichmondThis 1931 play by GB Stern is part of the Orange Tree's ongoing focus on drama about women's issues in the interwar years. It may not be quite as radical or rivetin…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:13PM[SHARE]Sunday, March 17, 2013
Ustinov, BathUntil now I've never understood the enthusiasm of American critic, Frank Rich, for the plays of Richard Greenberg. But this one is an absolute cracker and far superior to Three …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:41PM[SHARE]Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Jermyn Street, LondonCan you imagine a serious play about religion enjoying a two-year West End run today? That, however, is what happened to Graham Greene's debut play in 1953. Watching its…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:17PM[SHARE]Friday, March 8, 2013
Finborough, LondonI am delighted to see that JB Priestley is back in fashion. But even if this "immoral comedy" from 1933 doesn't seem as restlessly experimental as Cornelius, revived at the…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:00PM[SHARE]Hampstead theatre, LondonWilliam Boyd has fused two Chekhov stories from the 1890s, A Visit to Friends and My Life, to create a new play. The result is inevitably something of a hybrid: neit…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:27PM[SHARE]Thursday, March 7, 2013
Tricycle, London"In Israel nothing is exactly what you think," remarks a character in Paper Dolls. That neatly sums up the message of a show about five Filipino immigrants who work as live-i…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:41PM[SHARE]Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Gate, LondonBruce Norris has won golden praise with Clybourne Park and The Pain and the Itch at the Royal Court. Now the Gate has had the wit to revive an earlier piece, written in 2002 in t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:39PM[SHARE]Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Gielgud, LondonPeter Morgan struck box-office gold with his movie The Queen. He's likely to do so again with this play based on the private weekly audience given by the monarch to the prime …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:02PM[SHARE]Monday, March 4, 2013
Finborough, LondonHow do you tackle the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Most British dramatists, with the striking exception of David Hare in Via Dolorosa, shy away from it…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:04PM[SHARE]Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Donmar Warehouse, LondonBest known for movies such as Atonement and Anna Karenina, Joe Wright has finally got round to directing his first play, and, appropriately, he has chosen Pinero's wa…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:47PM[SHARE]Friday, February 22, 2013
Arts theatre, LondonBoy-meets-boy is now a familiar musical theme. What gives this show a certain piquancy is that it deals with a star of the Hollywood silents, William Haine…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:37PM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
