Friday, November 16, 2012
Almeida, LondonPlays about poets are notoriously problematic. But Nick Dear overcomes the difficulties in this probing, intelligent piece about Edward Thomas, who produced a formidable body …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:57AM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Cottesloe Theatre, LondonHow do you follow a big hit? Just as Jez Butterworth succeeded Jerusalem with the more modest The River, so Lucy Prebble follows her spectacular Enron with an intima…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:20PM[SHARE]Gate, LondonEuripides's great anti-war play has been constantly updated. But much as I relished the linguistic vigour and pugnacious wit of Caroline Bird's new version, descri…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:00PM[SHARE]Monday, November 12, 2012
Salisbury PlayhouseThis version of William Golding's 1964 novel confronts a subject from which the British theatre normally shies away in terror: the nature of religious faith. Although…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:23AM[SHARE]Sunday, November 11, 2012
'Forget the single play " give me an entire oeuvre'Over the years, I've been to seasons of plays by Harold Pinter at the Gate theatre in Dublin, by Sarah Kane at Berlin's Schaubühne and, mo…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:30PM[SHARE]Thursday, November 8, 2012
The Swan, Stratford-upon-AvonThis production of a Chinese classic has already caused controversy because only three actors out of a cast of 17 are of east Asian origin. But, although there a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:02PM[SHARE]Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Lyttelton Theatre, LondonIn 1980 Alan Bennett wrote Enjoy, which showed a Leeds working-class house and its occupants being preserved as a museum exhibit.Now, in his mordantly funny new play…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:07PM[SHARE]St James, LondonJean Webster's 1912 novel about an orphan girl and her mysterious benefactor has cast a long shadow. It spawned a Broadway play and several movies, including one in which, ra…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:00PM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Noel Coward, LondonYou could hardly have a greater contrast than between the stolid Uncle Vanya that has just opened at the Vaudeville and this mercurially brilliant import from Moscow's Vak…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:51PM[SHARE]Friday, November 2, 2012
Vaudeville, LondonHow do you play Anton Chekhov today? After the liberating unorthodoxy of the Young Vic's Three Sisters, we are back to normal with Lindsay Posner's production of Uncle Vany…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:25PM[SHARE]Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-AvonShakespeare's great revenge comedy gains immeasurably from being staged in modern dress. But, while other directors have opted for the materiali…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:52AM[SHARE]Thursday, November 1, 2012
Royal Court, LondonLucy Kirkwood's new play is bright, sharp, funny and 80 minutes long. And, while one can never legislate for length, I found myself craving more: I wanted to see Kirkwood,…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:51AM[SHARE]Wednesday, October 31, 2012
From the Woman in Black to killers in thrillers, theatre has plenty of characters that shock " but it takes Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth to well and truly terrify ' Spoiler alert: this blog re…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:16PM[SHARE]Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Crucible, SheffieldShelagh Delaney's play, the work of an unknown working-class 18-year-old from Salford, was a big hit in 1958 and became a source of inspiration to a new generati…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:48AM[SHARE]Friday, October 26, 2012
Royal Court, LondonI spy a danger for the theatre in a new form of chic exclusivity. Because everyone wants to see Jez Butterworth's first new play since Jerusalem and because space is limit…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:27PM[SHARE]Theatre Royal Stratford East, LondonAlthough this is the third of Martina Cole's bestselling crime thrillers to be presented at this theatre, it is my first acquaintance with her work. While…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:25PM[SHARE]Thursday, October 25, 2012
Hampstead, LondonAfter plays about Anne Boleyn and Abelard and Héloïse, Howard Brenton is turning into the history man. But I have no complaint about that, since he has chosen the best m…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:00PM[SHARE]Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Belgrade, CoventryAll great dramatists stake out their own particular territory; the problem with William Inge, who had four Broadway hits in the 1950s of which this was the last, is that he…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:18PM[SHARE]The National Theatre of Scotland has scored a coup by appointing the hugely talented Laurie Sansom as its new boss. Now, how about putting a Scot in charge of the Edinburgh festival?It's soo…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:46AM[SHARE]Sunday, October 21, 2012
Odéon, ParisLuc Bondy's production of Harold Pinter's Le Retour (The Homecoming) offers a radically fresh perspective on the play, without destroying its essential fabric. It helps that Bon…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:12AM[SHARE]Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Tricycle, LondonIndhu Rubasingham makes a strong start to her tenure at the Tricycle with this new play about the pride and prejudice that greeted the pioneering African-American actor Ira A…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:09AM[SHARE]Friday, October 12, 2012
A critic once described Alan Bennett as 'England's cultural teddy bear'. As his new play, People, prepares to open in London, Michael Billington argues that he is a more complicated " a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:38AM[SHARE]Thursday, October 11, 2012
Jermyn Street theatre, London'It is a text written to come out of the dark," said Samuel Beckett of this radio play first broadcast by the BBC in 1957. But, although not conceived for the st…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:00PM[SHARE]Rose, KingstonArthur Wing Pinero's 1893 play was a late-Victorian theatrical landmark, so it's good to see it given one of its increasingly rare outings. In the end, this piece of Anglicised…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:11PM[SHARE]Olivier, LondonI have little doubt that this 1625 play about saints and sinners by the Spanish monk Tirso de Molina is a masterpiece, but it would sit more easily in a smaller space, and Bij…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:50AM[SHARE]Wednesday, October 10, 2012
West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsIt is fascinating to see Tennessee Williams's tremendous play so soon after Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms, which has just been revived in London. Both…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:30PM[SHARE]Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Lyric Hammersmith, LondonSubject to obscenity charges in the US and banned in Britain for 16 years, Eugene O'Neill's 1924 play once enjoyed a scandalous reputation. But, although the Lyric's…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:08AM[SHARE]Friday, October 5, 2012
Lyttelton, LondonDespite one of those first-night technical glitches that seem to happen a bit too often at the National, this is a fine revival by Tom Cairns of Howard Barker's tremendous p…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:58PM[SHARE]Royal Court, LondonSometimes a play can be too compressed for its own good. Where her new full-length play Love and Information displays Caryl Churchill's dazzling gift for the elliptical, t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:52AM[SHARE]Thursday, October 4, 2012
Duchess, LondonJonathan Lewis's play, set in a military hospital in 1984, was rapturously received when seen at Derby Playhouse in 1995, and then at London's Donmar. Catching up with it…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:59PM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
