Orange Tree, RichmondThere is no shilly-shallying in this excellent revival of Allan Monkhouse's 1911 social comedy: within minutes, we learn that the eponymous housemaid has been impregnate…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:27PM[SHARE]The British have long been sniffy about French theatre, but classic playwrights from Molière to Marivaux deserve another lookWe seem to have a love-hate relationship with French drama. We o…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:49AM[SHARE]Almeida, LondonAddiction is a difficult subject to dramatise: it depends on repetition, isolation, an inability to connect with other people. But, although David Eldridge's moving new play d…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:46PM[SHARE]Cottesloe, LondonIf you are going to imitate, always imitate the best; even if Ryan Craig's new play is full of echoes of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and All My Sons, they are good m…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:57PM[SHARE]Hampstead, LondonMae West liked a guy who took his time, and Mike Leigh certainly exercises that privilege in this 2¾-hour play originally seen at Hampstead in 1979. But, although there m…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:17PM[SHARE]Vaudeville, LondonYou never know quite where you are with Neil LaBute. As he has shown in plays such as The Shape of Things and The Mercy Seat, he's a moralist who seems to delight in depict…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:35PM[SHARE]Allam stole the best actor crown and Smith was queen of musicals, but new plays were thin on the ground. And funding cuts were the ghost at the feastIn pictures: The Laurence Olivier awardsO…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:39AM[SHARE]How does theatre in Germany compare with here? What are its obsessions? Who are its stars? For the Guardian's New Europe series, Michael Billington hits BerlinI came to Berlin eager to learn…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:31PM[SHARE]Theatre Royal Haymarket, LondonSienna Miller may be the box-office draw, but Trevor Nunn's magnificent revival of Terence Rattigan's 1942 play is an ensemble achievement. And that seems appr…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:33AM[SHARE]Duchess, LondonTim Firth is clearly not a man to let a bad idea go to waste. Twenty years ago he wrote a one-act play, Man of Letters, about an encounter between age and youth on a Batley ro…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:58PM[SHARE]Royal Shakespeare, Stratford-upon-AvonStratford's new stage already blazes with life. The RSC has coupled King Lear with a revival of Rupert Goold's celebrated production of one of the trick…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:25PM[SHARE]Royal Shakespeare TheatreIt works. That's one's instant verdict on the transformed Royal Shakespeare Theatre. And it succeeds precisely because it feels new and strangely familiar. The old a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:02PM[SHARE]Apollo, LondonCoward's comedies are always bankable West End prospects. But Thea Sharrock's revival of this 1941 piece has lost some sheen since it was first seen at the Theatre Royal, Bath …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:59PM[SHARE]Dr Johnson's House, LondonRarely do a play and its setting match as well as this. Seated in the garret of Dr Johnson's house in Gough Square, off Fleet Street, we meet the great man himself,…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:20PM[SHARE]London PalladiumThe Victorian theatre of spectacle is alive and well, and residing at the London Palladium. But although this adaptation of the Frank Baum book and the 1939 movie, with addit…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:53PM[SHARE]Bush, LondonWhatever its economic woes, Ireland continues to yield good new dramatists. Deirdre Kinahan, making her UK debut in a production by Tall Tales theatre company, has lit on a …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:14PM[SHARE]More shows than ever seem to be abandoning the half-way pause, and running straight through. To pee or not to pee? That is the question"Did you have a good interval?" asks a character in Mic…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:45AM[SHARE]Noel Coward, London1956 was a momentous year: the Suez crisis, the Hungarian revolution, Khruschev's denuniciation of Stalin. But it was also a time of cultural upheaval, and this exuberantl…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:15PM[SHARE]Jermyn Street, LondonLong before it became trendy to attack celebrity culture, Alan Ayckbourn satirised it brilliantly in his 1988 Man of the Moment. He returned to the theme in this play, w…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:58PM[SHARE]Menier Chocolate Factory, LondonTheatre can offer many things: entertainment, enlightenment, ecstasy. But this strange show is something else: theatre as therapy. In the first half Ruby Wax,…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:34PM[SHARE]Olivier Theatre, LondonForget Boris Karloff with a bolt through his neck. Forget even Peter Boyle as the new, improved monster singing Puttin' On The Ritz in the Mel Brooks pastiche. What yo…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:46PM[SHARE]Olivier Theatre, London Continue reading...
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:46PM[SHARE]'Keep off the stage when you're on duty'"Imprisoned in every fat man," Cyril Connolly once wrote, "a thin man is wildly signalling to be let out." And inside every critic, it seems, lurks a …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:15PM[SHARE]Donmar, LondonGiven the Donmar's exemplary musical track record, it is a bit of a shock to find them importing this flimsy, vacuous diversion. Like Grease and Legally Blonde, it has a vaguel…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:09PM[SHARE]Royal Court, LondonOne of the virtues of the Royal Court's International Playwrights Season is that it brings us news from abroad. And this intriguing 90-minute play by Pedro Miguel Rozo, se…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:00PM[SHARE]Barbican, LondonRobert Lepage made his name internationally with The Dragons' Trilogy, created in 1985. Now he returns to the subject of the cultural collision of east and west in what he ca…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:26PM[SHARE]Crucible, SheffieldDavid Hare's play gets richer with time. Acclaimed in 1990 for its accurate portrait of a Church of England in crisis, it now seems a perfect metaphor for British ins…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:06PM[SHARE]Jerwood Vanbrugh, LondonA special fascination attaches to the early work of celebrated dramatists: you invariably get a first sketch of their lifelong obsessions. This youthful Noël …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:17PM[SHARE]Print Room, London"Can't a ghost story reveal insights into human nature?" Alan Ayckbourn asked before this play's 2002 Scarborough premiere. The answer is that of course it can: one has onl…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:44PM[SHARE]Orange Tree, RichmondNo one could accuse this theatre of ducking the Arab-Israeli conflict. A year ago it staged an absorbing play, Ben Brown's The Promise, about the Balfour Declaration of …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:56AM[SHARE]Royal Court, LondonClimate change drama is the new growth industry. But, while the National's Greenland is entirely issue-driven, Richard Bean's new play uses characters to explore ideas. Th…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:20PM[SHARE]
