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]Comedy Theatre, LondonThere's only one question to which everyone wants the answer: can Keira Knightley and Elisabeth Moss cut the mustard? The short answer is that they prove as potent a co…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:54PM[SHARE]Crucible Studio, SheffieldA three-play David Hare season kicks off with a revival of his 1978 study of the lies and disappointments of the postwar world. And, even if I'd like to see the pla…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:15PM[SHARE]Young Vic, LondonWhen it first appeared in 2007 Tanya Ronder's adaptation of DBC Pierre's prize-winning novel was somewhat overshadowed by a shooting on a Virginia campus which eerily echoed…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:34PM[SHARE]List of contenders accurately reflects the dominance last year of acting and directing over new writingNo great shocks in the list of this year's Olivier award nominees: it reflects, pretty …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:26AM[SHARE]Finborough, LondonThis is a rediscovery: a 1950 play by Emlyn Williams that provides an exciting suspense-drama, a portrait of the Jekyll-and-Hyde existence of a successful novelist and a me…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:15PM[SHARE]The Gallery Soho, LondonIt makes total sense to present Neil LaBute's 10-year-old play in a chic Charing Cross Road gallery. His theme is the nature of art and the moral responsibility of th…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:22PM[SHARE]Lyttelton, LondonHow on earth do you dramatise climate change? The best answer so far was Steve Waters' double bill, The Contingency Plan, which approached the vast topic through personal re…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:52PM[SHARE]Royal Exchange, ManchesterSchool plays are all the rage. Vivienne Franzmann's piece, joint winner of the 2008 Bruntwood Playwriting Competition, anticipated the vogue in its exploration of t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:53PM[SHARE]High ticket prices are fuelling this rise in box-office takings, and London theatre can't just rely on spin-offs and musicalsI'm always cheered when the theatre is doing well. And, on the su…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:59AM[SHARE]King's Head, LondonMatthew Bugg has written the book and lyrics, composed the score and also directed this late-night chamber musical. While I admire his energy, I wish he could have found a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:15PM[SHARE]Bush, LondonSteve Waters was the first dramatist to comprehensively tackle global warming with The Contingency Plan. He is now ahead of the pack in confronting the subject of so-called "free…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:30PM[SHARE]Lyric, HammersmithJeremy Dyson, who co-wrote the Lyric's long-running Ghost Stories, has now adapted five of Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected. The result is something of a mixed bag. One…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:52PM[SHARE]Jermyn Street, LondonYou don't expect to find a Rattigan "world premiere" in the dramatist's centenary year. In fact, this is the original version of a play produced in 1944 under the title …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:09PM[SHARE]Noel Coward, LondonSponsored by Roman Abramovich, Moscow's Sovremennik Theatre arrived in London for a brief nine-day residence. The largely Russian-speaking first-night audience also greete…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:59PM[SHARE]Almeida LondonThe Almeida has a strong track-record in producing American plays. And it was of one of its favoured sons, Neil LaBute, that I was reminded watching this astute, acerbic and ri…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:42PM[SHARE]Hampstead Theatre, LondonWith the NHS facing its biggest revolution in 60 years, now is the time for a play about the realities of hospital life. But, while Nina Raine follows up her Tribes …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:43AM[SHARE]Cottesloe, National TheatreThis is Peter Hall's fourth production of Shakespeare's most beautiful, opal-like comedy. And, even if it cannot efface golden memories of the one he did at Stratf…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:40PM[SHARE]White Bear, LondonThe textbooks all tell us that postwar British theatre, prior to the Royal Court revolution of the mid-1950s, was as arid as the Gobi desert. But a popular myth, lately den…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:01PM[SHARE]Bush, LondonThere is a long line of plays about educational no-hopers, from Barry Reckord's Skyvers to Nigel Williams's Class Enemy. While John Donnelly's new play, which kicks off a Bush sc…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:18PM[SHARE]Rose, KingstonShakespeare's sonnets can be read in any number of ways: as literary exercise, autobiographical narrative or anatomy of love. Peter Brook clearly leans towards the last. In thi…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:00PM[SHARE]Arcola, LondonThe Arcola has moved to inviting new premises: a converted paint factory in Dalston whose colour blocks were made famous by Turner and Constable and that, with its brick walls …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:31PM[SHARE]Star of Tom Jones and They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, she defied typecastingSusannah York, who has died aged 72, was a vibrant, energetic personality with a devouring passion for work, stron…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:38AM[SHARE]Cock Tavern, LondonPau Miró's play has been a big hit in its native Catalonia but it's not immediately easy to see why. What it offers, in the course of 80 minutes, is a faintly louche va…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:31PM[SHARE]Orange Tree, RichmondStudents of French farce can have a field day with this one. Written in 1875 by Alfred Hennequin and Alfred Delacour, and here niftily translated by Reggie Oliver, it pr…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:46PM[SHARE]Roundhouse, LondonI was tickled by the Observer's recent, inadvertent description of a malt whisky as "a genuine classic which never fails to disappoint". I've always felt that Julius Caesar…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:30PM[SHARE]Theatro Technis, LondonAs a famed singer and actor persecuted for his radical politics and civil-rights campaigning, Paul Robeson has the dimensions of an American tragic hero. And, even if …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:00PM[SHARE]Finborough, LondonAs a novelist, Graham Greene was prepared to experiment: as a dramatist, he was trapped in the conventions of the well-made West End play. That, at least, is the conclusion…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:30PM[SHARE]Royal Albert Hall, LondonCirque du Soleil is often accused of a soulless efficiency. So it must have seemed a bright idea to get Robert Lepage (who also hails from Quebec, where the circus s…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:31PM[SHARE]Riverside Studios, LondonWho would have thought it? One of the strongest theatrical survivors of the mid-1950s turns out to be this whimsical musical by Julian Slade and Dorothy Reynolds abo…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:30PM[SHARE]Little Angel, LondonYou don't, of course, get the whole of Alice in Tim Kane's 90-minute puppet version: no caucus-race, no croquet-mallet flamingos and " perhaps rightly, as the show is aim…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:30PM[SHARE]
