Monday, June 6, 2016
Shakespeare’s Globe, LondonAoife Duffin is an electrifying Kate in Caroline Byrne’s splendid Irish version, which injects touches of Yeats, Wilde and Beckett Shakespeare’s comedy of Pe…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:15AMWednesday, June 1, 2016
St James theatre, LondonAn attempt to adapt the Oscar-winning film for the stage cannot disguise its origins sufficiently enough to work as theatreIgnoring the biblical warning against putti…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:43PMFriday, April 22, 2016
Criterion, LondonThis thrillingly inventive piece about bed-hopping gem thieves is a slapstick delightThe financial prospects of young actors are probably only studied by economists as a hor…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:45AMFriday, April 15, 2016
Revivals from Arnold Wesker’s heyday prove the enduring quality of his work, where autobiographical detail went hand in hand with experimental stagecraftCelebrated playwrights often seem t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:10AMWith a sexually confused Putin and a Bond villain Blair, Corbyn the Musical has some pretty broad caricatures – but it’s even-handed in its politics. And it’s not the first musical to …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:55AMSunday, April 10, 2016
Victoria Palace Theatre, London Director Stephen Daldry made amusing artistic virtue of legal necessity and Sir Elton John savoured the show’s success Even before sampling the refreshments…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:33AMMonday, April 4, 2016
Dench deserved to break records for her psychologically probing in turn The Winter’s Tale, and Rufus Norris saw his vision for the National Theatre validated. But the Oliviers still need t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:52AMMonday, March 28, 2016
On May 8 1956, John Osborne's Look Back in Anger premiered at the Royal Court in London. It shocked the theatre world, some acclaiming it as the voice of a new generation, others damning it …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:13PMThursday, March 24, 2016
The storyline is contrived around a string of pop hits in this homage to the photo-stories and problem pages of the classic teenage girls’ magazine Aimed at a largely female audience with…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:15PMWednesday, March 23, 2016
Moving The Maids from France to the US adds a powerful racial subtext to Genet’s original, while Anouilh’s Welcome Home, Captain Fox! fares less well when set in America. Not all plays b…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:10AMWednesday, March 9, 2016
In 400 years since his death, only a few playwrights – including George Bernard Shaw and Edward Bond – have turned the Bard into a characterThe 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:00AMMonday, March 7, 2016
Denise Gough has been horrifying audiences – and scoring rave reviews – for her portrayal of an addict in People, Places and Things. The Irish actor talks about being one of 11 siblings,…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:03PMTuesday, March 1, 2016
David Peace’s modern classic The Damned United is being staged in Leeds, a city with no great love for its subject: charismatic, alcoholic football manager Brian Clough. Mark Lawson on the…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:14AMMonday, February 29, 2016
Best actor nomination for Farinelli and the King comes hours after winning Academy Award for best supporting actorThe “double O” category in Britain has traditionally been associated wit…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:43PMSaturday, February 27, 2016
Between them, two current stagings of Ibsen and Chekhov classics offer audiences five intermissions. While some see an art form reasserting itself, the move comes with a number of hitchesA r…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:18AMThursday, February 18, 2016
HG Wells’ prose is the hero of Jeff Wayne’s full-blown musical revival, which has enough bombast to drown out any ringtones in the audienceThere was always an overlap between the concept…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:32AMWednesday, February 10, 2016
Debut plays can be instant classics and false starts. From Ibsen’s Catilina to Shaffer’s Five Finger Exercise, they often contain thrilling hints of where a dramatist is headingImagine t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:16AMSunday, January 31, 2016
First Direct Arena, LeedsA greatest hits show made more poignant after Mortimer’s recent heart bypass meandered even more than usualEvery performance of Reeves and Mortimer’s new stage t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:40PMTuesday, January 19, 2016
A previously unperformed 1900 play about a proto-feminist painter has received a rehearsed reading at the National Theatre. Is a full revival now in order?It is both the dream and the nightm…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:54AMSunday, January 17, 2016
Sharon D Clarke studied to be a social worker before becoming a doctor … on Holby City. Now she’s an Olivier award-winning stage star, singing the blues in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Sh…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:44AMMonday, January 11, 2016
From new writing at the Royal Court to revivals at the NT, theatre schedules suggest that plays by women are finally getting better representation – but there’s still cause for concern O…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:10PMThursday, December 24, 2015
Complex writing, leftfield family shows and thoroughly bleak dramas make theatre stages far from jolly this Christmas. Praise be, then, for the new wave of pseudo-pantoThe theatrical form mo…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:38AMWednesday, December 23, 2015
The year brought radical rethinkings of Chekhov and Beckett, superior Shakespeares and new plays that were daring, engaging and powerfulChekhov wrote so few plays, which are revived so often…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:48AMTuesday, December 15, 2015
A lost work is often buried for a reason, but the recent rediscovery of a seminal Miller play, No Villain, confirms his brilliance and anticipates later masterpiecesThe biggest dream of all …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:39AMSunday, December 6, 2015
Recent openings present theatregoers with a choice between interval-free one-acters such as Here We Go and epics including Henry VIt struck me recently how useful it would be if theatre tick…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:24PMFriday, December 4, 2015
Mixing spy thriller with quantum physics, Stoppard’s play Hapgood received rude and confused reviews in 1988. Will a rare revival reverse its fortunes?In March 1988, Tom Stoppard gave an i…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:44AMWednesday, December 2, 2015
The appointment of Sheffield Theatres’ artistic director to lead at Chichester Festival theatre reflects his talent for musicals – and his innovative recordDaniel Evans has been appointe…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:42AMMonday, November 30, 2015
The temptation to update the text of an old play for a modern audience is resisted in two productions that refresh the originals in more intelligent waysTwo striking revivals last week – o…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:16AMFriday, November 20, 2015
As a female playwright who didn’t give interviews, Churchill has in the past been underestimated. So how has she come to be celebrated as one of Britain’s greatest dramatists?In the last…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:34AMWednesday, November 18, 2015
Wolverhampton GrandDavid Hasselhoff plays a nightclub owner who once, strangely, starred in Baywatch in this creaky addition to his personality cultMany actors, rattling around Britain in a …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:33AMFriday, November 13, 2015
Theatres can't keep asking us to hang about in the dark while actors move house. We may as well go to the cinemaAll performers hope for applause – but the new London West End production of…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:28AM 
