Shaw Theatre, LondonOn the opening night of former Radio 1 DJ Mike Read's musical about the Wilde one, there is a problem with the sound. The radio microphones, especially that of Peter Blak…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:21PMChapter, CardiffThe week leading up to the opening ceremony of the Olympics is the perfect context for staging Elfriede Jelinek's epic play about the culture of sport. As excitement and grum…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:07PMBrewery, BristolTwelve short plays in less than two hours is always a tall order. How to avoid each play feeling like a sketch, merely the beginning of something? Peter Oswald's plays, which…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:12PMVarious venues, WalesWales's contribution to the Cultural Olympiad is nothing if not eye-catching. "I've just seen a plane on the Heads of the Valleys road!" one startled local tweeted on Su…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:15PMCardiff city centreThis is fun. Give It a Name theatre company take audiences into the streets and hidden nooks of Cardiff at dusk as they recreate scenes from the 1970s spy thriller by Harr…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:08PMClwyd Theatr Cymru, MoldIn his first play, actor Matthew Trevannion returns to his home town of Pontypool. That adage about writing what you know serves him well in this impre…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:30PMUstinov Studio, BathSarah Ruhl's extended title for her 2009 play – the last in the Ustinov's impressive season of contemporary American plays – is a nod to its two layers. Yes, it is ab…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:09PMPontadarwe Leisure CentreThere could hardly be a better, more resonant context for NoFit State's latest circus show than the current tumultuous events across Europe. "Everything's going…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:35PMPatti Pavilion, SwanseaDylan Thomas, whose short story Just Like Little Dogs inspired this collaboration between Frantic Assembly and National Theatre Wales, would like this show, you would …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:15PMChapter, CardiffWith their assured production of Caryl Churchill's Serious Money last year, Waking Exploits established themselves as a young Welsh theatre company to watch. In this exhilara…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:00PMTobacco Factory, BristolAndrew Hilton's annual Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory season has done it again. This vivid, superlative production of Chekhov's last play, translated by Stephen M…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:45PMUstinov Studio, BathAdam Rapp's award-winning 2005 play about a love triangle shaped by double-unrequited love begins and ends with a desperate act. In the first, playwright Matt, in Amsterd…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:59PMSherman Cymru, CardiffIt is another coup, and a rather poignant one, for National Theatre Wales: bringing Peter Gill back to direct in his native city for the first time. He does so in a rev…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:30PMNorthcott, ExeterThis adaptation of Dick King-Smith's novel set in a 1940s farming community is heart-gladdening theatre from the start. Lanterns hang in the trees over a barn where a farmer…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:15PMTheatr Clwyd, MoldThe look of this production of Arnold Wesker's 1959 play couldn't be more on–trend. Ruth Hall's design is all postwar 50s shabby chic: a gorgeous nostalgia-fest of retro …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:33PMArnolfini, BristolA performance piece stemming from the quantum theories of Erwin Schrödinger – he of the cat that is simultaneously dead and alive notion – sounds heavy enough. But a r…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:37AMTaliesin, SwanseaFew modern classics bring more challenges, in particular the burden of expectation, than Anthony Burgess's dystopian shocker. How do you stage it to give the full force of i…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:30PMNational Theatre Wales's first musical, The Village Social, is a dark-comic cocktail of the Bacchae and the Vicar of Dibley. Elisabeth Mahoney joins its rural tourGiven the buzz about him at…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:57AMTaliesin, SwanseaAfter the sexy energy of their production of Dangerous Liaisons last year, Mappa Mundi's take on Shakespeare's romcom, featuring bickering lovers and disgraced innocence, is…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:00PMBrewery, BristolTwins, living on an island 99 metres off the coast of Bournemouth, greet the audience. They are standing in a fish tank. "I'm Peter," says the young woman, played by Susie Ri…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:18PMChapter, CardiffIn the nine years since Gary Owen's ferociously bleak dystopian play premiered, its concerns have grown ever more pressing. This is a world divided into the beautiful and rep…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:34PMNew theatre, ExeterIt is not difficult to guess who Thomas Heywood was flattering with his 1599 swashbuckling play about a plucky maid called Bess who is chaste and true, and rules in a man'…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:04PMThe Brewery, BristolPart of the Bristol Ferment season dedicated to new and emerging theatrical work and talent, Discombobulated immediately lives up to its fine title. Performers Angus Barr…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:28AMAberystwyth Arts CentreWhile most of theatreland beyond Edinburgh slows or closes in high summer, Aberystwyth Arts Centre puts on a musical, one of its biggest shows of the year. Last year's…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:30PMChapter, CardiffDanceWhat is it to be a woman right here, right now? How can you articulate through movement? And what can you say? Caroline Sabin isn't the only artist to pose these questio…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:59PMChapter, CardiffClare Bayley's powerful 2007 play, performed in a 40ft shipping container and revived for Refugee Week, is one you are glad to flee when it ends. A deliberately gruelling and…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:30PMRadio 3's staging of Terence Rattigan's 1941 play provided a warm and moving introduction to the playwright's workThe Terence Rattigan season, which celebrates the centenary of the playwrigh…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:00AMClwyd Theatr Cymru, MoldSome productions of Shakespeare's comedy about the taming of a spirited young woman into happy obedience are an uneasy watch for anyone with even remotely feminist sy…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:18PMTobacco Factory, BristolHistory can be a slippery old business. It's not just the contrasting versions of the past, but a question of how we relate to the big events and key dates. These iss…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:44PM