Friday, March 4, 2011
Shakespeare – and in particular the long-awaited reopening of the RSC's Stratford theatre – takes centre stage this weekAfter the Queen (such a celebrated theatregoer) opens the building…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:07PMThursday, March 3, 2011
Liverpool PlayhouseSophocles's Oedipus may be 2,500 years old, but Steven Berkoff's version looks as if it got stuck, theatrically, in the 1970s. That's not to say it isn't a striking evenin…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:30PMWith less money to go around, theatres should be working together to grow their audiences, not fighting for the scraps"Collaboration" was a much-repeated mantra at the State of the Arts con…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:28AMWednesday, March 2, 2011
Lowry, SalfordJohn Osborne's Look Back in Anger borrowed from Ibsen's A Doll's House in Jimmy and Alison's erotic game of "squirrels and bears". The baby talk is ratcheted up in Bryony Laver…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:15PMTuesday, March 1, 2011
Young Vic, LondonRain on stage has been popular in recent years, drenching everything from Howard Davies's Philistines to the Take That musical, Never Forget. But rain is the entir…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:13PMMonday, February 28, 2011
Hambledon Village Hall, SurreyMarvellous, unlikely – and you might well add preposterous and charming to the list for this family show created by one of theatre's most cherishable young co…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:45PMSunday, February 27, 2011
Theatre 503, LondonPeering back 30 years to the clashes that took place on our streets between rightwing extremists and the Anti-Nazi League in the early 1980s, Sharon Clark's London debut i…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:02PMFriday, February 25, 2011
Trafalgar Studios, LondonMusicals don't always have to make a big song and dance, and Adam Gwon's sung-through effort certainly doesn't. Its restrained minimalism is part of its charm, somet…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:03PMFrom A Doll's House in Salford to Million Dollar Quartet in the West End, this week's theatre picks are teasingly wide-ranging Another teasingly wide-ranging week of theatre ahead. Just to r…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:16PMPerformance artist Brian Lobel is buying minutes in a London market this week – then selling them back on DVD next month"Can I have a minute of your time?" Most of the time we hurry along …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:03AMThursday, February 24, 2011
Lyceum, SheffieldFrances and Madeleine are two women with the promise of youth long behind them. Frances has been a homebody, living for her husband and children, all now gone. Madelein…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:41PMWednesday, February 23, 2011
West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsThe first hint of just how challenging the Terence Rattigan centenary may prove for British directors comes with Sarah Esdaile's revival of his masterpiec…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:44PMTuesday, February 22, 2011
Gate, LondonIt is another ordinary night in for teenage Angela and her dad. He brightly suggests a pizza and DVDs. She kids him, calling him "a loser nerd". But the tension is so tight you c…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:21PMYouth unemployment and cuts to the arts risk making theatre more of a closed shop than ever – but it cannot afford to shut out the next generation of artistsLast week I spent a happy after…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:29AMMonday, February 21, 2011
Tricycle, LondonHumans are mostly made of water and, as the scientist giving a lecture about rising sea levels informs us at the start of this intriguing devised show, "water is a sociable m…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:15PMLandor, LondonAndrew Lloyd Webber and Alan Ayckbourn are not used to flops, but their collaboration on this PG Wodehouse-inspired musical lasted only 38 performances in the West End in 1975.…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:48PMSunday, February 20, 2011
Hampstead theatre, LondonOdysseus has been gone for 20 years fighting the Trojan wars. His wife, Penelope, waits patiently for his return in their glass-fronted villa facing the sea, and in …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:00PMFriday, February 18, 2011
As Frankenstein comes to life in London this week, there are plenty of other reanimations happening across the UK tooThe two big openings of the coming week are Robert Lepage's Blue Dragon a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:27PMThursday, February 17, 2011
Peacock, LondonShoes makes the average episode of Sex and the City seem like Tolstoy. This two-hour peon to footwear – from Louboutins to flippers, from Jimmy Choos to Birkenstocks – is …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:08PMWednesday, February 16, 2011
Salisbury PlayhouseConstance Middleton's friends all have her best interests at heart. They think she should know that her husband of 15 years, the successful surgeon John Middleton, is havi…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:20PMEnvironmental themes are hitting the stage in plays left, right and centre, but artists must strive to be more than just advocatesWhen TippingPoint – an organisation that brings together …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:46PMTuesday, February 15, 2011
Royal & Derngate, NorthamptonDiana, played by the excellent Marianne Oldham, is a woman who has always stayed in the shadows, supporting her husband, Michael, an admired colonel and MP. But …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:30PMMonday, February 14, 2011
Nuffield, SouthamptonDirector Natalie Abrahami takes a swaggering, Rupert Goold-style approach to this touring production for Headlong Theatre, an evening that transposes Shakespeare's comed…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:30PMFriday, February 11, 2011
With Argentinian and Canadian playwrights, a new Arthur Miller and Sue Glover's Marilyn, there's a cosmopolitan feel in Scottish theatre this week. And there's plenty going on elsewhere, too…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:51PMGoing easy on MPs over arts cuts, despite broken promises of a 'golden age', was one of several shortcomings at the conferenceJust like last year, the annual State of the Arts (Sota) confere…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:06PMThursday, February 10, 2011
Southwark Playhouse, London"Marriage," declared Mae West, "is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution yet." Neither is Bobby, the anti-hero of Stephen Sondheim's 1970 music…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:35PMWednesday, February 9, 2011
Wyndhams, LondonThere are few more enjoyable sights than watching liberal hypocrisy being given a good thrashing, and Bruce Norris's Royal Court transfer arrives in the West End with such a …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:34PMTuesday, February 8, 2011
Ustinov, BathMemory is a construct in this double bill of Pinter shorts, two plays that are like sharp shards of reflecting glass.In the 20-minute Monologue, a dapper, ageing man (the excell…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:15PMOctagon, BoltonIt is a brave director who offers an audience a modern-dress Romeo and Juliet on a nearly bare stage, but since he transformed Bolton into an essential theatre-going destinati…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:15PMMonday, February 7, 2011
Royal Exchange Studio, ManchesterEven the cruelest, iciest winter eventually turns to spring. In Andrew Sheridan's dense, difficult and brave debut play the shoots can barely be glimpsed, bu…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:26PMSunday, February 6, 2011
Chichester Festival TheatreWhen cowed evacuee William Beech is billeted to the elderly Tom Oakley in Dorset, it looks as if he is out of the frying pan and into the fire. Will is covered wit…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:06PM 
