Dukes, LancasterThree young fighters grapple with a world of blue-eyed heroes and foreign-looking villains in Nick Ahad’s witty play Real life has a way of sneaking into the theatre. Only …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:46AMTraverse, EdinburghKwaku Mills is a revelation as a boy growing up amid poverty in this touring revival of Arinzé Kene’s crackling, compelling monologueImagine an inner-city version of Un…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:54AMNew Vic theatre, Newcastle-under-LymeBeatrice and Benedick engage in heartwarming hostilities in Northern Broadsides’ rich and rewarding productionRobin Simpson’s Benedick has just been …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:24AMThe Manipulate festival in Scotland has surreal square dances, puppetry without puppets and jaw-dropping human landscapesIn between shows at the Manipulate festival, a veteran arts producer …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:54AMDerby theatreSabrina Mahfouz has impressively distilled the inspired novel about a world where the power rests with the black populationAt the heart of Malorie Blackman’s young adult novel…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:42AMHull TruckDementia drama and Jacobean bloodbath sit uneasily alongside each other in a reworking of King Lear during the fishing industry’s dying daysThey’re a hard-bitten lot, the Lear …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:04AMThe national theatres of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland have all caused a stir about what they represent. How should they reflect a country’s identity?They had Richard Eyre on the ra…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:42AMNew Vic, Newcastle-under-LymeAn immersive show for the under-fives strikes gold and acts as a primer for Peter Leslie Wild’s inventive and boisterous main stage productionAs is often the c…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:54AMHull TruckA sumptuous choral score is key to this slick, polished production featuring an impressive female Fagin and tightly drilled young companyThe statistics about the working poor in Th…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:04PMFrom Victorian penury to Caribbean party music, new productions at Leeds Playhouse and Northern Stage in Newcastle revisit Dickens’s festive favouriteIt isn’t only the ghosts of Christma…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:12PMTraverse, EdinburghKieran Hurley’s gripping Edinburgh-set two-hander confronts the economic divide in the city and the stranglehold the middle-classes have on the artsKieran Hurley’s pro…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:32AMPantomime legend Johnny McKnight does his usual festive double, starring in Mammy Goose at the Tron in Glasgow – and writing Sleepin’ Cutie at Macrobert, StirlingIs pantomime a reactiona…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:32AMRoyal Lyceum, EdinburghElla Hickson’s adaptation of JM Barrie’s story is a funny and heartbreaking coming-of-age tale for its swashbuckling heroinePeter Pan is as much a concept as a cha…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:48AMTheatre Royal, NewcastlePlacing the story in the context of two rival circuses, Michael Harrison’s show boasts jugglers, skaters and motorcyclistsIf you want the secret behind the UK’s f…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:04AMLive theatre, NewcastlePlaying themselves with humour, grace and honesty, a former inmate and her daughter tell their story and reveal their bond Cheryl and Abigail Byron are on adjacent cha…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:42AMColiseum, OldhamKevin Shaw’s colourful panto is an enjoyable sugar rush seemingly powered by E-numbersFine Time Fontayne and Simeon Truby make their first entrance as the Ugly Sisters wear…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:12AMCast, Doncaster Anna Jordan tunes into intertwined lives and captures the oblivion and camaraderie of the dancefloor in her new dramaIt’s no spoiler to reveal that Pop Music ends with Come…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:36PMNorthern Stage, NewcastleStaged in the round, Elayce Ismail’s production relocates Dylan Thomas’s dramatic poem about the people of Llareggub In divided times, there’s something comfor…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:06AMLive theatre, Newcastle Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher is restaged in a Tyneside mental hospital in a poignant and politically charged musicalIt sounds like a challenge f…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:04PMTraverse, EdinburghAnna Jordan’s four-hander for Frantic Assembly, unfolding across time to tell parallel war stories, is performed with heart and focusA man is trying to cross the sea to …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:24AMUnity, LiverpoolDeparting from convention and reality, Leo Butler’s simulated psychedelic experience crashes around with jolly abandonYou can imagine an Open University programme that sets…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:33AMRoyal Exchange, ManchesterSarah Frankcom gives Arthur Miller’s decline-and-fall drama an extra edge in this powerful productionDon Warrington’s Willy Loman is at the centre of his own un…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:36AMTraverse, EdinburghClare Duffy’s play skirts the big issues as an ecowarrior and her mother clash in a locked bathroom Opening in the week the UN has made dire warnings about climate chang…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:04PMTheatr Clwyd, MoldWilliam Golding’s fable of desert-island anarchy is reinvented for the modern age in Emma Jordan’s brutal, bold productionThere’s a theory being pushed by the psychol…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:33AMRoyal Lyceum, Edinburgh With 50/50 gender-split casting, this comedy of disguise and identity enjoys a playful makeoverYou get a sense of the playfulness of Wils Wilson’s trippy take on Sh…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:32AMTramway, Glasgow The thwarted lover story, retold in dazzling Glaswegian Scots, has raucous spirit and flamboyant hairpieces but its verbal flourishes are lost in acoustic fogEdwin Morgan’…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:36AMVictoria and Albert Museum, LondonA brutal score by Jerskin Fendrix is the driving force behind this bleakly topical reworking of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu RoiSince its premiere in 1896, Alfred J…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:54AMRoyal Lyceum, EdinburghA man sits outside a prison in self-imposed punishment, in this philosophically provocative but dramatically inert dramaThe set is not a million miles from Druid Theat…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:04AMThe Studio, EdinburghStewart Laing sensitively takes Édouard Louis’s groundbreaking coming-of-age story from page to stageWhen Édouard Louis was growing up in a poor working-class villag…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:54AMAssembly Checkpoint, EdinburghFrom corrupt cartels to ‘snakehead’ smugglers, the journalist-cum-author presents a plain-talking breakdown of complex global illsWhen Misha Glenny ventured…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:36AMRoundabout at Summerhall, EdinburghDating apps and cute cat gifs are stifling a couple’s ability to communicate in Eve Nicol’s play for Middle ChildWhat’s a monogamist to do in the age…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:24AM
