Thursday, October 11, 2012
Rose, KingstonArthur Wing Pinero's 1893 play was a late-Victorian theatrical landmark, so it's good to see it given one of its increasingly rare outings. In the end, this piece of Anglicised…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:11PMOlivier, LondonI have little doubt that this 1625 play about saints and sinners by the Spanish monk Tirso de Molina is a masterpiece, but it would sit more easily in a smaller space, and Bij…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:50AMWednesday, October 10, 2012
West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsIt is fascinating to see Tennessee Williams's tremendous play so soon after Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms, which has just been revived in London. Both…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:30PMTuesday, October 9, 2012
Lyric Hammersmith, LondonSubject to obscenity charges in the US and banned in Britain for 16 years, Eugene O'Neill's 1924 play once enjoyed a scandalous reputation. But, although the Lyric's…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:08AMFriday, October 5, 2012
Lyttelton, LondonDespite one of those first-night technical glitches that seem to happen a bit too often at the National, this is a fine revival by Tom Cairns of Howard Barker's tremendous p…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:58PMRoyal Court, LondonSometimes a play can be too compressed for its own good. Where her new full-length play Love and Information displays Caryl Churchill's dazzling gift for the elliptical, t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:52AMThursday, October 4, 2012
Duchess, LondonJonathan Lewis's play, set in a military hospital in 1984, was rapturously received when seen at Derby Playhouse in 1995, and then at London's Donmar. Catching up with it…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:59PMTuesday, October 2, 2012
Donmar Warehouse, LondonRacine in English? It always poses a problem, but we're getting steadily better at it. And director Josie Rourke and translator Alan Hollinghurst come up with a radic…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:48PMMenier Chocolate Factory, LondonHas anyone noticed the link between this once-famous 1892 farce by Brandon Thomas and Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot? What happens to the Jack Lemmon charact…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:36PMSunday, September 30, 2012
The American playwright's masterpiece, an explosive story of sexual repression, has suffered at the hands of directors and censorsGiven that it is Tennessee Williams's best play, it is surpr…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:00PMThe American playwright's masterpiece, an explosive story of sexual repression, has suffered at the hands of directors and censors Continue reading...
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:00PMMinerva, ChichesterHow do you play Noël Coward's famous comedy? For its verbal musicality or its emotional reality? Overstress either and the play suffers. Jonathan Kent's revival gets the …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:45PMFriday, September 28, 2012
Unicorn, LondonThis moving, 75-minute play by David Greig tells the true story of Janusz Korczak who, in the second world war, created an orphanage for more than 200 children inside the Wars…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:15PMThursday, September 27, 2012
Harold Pinter, LondonAlan Ayckbourn's brilliantly intricate comedy, first seen in Scarborough in 1984 and then at the National, sits uneasily in the West End. It demands a company, a sense o…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:57PMMonday, September 24, 2012
Prince of Wales, LondonThere is a good musical to be written about the Beatles, covering their artistic achievements as well as the internal friction that led to their breakup. Unfortunately…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:01PMThursday, September 20, 2012
This French production swathes Strindberg's naturalistic tragedy in nonsensical Gallic chicI am all for radical rethinks of the classics. London, for instance, boasts few better evenings tha…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:34PMUstinov Studio, BathIn the early 1730s, a young Welsh music teacher called James Parry had a raging affair with his pupil Mary Powell, a wealthy heiress. He hoped for marriage but was jilted…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:52PMWednesday, September 19, 2012
Apollo, LondonWhat with contributions from Simon Callow, Michael Pennington and Ian McKellen, the one-person Shakespeare show is a somewhat crowded field. And while Roger Rees, a Royal Shake…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:07AMTuesday, September 18, 2012
Southwark Playhouse, London"An empty comedy of intrigue without any reality of emotion whatsoever" was the crushing verdict of critic Bonamy Dobrée on this once-popular 1709 play by Susanna…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:30PMAs a new blue plaque pays tribute to Pinter's Hackney, and Barry Reckord is commemorated in Shepherd's Bush, there has never been a better time to invest in the next generation of writersHow…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:51PMPerry Pontac writes: After retiring from the stage in the late 1980s, John Moffatt (obituary, 17 September) largely concentrated on BBC radio drama work. He was incomparable. He appeared in …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:00AMFriday, September 14, 2012
Royal Court, LondonCaryl Churchill's new play has 57 scenes, runs 110 minutes and employs 16 actors to play more than 100 characters. Too much information?But one of the many points made by …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:18PMYoung Vic, LondonTextual tinkering with the classics rarely works. Better to go the whole hog, as Benedict Andrews does in this radical new Three Sisters, which is set in today's Russia, pep…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:56AMWednesday, September 12, 2012
Old Vic, LondonIbsen's Hedda was once described as a hoop through which every aspiring female actor must jump; and Sheridan Smith performs the feat with commendable ease and agility. But Ann…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:42PMHampstead theatre, LondonWhen David Hare's play was first seen in 1998, it suffered from the miscasting of the central roles of Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie). Now, in Neil Armf…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:00PMTuesday, September 11, 2012
Almeida, LondonJonathan Pryce is the latest actor to scale Mount Lear and, although it's getting a bit crowded on the summit these days, he gives a striking, individualistic performance in a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:35PMSunday, September 9, 2012
Orange Tree, RichmondSeductive snaps of a semi-nude blonde model adorn the balconies of this intimate theatre. Far from signalling a sudden descent into exploitative sex farce, the…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:15PMFriday, September 7, 2012
Theatre 503, LondonTim Roseman and Paul Robinson have enjoyed a fruitful six-year tenure as joint directors of this south London new-writing powerhouse. To mark Roseman's departure they have…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:49AMWednesday, September 5, 2012
Old Rep, BirminghamShakespeare transcends national frontiers; and in this extraordinary Catalan collage, conceived and directed by the vibrantly experimental director Calixto Bieito, you sen…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:51AMMonday, August 27, 2012
Southwark Playhouse, LondonCorneille called this play, written in 1636 when he was barely 30, a "strange monster". Ever since a fabulous Giorgio Strehler production in Paris in 1984, however…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:00PMTuesday, August 21, 2012
Barbican, LondonI've always thought there's a dodgy brilliance to Carousel. Musically it is far and away the most sophisticated of the Rodgers and Hammerstein operettas, yet lyrically it com…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:27AM 
