Monday, July 9, 2012
Riverside Studios, LondonThis delightful piece, conceived by Adrian Fisher and Stuart Barham, celebrates the lives and careers of Noël Coward and Ivor Novello. They had a lot in common: bot…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:37PMFriday, July 6, 2012
Swan, Stratford-upon-AvonThe best intentions sometimes go awry. On paper, it might have seemed a good idea to commission a Mexican dramatist, Luis Mario Moncada, to write a play ab…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:01AMThursday, July 5, 2012
Shakespeare's Globe, LondonToby Frow's new Shrew starts with a Bermondsey drunk clambering on stage and threatening to disrupt the evening's entertainment. Older playgoers may recall a simil…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:15PMWednesday, July 4, 2012
Theatre Royal BrightonNew ventures are always welcome and this show marks an attempt to restore this handsome 1807 theatre to its function as a producing house that can feed work into the We…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:35AMSunday, July 1, 2012
A five-hour show? That's not nearly long enoughCan you ever have too much of a good thing? Audiences don't seem to think so. Advertise an event that lasts the best part of a day and you will…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:30PMRoyal Court, LondonIn Some Voices and Blue/Orange, Joe Penhall dealt with society's incapacity to cope with mental illness. Now he turns to the subject of male pregnancy; and what starts out…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:30AMThursday, June 28, 2012
Chichester Festival TheatreCole Porter's cosmopolitan chic essentially belonged to the 1930s, but he enjoyed a late, great hit in 1948 with this backstage story: one that shows the battling …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:25PMWednesday, June 27, 2012
West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsI have moaned constantly about the dearth of new musicals but this theatre has certainly done its bit, with shows ranging from Spend Spend Spend! to The Go-Bet…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:53PMTuesday, June 26, 2012
Bush Theatre, London"What is robbing a bank compared to founding a bank?" asks Brecht in The Threepenny Opera. That idea pervades Dominic Savage's sharp, short theatrical debut. But, althoug…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:00PMMonday, June 25, 2012
Finborough, LondonForty years ago, a Toronto company created a devised play by sending a group of actors to live and work on farms in Ontario. That experience, a landmark in Canadian theatre…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:22PMSunday, June 24, 2012
Hampstead, LondonSurvivors of Gatz will not shrink at the idea of a nine-hour day spent watching three plays by the great Irish dramatist, Tom Murphy. Garry Hynes, who directs them for Galwa…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:00PMFriday, June 22, 2012
Gate, LondonFive years ago Hassan Abdulrazzak caused quite a stir with a debut play, Baghdad Wedding, about life among London's Iraqi exiles. Now at long last comes a second play, The Prophe…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:04PMWednesday, June 20, 2012
Lyttelton, LondonPlays about the legacy of the 1960s are becoming increasingly common. After Mike Bartlett's Love, Love, Love and Alexi Kaye Campbell's Apologia, we now have this debut from …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:21PMSunday, June 17, 2012
Young Vic, LondonAt the curtain call for this show from Belarus Free theatre, a protester shouted that it was "a political provocation". He went on, before clumping noisily out, to declare t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:04PMThursday, June 14, 2012
Noel Coward theatre, LondonI have spent much of my life attacking adaptations. But the glory of this show, created and performed by New York's Elevator Repair Service, is that it is no cut-a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:00AMWednesday, June 13, 2012
Menier Chocolate Factory, London Harvey Fierstein's award-winning trilogy has its place in Broadway history, in that in 1982 it showed a gay hero's quest for love and family could achieve po…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:34PMMonday, June 11, 2012
Royal Court, LondonVivienne Franzmann scored a deserved success with Mogadishu, which examined self-destructive white liberal guilt in a school setting. Her new play extends the theme to att…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:12PMIt is Corden's ability to react in the moment while sticking to the comic structure that makes this an award-worthy performanceHaving lost out in the British theatrical awards to the Franken…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:22AMFriday, June 8, 2012
Donmar Warehouse, LondonThe social responsibility of the scientist was a hot topic when the Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt wrote this play in 1961: this, after all, was a period when …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:37AMWednesday, June 6, 2012
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-AvonThis, of all Shakespeare's plays, badly needs a shot in the arm – and it receives a powerful one in this production by Gregory Doran, the RSC'…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:13PMMonday, June 4, 2012
Various venues, NorthamptonCivilised order confronts unbridled anarchy in Northampton this summer, where Laurie Sansom has had the imaginative idea of staging a trilogy dubbed Festival of Ch…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:25AMSunday, June 3, 2012
A new documentary charts the struggle of Afrikaans playwright Athol Fugard against the violence of apartheid. Michael Billington admires his spiritI have always had slightly mixed feelings a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:45PMShakespeare's Globe, LondonThe final visiting production in the invigorating Globe to Globe season is a much-travelled Hamlet, dating back to 1997, from Lithuania's Meno Fortas com…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:45PMThursday, May 31, 2012
Olivier, LondonWe are at the hub of a modern seat of power. As we hear the whirring sound of a helicopter overhead, frantic desk-wallahs pass urgent messages ever higher up the chain of comm…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:02PMWednesday, May 30, 2012
Open Air theatre, Regent's Park, LondonThis musical had the misfortune to receive its British premiere on the night in 2003 when America invaded Iraq. Now revived by Timothy Sheader, it…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:08PMTuesday, May 29, 2012
It's never been a better time to be a young playwright – but are we missing out on older voices?It's a great time to be a young dramatist. Theatres are hungry for your work. The media love…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:06AMMonday, May 28, 2012
Shakespeare's Globe, LondonOne important aspect of the Globe to Globe season is its appeal to expatriate communities. On a hot Saturday afternoon the Globe was packed with Turks, young and o…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:08PMFinborough, LondonIt is 10 years since the playwright John McGrath died; 46 since this play was last seen in London. Both the man and his work are honoured in this superb revival by Robert H…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:08AMSunday, May 27, 2012
You could easily make up a men's 11 of playwrights passionate about the game and directors, too, are often cricket nuts – so what's the appeal?With the summer game getting into i…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:31PMFriday, May 25, 2012
Alan Ayckbourn, a playwright with a remarkable ability to take the national temperature, is reviving his landmark 1972 play to mark its 40th anniversary"It is difficult to find a bright mome…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:55PMAlmeida, London I find myself wondering what Matthew Dunster's new play is really about. Is it a satire on the perils of TV fame, a study of the fragility of friendship, or a didactic warnin…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:20AM 
