Sunday, October 30, 2011
Not everyone liked 13 and The Faith Machine – but if drama isn't for airing big ideas, then what is it for?What does a critic do when he finds himself out of step with majority opinion? I&…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:45PMWednesday, October 26, 2011
Hampstead Theatre, LondonWallis Simpson is, mysteriously, back in fashion. But Nicholas Wright's new play is not, as Madonna's new film reportedly is, a glowing personal portrait. Instead it…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:09PMTuesday, October 25, 2011
Olivier theatre, LondonMike Bartlett has moved from writing minimalist dramas to maximalist epics without any intervening stage of development. Having tackled climate change in Earthquakes i…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:30PMMonday, October 24, 2011
Harold Pinter theatre, LondonIt is highly appropriate that Ariel Dorfman's 1990 moral thriller is the first play to be presented in this newly-named theatre. Not only is Harold Pinter one of…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:39PMSunday, October 23, 2011
Wilton's Music Hall, LondonOnce shunned by the British theatre, Racine is edging back into fashion. It is well worth the detour to London's East End to catch Irina Brown's modern-dress reviv…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:36PMThursday, October 20, 2011
Royal Shakespeare, Stratford-upon-AvonThe Sixties are back with a vengeance. After Bond's Saved and Osborne's Inadmissible Evidence we now have an RSC revival of Peter Weiss's 1964 dialectic…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:23PMActor who excelled at playing women of strength, wit and charmSheila Allen, who has died aged 78, was an actor of extraordinary range and power, and a delightful, independent-minde…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:49AMRoyal Court, LondonApril de Angelis has written a funny, generous play about a woman – a left-leaning feminist who once protested at Greenham Common – facing a crisis at the age of 50. B…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:11AMTuesday, October 18, 2011
Donmar Warehouse, LondonJohn Osborne and Samuel Beckett are always seen as opposites. But, just as Beckett was the poet of terminal stages, so Osborne's 1964 near-monodrama is a powerful stu…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:44PMTricycle, LondonAs a prelude to next year's season on the nuclear bomb, the Tricycle revives Lee Blessing's play based on an unofficial encounter between US and Soviet arms negotiators that …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:59PMMonday, October 17, 2011
There are three strong contenders to fill Michael Boyd's shoes: Gregory Doran, Rupert Goold and David Farr. Or could a Shakespearean twist see the job going to a maverick outsider?Everyone i…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:10AMSunday, October 16, 2011
Bush, LondonI confess that this is a partial response to the vast enterprise with which Josie Rourke has chosen to christen the spaciously handsome new Bush theatre. The event consists …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:00PMThursday, October 13, 2011
Lyric Hammersmith, LondonBecause we see it so rarely, we forget that Edward Bond's Saved is a play rather than a cause celebre. And watching Sean Holmes's powerful production, the first majo…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:53PMSt Pancras Church, LondonLast winter in Athens I discovered the work of a major Greek director, Theodoros Terzopoulos. The piece I saw, based on the letters of Elizabeth I and Mary Quee…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:17PMTest your knowledge of the man behind the play that shocked Britain in 1965, Saved, and which is now enjoying a revival at London's Lyric HammersmithMichael Billington
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:51AMWednesday, October 12, 2011
Palace, WatfordAs a playwright, Julian Mitchell is part of a vanishing breed: the fastidious craftsman who knows how to explore ideas while generating suspense. And I certainly enjoyed Mitch…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:42PMMonday, October 10, 2011
Finborough, LondonNo Irish play in recent months has given me more pleasure than this revival of a forgotten piece by St John Ervine. Written in 1911, long before the Belfast-born Ervine bec…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:00PMReviewers who refuse to cover certain kinds of theatre are doing the art a disservice. And I should knowJohn Gielgud once said he sympathised with critics. It must be awful, he felt, to cons…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:08AMSunday, October 9, 2011
Arts Theatre, LondonThe BBC faces cutbacks; audience ratings are examined with microscopic precision; the axing of a popular soap star provokes national headlines – in some respects Frank …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:58AMFriday, October 7, 2011
Chichester Festival theatreProductions of Sondheim's dark masterpiece tend to oscillate between a quasi-industrial vastness and a psychologically revealing intimacy. The great quality of Jon…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:15PMWednesday, October 5, 2011
Wyndhams Theatre, LondonI think now, as I did when I first saw it in 1988, that Alfred Uhry's Pulitzer prize-winning play is not much more than a pleasing anecdote about the growing amity be…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:17PMLyttelton, LondonConor McPherson has in the past shown a genius for investing the melancholy of modern Irish life with a sinister undertow. Now he has thrown caution to the winds by setting …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:08AMTuesday, October 4, 2011
After four years, the adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's book is still going strong, and providing the RSC with vital income. But why do people love it so much?In racing parlance, War Horse is…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:59PMMonday, October 3, 2011
Aldwych, LondonEveryone remembers the 1967 movie in which Paul Newman got to eat 50 eggs. But this stage version by Emma Reeves goes back to the Donn Pearce novel on which the film was based…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:29PMFriday, September 30, 2011
Menier Chocolate Factory, LondonIf you were being charitable, you might say that Saul Rubinek, an experienced Canadian actor, has written a satire on male manipulativeness in the manner of N…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:27PMWednesday, September 28, 2011
Old Vic, LondonRecent London revivals of Synge's 1907 play have tended to treat it as a dark rural tragedy. Refreshingly, John Crowley's new production, which includes a band of itinerant mu…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:00PMSunday, September 25, 2011
Versatile actor and writer often called upon to play toffs and bumbling clericsThe actor Jonathan Cecil, who has died of pneumonia aged 72 after suffering from emphysema, spent much of his …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:47PMVersatile actor and writer often called upon to play toffs and bumbling clerics Continue reading...
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:47PMSt Giles' Cripplegate, LondonI've no doubt that this Jericho House production acquired enormous political resonance when it toured recently to Jerusalem, Haifa and the West Bank. It is, afte…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:49PMWednesday, September 21, 2011
Cottesloe, LondonAn air of mystery surrounds any new Mike Leigh project. Like a dedicated scientist, he works behind closed doors researching with his chosen team: his latest experiment didn…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:06PMRichmond, London"This show contains loud bangs and adult themes," warns a notice outside the theatre. In fact I detected few of either in a play, based by Gill Adams on a book by Christine K…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:00PM 
