Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Richmond, 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 02:00PMJudith Miller's switch from political correspondent to playhouse pundit has caused a stir, but surely it's not a bad thing for critics to know about the world at largeIn the early 70s there …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:41PMTuesday, September 20, 2011
Crucible, SheffieldIt's been billed in advance as a classic encounter between two stars of The Wire, Clarke Peters and Dominic West. But what first impresses about this much-touted event is …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:59PMPrint Room, LondonThese two short Pinter plays are here presented as an almost seamless event. Both, in fact, are set in a bleak, white-walled, fluorescent-lit room that suggests an interrog…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:10PMMonday, September 19, 2011
Octagon, BoltonIt is always good to find dramatists widening their horizons, and Stella Feehily's new play, which deals with humanitarian workers operating in the midst of a Congolese civil …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:00PMSunday, September 18, 2011
Vaudeville, LondonArthur Miller's 1994 play towers over the dismal lowlands of current West End theatre like a majestic mountain peak. Part psychological detective story and part political d…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:48PMThursday, September 15, 2011
Almeida Theate, LondonStephen Poliakoff is back with his first new play in 12 years. But, while I welcome his return, this piece feels like an anthology of Poliakoff's recurring preoccupatio…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:49PMWednesday, September 14, 2011
Minerva, ChichesterIt takes a certain wild courage to write an accompaniment to an acknowledged one-act masterpiece like Terence Rattigan's The Browning Version. But David Hare has taken on …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:05PMHampstead theatre, LondonSteve Thompson is a very funny writer who has here chosen a tricky subject: the 1975 legal battle by members of the Monty Python team over a US network's censorious …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:44AMAs Alan Ayckbourn's 75th play, Neighbourhood Watch, opens in Scarborough, test your knowledge of Britain's most prolific and popular dramatistMichael Billington
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:52AMTuesday, September 13, 2011
Stephen Joseph, ScarboroughOne of Alan Ayckbourn's least appreciated qualities is the sharpness of his social antennae. At the very moment when there is a lot of political babble about a "br…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:00PMSunday, September 11, 2011
Southwark Playhouse, LondonJessica Swale made a big impact last year with a stunning production of Sheridan's The Rivals in Southwark. Now she's back with a comedy by Hannah Cowley that Sher…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:15PMThursday, September 8, 2011
St Katharine Docks, LondonFact or fiction? Which is the best way for the theatre to handle an event as momentous as 9/11? That is the question implicitly raised by this site-specific show, w…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:36PMWednesday, September 7, 2011
Oliver, LondonArnold Wesker's tremendous 1959 play expanded the frontiers of drama in that it was one of the first to seriously dramatise work. But, while it is always good to see it revived…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:59PMAs the National Theatre serves up a revival of Arnold Wesker's 1959 play The Kitchen, we grill you about the man and his workMichael Billington
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:21AMTuesday, September 6, 2011
Theatre Royal HaymarketThe Tempest, as Anne Barton once pointed out, is an obliging work of art. It can be seen, among myriad other things, as anti-colonialist tract, theatrical metaphor and…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:32PMRoyal Court, LondonI would say debbie tucker green has carved out her own special niche at the Royal Court: partly through her insistence on lower-case name and titles, but more significantl…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:30PMSunday, September 4, 2011
Orange Tree, RichmondThis is the 12th Václav Havel production Sam Walters has staged in the Orange Tree's 40-year history. While such loyalty is admirable and the play itself dates from the…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:39PMWednesday, August 31, 2011
Royal Court, LondonAlexi Kaye Campbell has previously written two impressive plays, The Pride and Apologia, about the way gay rights and feminism have lost something of their initial idealis…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:01PMTheatre Royal, BathDavid Haig rightly gets a standing ovation as the sad, dubiously mad Hanoverian Lear. But, although Alan Bennett deserves credit for putting the character on stage, I can'…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:00PMThe plays of NF 'Wally' Simpson, who has died aged 92, were hilariously subversive, yet masked a deeply philosophical mindThe comic dramatist NF Simpson, who has died at the ripe old age of …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:38AMTuesday, August 23, 2011
Barbican, LondonThis production arrives from the Lincoln Center in the US laden with seven Tony awards. But, perhaps because only two of the original cast have made the journey, it is a litt…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:01PMMonday, August 22, 2011
Royal Lyceum, EdinburghOne can divide theatre, broadly, into two categories: narrative and dramatic. The former is expansive and would include events like Peter Brook's The Mahabharata and t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:34AMMonday, August 15, 2011
When Tony Kushner's honorary degree was vetoed over allegations that he was anti-Israel, there was an outcry. Here he talks for the first time about the controversyThe best dramatists, …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:31PMKing's, EdinburghIt's a pity the word "hybrid" has acquired pejorative overtones, because that's exactly what this delightful production offers. Adapted and directed by Tae-Suk for Seoul's M…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:30PMSunday, August 14, 2011
Royal Lyceum, EdinburghI suspect Wu Hsing-kuo is the Taiwanese answer to Orson Welles. He has not only written and directed but also performs, in Mandarin and with the aid of nine musicians,…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:00PMThursday, August 11, 2011
Through his piercing intellect, the late British actor John Wood redefined every role he playedI've been very lucky in my professional life. And one of my greatest strokes of good fortune wa…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:32AMWednesday, August 10, 2011
Open Air, Regent's Park, LondonIf this enjoyable 1992 musical has a slightly synthetic feel, it is hardly surprising. Ken Ludwig has rewritten the book of a 1930 Gershwin musical, Girl Crazy…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:00PMTuesday, August 9, 2011
Donmar Warehouse, LondonJude Law is the big draw in this outstanding revival of Eugene O'Neill's 1921 play. But Law's is only one in a triptych of fine performances, the others coming from R…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:00PMThe Scoop, LondonIn a concrete amphitheatre surrounded by the gleaming towers of capitalism, Phil Willmott has had the wit to stage Brecht's most explicitly communist play. And even if histo…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:00PMMonday, August 8, 2011
Finborough, LondonRebecca Gilman is an American dramatist who writes about hot topics with unsensational honesty. Having dealt with stalking in Boy Gets Girl and racism in Spinning into Butt…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:40PM 
