Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Lyttelton, LondonWhat was Clifford Odets up to in this strange 1938 play? Was he, as he once claimed, writing about the near-impossibility of love between man and woman in a deeply competiti…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:48PMTuesday, March 29, 2011
Old Vic, LondonSomewhat coolly received at its premiere in 1977, Terence Rattigan's final play stands the test of time.And, watching Thea Sharrock's fine revival, I was struck by how many cl…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:28PMMonday, March 28, 2011
Theatre 503, LondonBrighton's Hydrocracker company makes its London debut with this lively new play by Neil Fleming about management consultants. It's a rich topic given that government spen…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:15PMRather than simply being tragic poems of frustration and loss, Tennessee Williams's plays provide a rich – and very comic – social record of his timesAnniversaries offer a cue for reasse…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:22AMWednesday, March 23, 2011
Royal Court, LondonHow do we view the past? Do we forgive and forget, or keep alive ancient animosities? The questions may seem academic. But they are a living issue in Latvia where every 16…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:40PMTuesday, March 22, 2011
Gielgud, London"Charmingly attenuated" was how the New Yorker's Pauline Kael described the original 1964 Jacques Demy movie. Suspiciously thin would be my verdict on this stage version adapt…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:24PMMonday, March 21, 2011
Orange Tree, RichmondThere is no shilly-shallying in this excellent revival of Allan Monkhouse's 1911 social comedy: within minutes, we learn that the eponymous housemaid has been impregnate…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:27PMThe British have long been sniffy about French theatre, but classic playwrights from Molière to Marivaux deserve another lookWe seem to have a love-hate relationship with French drama. We o…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:49AMThursday, March 17, 2011
Almeida, LondonAddiction is a difficult subject to dramatise: it depends on repetition, isolation, an inability to connect with other people. But, although David Eldridge's moving new play d…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:46PMWednesday, March 16, 2011
Cottesloe, LondonIf you are going to imitate, always imitate the best; even if Ryan Craig's new play is full of echoes of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and All My Sons, they are good m…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:57PMTuesday, March 15, 2011
Hampstead, LondonMae West liked a guy who took his time, and Mike Leigh certainly exercises that privilege in this 2¾-hour play originally seen at Hampstead in 1979. But, although there may…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:17PMMonday, March 14, 2011
Vaudeville, LondonYou never know quite where you are with Neil LaBute. As he has shown in plays such as The Shape of Things and The Mercy Seat, he's a moralist who seems to delight in depict…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:35PMAllam stole the best actor crown and Smith was queen of musicals, but new plays were thin on the ground. And funding cuts were the ghost at the feastIn pictures: The Laurence Olivier awardsO…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:39AMSunday, March 13, 2011
How does theatre in Germany compare with here? What are its obsessions? Who are its stars? For the Guardian's New Europe series, Michael Billington hits BerlinI came to Berlin eager to learn…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:31PMTheatre Royal Haymarket, LondonSienna Miller may be the box-office draw, but Trevor Nunn's magnificent revival of Terence Rattigan's 1942 play is an ensemble achievement. And that seems appr…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:33AMFriday, March 11, 2011
Duchess, LondonTim Firth is clearly not a man to let a bad idea go to waste. Twenty years ago he wrote a one-act play, Man of Letters, about an encounter between age and youth on a Batley ro…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:58PMThursday, March 10, 2011
Royal Shakespeare, Stratford-upon-AvonStratford's new stage already blazes with life. The RSC has coupled King Lear with a revival of Rupert Goold's celebrated production of one of the trick…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:25PMRoyal Shakespeare TheatreIt works. That's one's instant verdict on the transformed Royal Shakespeare Theatre. And it succeeds precisely because it feels new and strangely familiar. The old a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:02PMWednesday, March 9, 2011
Apollo, LondonCoward's comedies are always bankable West End prospects. But Thea Sharrock's revival of this 1941 piece has lost some sheen since it was first seen at the Theatre Royal, Bath …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:59PMTuesday, March 8, 2011
Dr Johnson's House, LondonRarely do a play and its setting match as well as this. Seated in the garret of Dr Johnson's house in Gough Square, off Fleet Street, we meet the great man himself,…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:20PMTuesday, March 1, 2011
London PalladiumThe Victorian theatre of spectacle is alive and well, and residing at the London Palladium. But although this adaptation of the Frank Baum book and the 1939 movie, with addit…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:53PMBush, LondonWhatever its economic woes, Ireland continues to yield good new dramatists. Deirdre Kinahan, making her UK debut in a production by Tall Tales theatre company, has lit on a …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:14PMMore shows than ever seem to be abandoning the half-way pause, and running straight through. To pee or not to pee? That is the question"Did you have a good interval?" asks a character in Mic…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:45AMMonday, February 28, 2011
Noel Coward, London1956 was a momentous year: the Suez crisis, the Hungarian revolution, Khruschev's denuniciation of Stalin. But it was also a time of cultural upheaval, and this exuberantl…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:15PMSunday, February 27, 2011
Jermyn Street, LondonLong before it became trendy to attack celebrity culture, Alan Ayckbourn satirised it brilliantly in his 1988 Man of the Moment. He returned to the theme in this play, w…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:58PMFriday, February 25, 2011
Menier Chocolate Factory, LondonTheatre can offer many things: entertainment, enlightenment, ecstasy. But this strange show is something else: theatre as therapy. In the first half Ruby Wax,…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:34PMWednesday, February 23, 2011
Olivier Theatre, LondonForget Boris Karloff with a bolt through his neck. Forget even Peter Boyle as the new, improved monster singing Puttin' On The Ritz in the Mel Brooks pastiche. What yo…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:46PMOlivier Theatre, London Continue reading...
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:46PM'Keep off the stage when you're on duty'"Imprisoned in every fat man," Cyril Connolly once wrote, "a thin man is wildly signalling to be let out." And inside every critic, it seems, lurks a …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:15PMMonday, February 21, 2011
Donmar, LondonGiven the Donmar's exemplary musical track record, it is a bit of a shock to find them importing this flimsy, vacuous diversion. Like Grease and Legally Blonde, it has a vaguel…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:09PMRoyal Court, LondonOne of the virtues of the Royal Court's International Playwrights Season is that it brings us news from abroad. And this intriguing 90-minute play by Pedro Miguel Rozo, se…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:00PM 
