Wednesday, June 29, 2016
Donmar, London A lost world of showbiz exiles is evoked through powerful monologues, hauntingly delivered by Stephen Dillane, Gina McKee and Ron Cook Brian Friel’s magical play can be seen…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:22AMAlmeida, LondonThe fierce intelligence of the Almeida, Headlong and Nottingham Playhouse's spin on George Orwell shines through - but the play contributes to a worrying theatrical trendIt is…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:32AMTuesday, June 28, 2016
From Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ to Macbeth’s ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’, Shakespeare’s lines present an infinity of choicesEarlier this month, I took part in a fas…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:39AMFriday, June 24, 2016
Shakespeare’s Globe, LondonRay Fearon and Tara Fitzgerald give feverish performances but this production has an aura of perverse oddity – why do the Macbeths have a child?Iqbal Khan’s …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:51AMThursday, June 23, 2016
Open Air theatre, Regent’s Park, LondonMichelle Terry is riveting as Shakespeare’s wartime king in a production that emphasises how roleplaying is integral to monarchyAside from Hamlet, …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:14AMWednesday, June 22, 2016
Hampstead theatre, LondonEdward Snowden-a-like Andrew is visited by two shadowy WikiLeaks employees in Mike Bartlett’s intelligent new play, exploring the 2013 revelationsMike Bartlett’s…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:57AMRoyal Court, LondonMega-fame and limitless cash can turn a man into a monster, and Simon Stephens's new play excellently evokes its hero's spiritually shrunken worldNo one will be surprised …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:34AMTuesday, June 21, 2016
Almeida, LondonDavid Cromer’s cooly observant narrator leads a radically reworked version of Thornton Wilder’s classic that taps into collective folk memoryWe are used to seeing old play…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:25PMNew Wolsey, IpswichThe verse is handled with microscopic precision as Nunn relocates Shakespeare’s comedy to a world of diplomats and cocktails where Theseus becomes a white-suited Mountba…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:14PMFinborough, LondonNeil McPherson pays tribute to Charles Hamilton Sorley in a beautifully orchestrated production with songs by Schubert and George ButterworthRobert Graves considered Charle…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:46AMSunday, June 19, 2016
Southwark Playhouse, LondonAn updating of Gorky’s play loses the moral ambiguity surrounding its female protagonist and makes little sense uprooted from its historial contextMaxim Gorky’…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:36AMSaturday, June 18, 2016
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 04:56PMThursday, June 16, 2016
Almeida, LondonIn Rupert Goold’s production, Fiennes sacrifices some of the character’s irony while Vanessa Redgrave softens the often scolding Queen MargaretRupert Goold’s production …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:43PMWednesday, June 15, 2016
Prince Edward theatre, London Impressive stage magic, a gold-dripping design and a party-loving genie make this energetic adaptation of the animated movie a wicked treatImagine a Christmas p…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:31PMAdelphi, LondonTransfers can be tricky. But Richard Bean's updated version of Goldoni's comic classic seems, if anything, even funnier than it did at the National. The text has been shortene…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:36PMMonday, June 13, 2016
A political radical, as an actor he excelled at playing tortured establishment figuresCorin Redgrave, who has died aged 70, was both a formidable actor and a strenuous political activis…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:59AMSunday, June 12, 2016
Barbican, LondonHuppert is a treat but even she struggles to make sense of a production that is at times close to insufferable Continue reading...
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:10AMFriday, June 10, 2016
Chichester Festival theatreFiennes gives an accomplished performance in an elegantly mounted production of Terence Rattigan’s uneven playWe associate Terence Rattigan with domestic drama. …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:10AMThursday, June 9, 2016
Gielgud, LondonPeter Morgan struck box-office gold with his movie The Queen. He's likely to do so again with this play based on the private weekly audience given by the monarch to the prime …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:21PMLyttelton, LondonTerence Rattigan’s powerful portrait of emotional turmoil in postwar Britain is beautifully played – if only the sound effects weren’t so disruptiveTerence Rattigan’…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:32AMProductions of new plays by Tracy Letts and Rebecca Gilman confirm the Windy City is a hotbed of exciting new dramaNew York gets all the attention but in my experience Chicago is just as vib…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:25AMWednesday, June 8, 2016
Barbican, LondonCumberbatch has a gift for suggesting Hamlet’s essential decency, but visual conceits take the place of textual investigation in this frustrating stagingAfter all the hype …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:34AMThe West End’s preview practice dates back nearly 50 years. As it stands, the outdated system works against the public interestWhen does Harry Potter and the Cursed Child actually open? Th…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:34AMCharing Cross theatre, LondonThom Southerland opens his Charing Cross tenure with his brilliantly staged revival set aboard the doomed linerThe disaster-musical seems an unlikely genre, but …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:26AMApollo, LondonThis evocative chamber piece, based on LP Hartley’s 1953 coming-of-age novel, is done with taste and style but never quite soars Is LP Hartley’s 1953 novel a good subject f…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:21AMTuesday, June 7, 2016
Tug of War, a gripping take on the history plays with protest songs from Leonard Cohen and Nina Simone, is rocking Chicago. The woman behind it says torture and invasion never felt more rele…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:09AMMonday, June 6, 2016
Chichester Festival TheatrePeter Shaffer's spectacle of Mozart's mediocre rival distorts historical reality but remains compelling and stylishly presentedFew living dramatists write big star…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:12PMThe 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 04:55PMMinerva theatre, Chichester Strindberg's Miss Julie is well directed, but it's Shaffer's dark comedy that illuminates in this contrasting double billAugust Strindberg's tragedy Miss Julie an…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:32PMSunday, June 5, 2016
Swan, Stratford-upon-AvonA refreshingly authentic Jacobean setting by the RSC allows Ben Jonson’s comedy of greed to play to its vicious strengths Polly Findlay has taken a bold and, by to…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:24AMBattersea Arts Centre, LondonHow the Labour government drove itself to invade Iraq in 2003 is laid bare in this sharp distillation of Chilcot inquiry evidence – given added fire by damning…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:10AM 
