Sunday, October 11, 2015
Rose theatre, Kingston upon ThamesTrevor Nunn’s staging of the RSC’s bold 1960s Shakespeare adaptation lacks the original’s daring, though there are some fine turns in the lead rolesWh…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:20AMSunday, October 4, 2015
Everyman, LiverpoolSimon Armitage and Nick Bagnall’s time-slip take on the Greek epic makes some topical political pointsThe Odyssey: Missing Presumed Dead claims Homer as the bard of shif…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:43AMAlmeida, LondonKate Fleetwood stuns in the title role of Rachel Cusk’s fierce and intelligent adaptationHas Homer become our new Shakespeare? Are the ancients our new contemporaries? As th…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:43AMLyric Hammersmith, LondonLaura Wade’s adaptation of Sarah Waters’s best-selling lesbian love story lacks ardour in both its politics and songsThere is a carnival of talent in Tipping the…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:43AMSunday, September 27, 2015
Royal Court, LondonMartin McDonagh’s first play in more than a decade, with electric performances from David Morrissey and Reece Shearsmith, should be the Royal Court’s new JerusalemMart…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:22AMLyttelton, LondonSally Cookson’s bold, tumultuous reimagining of Charlotte Brontë’s novel is a feast for the sensesSally Cookson presents a picture of exultant feminism in Jane Eyre. Fo…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:09AMHampstead, London Simon Russell Beale is a delight as the one-legged 18th-century dramatist who turned fame into an art form in Richard Eyre’s rumbustious productionYou don’t often see a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:09AMSunday, September 20, 2015
Noël Coward, LondonNicole Kidman’s precise, contained performance as Rosalind Franklin and Michael Grandage’s vivid production make the most of a sketchy playNot so much theatrical Viag…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:06AMAdelphi, LondonThe costumes and choreography are full of brio, but a dull central character drags down this tale of transformative footwearAt the end, Kinky Boots comes together, in a battal…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:06AMSunday, September 6, 2015
Dorfman, London SE1The extraordinary Denise Gough electrifies as a raging, terrified addictThis is the week when a tremendous actor gets the recognition she deserves. It is not that Denise G…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:43AMShoreditch town hall, London EC1The life of the colourful Duchess of Argyll is marvellously evoked through a series of underground installations, but the human absence is palpableThese days,…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:43AMSunday, August 30, 2015
Cumberbatch is a strikingly eloquent Hamlet in an evening of fitful illuminationI don’t think I have ever seen a more rational Hamlet. When Benedict Cumberbatch tots up his bodkins, whips,…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:04AMSunday, August 9, 2015
Donmar Warehouse, London Seething resentments surface amid opulent surroundings as four women sit out a revolutionPlaywrights are usually praised for their compassion. But every now and then…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:12AMSouthwark Playhouse, LondonGreta Garbo and Sally Bowles stalk Thom Southerland’s full-tilt production of the 1989 musicalAt Southwark Playhouse, Thom Southerland has done sterling work in …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:12AMSaturday, August 8, 2015
In nearly 20 years reviewing theatre for the Observer Susannah Clapp has seen 24 wildly different interpretations of Hamlet. Benedict Cumberbatch had many examples to study before offering h…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:33PMSunday, August 2, 2015
Almeida, LondonThere is tremor not terror – but tremendous acting – in James Macdonald’s overly ingenious reworking of EuripidesOn the one hand Ben Whishaw. Wandlike – or thyrsos-lik…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:16AMRegent’s Park Open Air theatre, LondonThere are beards and gingham and high kicks galore in Rachel Kavanaugh’s pitch-perfect production Seven Brides for Seven Brothers could have been ca…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:16AMPlatform theatre, Central Saint Martins, LondonThis clever co-production of Stevenson’s great story really is a tale of two halvesHow appearances can deceive. Jekyll and Hyde is an intrigu…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:16AMSunday, July 19, 2015
Home, ManchesterCharlotte Rampling collaborates in a scare-free adaptation of the fairytaleThis year’s Manchester international festival has made striking tilts at fairytale and myths. Max…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:24AMSoho theatre, LondonAnders Lustgarten’s stories of injustice, delivered as first-hand testimony, are powerful but ultimately improbableIt is not easy to cry in a small theatre, especially …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:24AMWyndham’s, LondonNeither Stephen Merchant nor Steffan Rhodri can elevate Richard Bean’s two-hander above the level of whimsyIt’s as if you turned up to Centre Court and found yourself …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:24AMSunday, July 12, 2015
Bristol Old VicOwen Sheers interviewed soldiers recently wounded in Afghanistan for his harrowing tale of young lives shattered by warPink mist is the spray of blood that hangs in the air wh…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:54AMRoyal Exchange, ManchesterCaryl Churchill’s doom-wreaking Skriker, created 20 years ago, proves to be a primary figure of modern theatreShe would not be welcome as a member of the Garrick …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:54AMSunday, July 5, 2015
Shakespeare’s Globe, LondonDominic Dromgoole’s final staging as artistic director turns Shakespeare’s troubling problem play into something close to jolly, and is all the bolder for it…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:15AMYoung Vic, LondonNick Gill’s adaptation and Richard Jones direction conspire to flatten the novel’s tension and mystery, though Rory Kinnear shines throughKafka said he wanted his work t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:15AMSunday, June 21, 2015
Royal Court, LondonDebbie Tucker Green directs her own intense crime and punishment dramaCataclysm in a small space. Explosion in lower case. Intensity and obliqueness are defining marks of …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:42AMLyttelton, LondonAn ex-con struggles to go straight in a vibrant New York dramaThe design alone makes it worth the visit. Robert Jones’s set declares the idiom of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:42AMWhat’s inherited, what’s learned? The dialogue’s salty and the performances finely tuned in Gary Owen’s Royal Court debutViolence and Son by Gary Owen begins with an electronic sizzl…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:20AMSunday, June 14, 2015
Dorfman, London Fine performances add clout to Patrick Marber’s changing-room three-handerIt is 20 years since Patrick Marber burst on to the stage of the National with his sharp-witted po…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:36AMFormer Fads shop, Archway Mall, LondonThree wordless studies of old men in a shop window make a surreal spectacle of ordinary lifeArtangel’s new show could hardly have a more suitable sett…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:36AMSunday, June 7, 2015
Almeida, LondonAn exhilarating present-day reworking of Aeschylus gives free rein to female power“I felt so alive once I’d killed him.” As the husband-slayer Clytemnestra, a magnificen…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:34AM 
