
At a time when, in the post-Brexit years, British theatre is increasingly insular, a visit by the Wooster Group, legendary veterans of American experimental theatre, is surely worth celebrat…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 11:22AM[SHARE]Every day, for many weeks, we keep hearing about nuclear weapons. Part of the reason for the current attack on Iran by the United States and Israel is the idea, whether true or not, that the…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 11:28AM[SHARE]Okay, this is odd. The original novel, Les Liaisons dangereuses, first published in 1782, features a rich and powerful man and woman positively exulting in their manipulation of a much young…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 03:49PM[SHARE]Today, in Geneva, there are tentative peace talks between Ukraine and Russia; today, in London, there is a powerful play about the ongoing war. Oddly enough, it is fringe venues, the Finboro…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 12:48PM[SHARE]Terence Rattigan is a posh playwright whose work encapsulates the emotional restraint of the 1950s, and who was overtaken by the Angry Young Men. Right? Wrong! Although this sketch of his ca…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 11:01AM[SHARE]Some shows have great moments, but somehow just don't work " the whole is less than the sum of its parts. This is my feeling about Frantic Assembly's 30th anniversary show, Lost Atoms, which…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 12:48PM[SHARE]New Year, new line up of West End stars. This time it's the turn of Olivier-Award-winner Sheridan Smith and multi-award-winning comedian Romesh Ranganathan, both household names, now appeari…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 09:47AM[SHARE]Thatcher, and the image of Thatcher's Britain, continues to cast a long shadow over contemporary culture. So it's hardly a surprise that the most audience-pleasing moment in playwright Jack …
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 11:23AM[SHARE]In 2023, Malaysian actor Michelle Yeoh won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once. Some reactions praised her as "the first Asian actress" to achieve…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 09:26AM[SHARE]Weird scenes inside the farmhouse; weird scenes in Northern Ireland; weird scenes of the 1980s. Meghan Tyler's Crocodile Fever at the Arcola Theatre is a breath-takingly eccentric and wonder…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 02:23PM[SHARE]The Royal Court, Britain's premiere new writing venue, celebrates its platinum anniversary next year " yes, it's been 70 years since 1956's Look Back in Anger. In anticipation, the theatre i…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 07:24PM[SHARE]Broken Britain has a big problem with youth. About a million of those aged 16 to 24 are NEETs (not in education, employment or training), some 13 per cent of this age group. Many working-cla…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 05:31PM[SHARE]Perhaps it's an indicator of the feebleness of new writing after the pandemic that so many of the current highly hyped plays are 1990s and 2000s revivals " success in the past is, it is hope…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 12:56PM[SHARE]Slowly, very slowly, the audience begins to arrive. Taking their seats, shedding jackets, arranging bags and glancing at programmes. But already, there's a stir: the imposing figure of actor…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 04:37AM[SHARE]Is there such a thing as the seven-year itch? Named after Billy Wilder's 1955 comedy, which starred Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell, in which a psychiatrist argues that almost all men need to h…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 07:40AM[SHARE]George Bernard Shaw is the supreme example of old writing. Maddeningly verbose, eye-poppingly articulate and self-consciously progressive, his work is so Edwardian that any revival runs the …
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 01:32PM[SHARE]Let us always remember the pioneers. Although there is a fair amount of relatively mainstream queer theatre today (fueled in the popular imagination by RuPaul's Drag Race on BBC television),…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 07:37AM[SHARE]Only the truth, we are told, can set us free " but there are times in love when the New Testament Gospel of John is an inadequate guide. A good example is the situation that Terence Rattigan…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 01:40PM[SHARE]Theatre needs mystery. In the darkened auditorium, with a crowd of strangers sharing your experience, it is possible to believe in anything you see on the stage: ghosts, miracles and magic. …
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 06:51AM[SHARE]Coming of age stories are more or less all the same. But what distinguishes Julia Grogan's Playfight, which was first staged at the Edinburgh Festival last year, and is now at London's Soho …
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 12:33PM[SHARE]Are we really in "a new era of male anger, societal discontent and rage"? This is what Royal Court artistic director David Byrne claims in the programme of Manhunt, Robert Icke's new documen…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 05:26PM[SHARE]Anxiety. Apprehension. Angst even. Yes, that's the feeling that rises in me as I come into the auditorium of Omnibus Theatre, in Clapham, south London, to watch Chris Fung perform in his own…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 04:48PM[SHARE]One of the joys of contemporary playwriting is its openness to flexible casting. In Ruby Thomas's 2019 play Either, for example, there are two lovers " denoted as A and B " whose story is pe…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 04:30PM[SHARE]How long would you wait for your soulmate? In "The Demon Lover", a short story by Elizabeth Bowen, published in 1945, a young couple make a passionate vow during the first world war. When he…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 04:44AM[SHARE]Diaries are dynamite " they hold secrets, and secrets can tear families apart. In Coral Wylie's debut, Lavender, Hyacinth, Violet, Yew, currently at the Bush Theatre, written records are lin…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 06:10AM[SHARE]British people are socially awkward: this explains why we talk about the weather, queue compulsively and pretend to be polite. It is also at the heart of our television culture, anything fro…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 11:19AM[SHARE]Marketing is the new real. For many years, in theatre as elsewhere in society, the most important thing is not creativity, or originality, or integrity, but hype. A good example is The Years…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 10:19AM[SHARE]Even the best streamed theatre can't compete with the live version. It's simple " with this art form you really have to be there. In person. Take the case of Tarantula, master storyteller Ph…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 10:27AM[SHARE]Is resilience the most powerful character trait? When you think about the suffering of the Windrush Generation, migrants to the UK in the 1950s, it is their sheer staying power that is immed…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 11:29AM[SHARE]Fringe venues perform a vital role on the ecology of London theatre. While many shows at these small venues are underfunded, and some are frankly rough as well as ready, you can occasionally…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 03:48PM[SHARE]The myth of Oedipus is so central to our psychic world that I was really surprised how many people in the audience for this revival were shocked by the revelation of the protagonist's incest…
SOURCE: thetheatretimes.com at 02:04PM[SHARE]

