After four decades of festive fun in York, the actor and writer is hanging up his frock and hobnailed boots. He looks back at the Theatre Royal’s panto family‘I must say I never expected…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:54AMWest Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsFor anyone who has neither been, nor parented, a teenage girl over the past 10 years, Georgia Nicholson is the creation of teen fiction author Louise Rennison,…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:12AMNottingham Playhouse Rating: *****Little Hugh of Lincoln was a 13th-century cause célèbre. The young boy's disappearance inflamed the anti-Semitism of the Christian com…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:04AMCrucible, SheffieldAn exemplary revival of what may be Brian Friel's greatest play makes a fine centrepiece to this season of his workBrian Friel's 1980 drama was born from twin impulses: th…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:54AMOctagon, BoltonDickens singled out David Copperfield as his "favourite child". It's no coincidence that the book was also Freud's favourite work of fiction – Dickens's autobiographical cre…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:36AMTheatre Royal, YorkThe Touring Consortium was established in 1996 to produce curriculum-based drama, during which period it has presented To Kill a Mockingbird no less than three times. Thou…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:42PMHull Truck theatre Swerving between charm and disgust in a dark, disturbing production, Fraser creates a sense of a man bitterly aware that he will never fit inTwenty-five years ago, a stran…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:48AMHe’s staged Thalidomide! A Musical, stormed American TV and starred in an explicit fairytale with his wife. Now, Mat Fraser is raising hell as Shakespeare’s royal villain – without the…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:18AMTheatre Royal, WakefieldThe writer launches his touring company with a new play blending the gentle hilarity and northern baroque he has made his ownA standup comedian and a debt collector w…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:02AMWest Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsTerry Johnson’s adaptation, directed by Lucy Bailey and starring Catherine McCormack, captures the dubious sexual politics and superficiality of the eraThe m…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:12AMRoyal Exchange, ManchesterAnxieties over loneliness and zero-hours contracts take an eerily real form for the characters in Alan Harris’s lyrical two-handerJimmy, who is 34 and lives with …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:31AMTheatre Royal, YorkA flashing-eyed performance from Phoebe Pryce is undermined by a too-literal production featuring a roaring fire – and a real canine co-starBranwell Brontë’s gift to …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:36AMTheatre Royal, YorkOriginally produced in 1968, Alan Bennett's first full-length stage play is not, strictly speaking, a play at all, but an old-school revue set in a very old school. The mi…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:42AMRoyal Exchange, ManchesterOpera director Jo Davies’ musical mastery shines through in a production made all the more absorbing by its gender-fluid castingGender fluidity is in vogue for Tw…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:18AMVictoria Dock, HullAs a feat of logistics, this thrilling odyssey played out on water looks likely to be a highlight of Hull’s year as UK City of CultureWhen the waters rise, Hull may be t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:18AMNo one thought his metaphysical thriller could work as a play. But technology has made it possible. We meet Paul Auster as he takes a VR trip inside his own head – and recalls what he lear…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:12AMDerby theatreThe spartan flat used for an affair becomes a squash court in Lekan Lawal’s overthought, revolving staging of this misogynistic 1978 playAdultery was a lot simpler back in 197…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:18AMAfter musical dramas featuring a serial killer and a notorious libertine, the actor returns to the stage as a tyrant. He talks about playing sociopaths and why he gave up votingAccording to …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:12AMHope Mill, Manchester The crusading off-Broadway musical, billed as ‘the show Rodgers and Hammerstein never wrote’, gets its UK premiereAs a venue specialising in new and rarely performe…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:54AMWest Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsKids film brawls on their mobile phones and flower memorials litter the set in an astonishing production that captures the play’s sense of futilityWest Yorks…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:32AMBirmingham Rep A dysfunctional couple do battle with a body in their bedroom in Sean Foley’s off-kilter adaptation of Ionesco’s comedyAmong Eugène Ionesco’s full-length absurdist dram…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:18AMNorthern Stage, Newcastle upon TyneThis moving verbatim piece about young people in care shows playwright Paddy Campbell’s fine ear for absurdity Paddy Campbell’s first plays, Wet House …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:42PMOctagon, BoltonDavid Thacker revives David Rudkin’s rarely performed 1970s play about an infertile Ulsterman and his English wifeDavid Rudkin is a major figure in postwar British theatre w…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:36PMBelgrade theatre, CoventryThis musical adaptation of Idle’s take on Edward Lear’s much-loved poem is a hummable defence of the spirit nonsenseMy nine-year-old goddaughter, Maya, has a qu…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:06AMNorthern Stage, Newcastle As the heroine of Ibsen’s psychodrama, a pistol-packing Victoria Elliott rages against corseted constriction in Selma Dimitrijevic’s adaptationThe fashion for H…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:12AMNorthern Stage, NewcastleDr Victoria Frankenstein is the gender-switched, life-creating star of Lorne Campbell’s radical and illuminating gothic rebootThe year is 1831: debarred from atten…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:03AMWest Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsUpdated to a minimalist live/work space full of digital sound manipulation, Sam Pritchard’s production plays on the pain of judging people by how they speakN…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:42AMNew Vic, Newcastle-under-LymeChristian Edwards makes an absorbing hero in this swaggering adaptation of Rostand’s tale, featuring some brilliant baroque musicNorthern Broadsides has built …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:12AMRoyal Exchange, ManchesterGraeae use British Sign Language to bring new depths to Federico García Lorca’s play, with Kathryn Hunter on vicious formIf ever the time was right for a reappra…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:24AMBelgrade, CoventrySatinder Chohan’s compelling play about a woman desperate to become a mother draws intense performances from its castWhen Satinder Chohan commenced work on a drama set in…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:24AMOctagon, BoltonJessica Baglow is radiant as the gobby but intellectually insatiable hairdresser who spars with her boozy Open University lecturerIf one thing has altered in the 37 years sinc…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:12AM
