Sunday, June 24, 2012
Playhouse, LiverpoolValentia, a tiny island off the coast of County Kerry, is the kind of place where you make your own entertainment. Sal, a young woman who has returned to her remote Irish…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:15PMThursday, June 21, 2012
Hull TruckA recent study at Royal Holloway University suggests that the Strictly-inspired popularity of ballroom dancing marks a reversion to traditional gender roles. What women want, in ot…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:15PMSunday, June 17, 2012
A former member of pop group Busted is directing Gareth Gates in a musical about the birth of emailFor a brief period in the early noughties, Busted were the biggest band in Britain, infamou…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:29PMTuesday, May 29, 2012
Theatre Royal, YorkFor the past three years, York Theatre Royal has been subject to an annual bloodless coup, in which everyone from the artistic director to the catering manager is kicked o…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:14PMMonday, May 28, 2012
Crucible, SheffieldKaite O'Reilly's drama is so disorientating that even the front-of-house announcements are confusing. There's no mention of a play, only notification of workshops and plen…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:10PMThursday, May 24, 2012
New Vic, Newcastle-under-LymeIn Thomas Hardy's novel, sheep farming is a tough, unforgiving existence. The prospects of the hero, Gabriel Oak, are wiped out when an immature sheepdog, "incap…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:44PMFriday, May 18, 2012
A young man and woman bound onto a bare stage, bottles of water in hand. They begin sparring: physically at first, then verbally. The language is explicit, poetic, raw. They want to do obsce…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:30AMThursday, May 10, 2012
West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsTom Stoppard's 1982 comedy opens with an audacious sleight-of-hand in which Max, an architect, is distraught to discover that his wife Charlotte has been unfai…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:53PMTuesday, May 8, 2012
Octagon, BoltonCoronation Street star Pat Phoenix was once described by prime minister Jim Callaghan as "the sexiest thing on television". Yet Phoenix, who played the Street's rapier-tongued…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:11PMSunday, April 22, 2012
Live, NewcastleA journalist once had cause to ask why Frank Sinatra was sitting backstage without any trousers. The singer pointed at the hack's crumpled suit and replied: "So I don't go out…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:06AMSunday, April 8, 2012
Wonderful Town has opened to rave reviews – so why isn't it staged more often? Alfred Hickling talks to the team who put the dazzle back into BernsteinIn 2004, the music director of t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:30PMThursday, March 29, 2012
Theatre-by-the-Lake, KeswickThere are two established routes into Oxbridge: through the front or round the back. There's a nub of guilt at the core of the History Boys, as if Alan Bennett we…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:00PMWednesday, March 28, 2012
Theatre Royal, NewcastleSusan Boyle has not sung live on stage since her participation in the 2009 Britain's Got Talent tour, prior to which she had cemented her new celebrity status by spen…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:20AMMonday, March 26, 2012
Lawrence Batley, HuddersfieldThis version of Conan Doyle's classic is an enlightened, if somewhat unexpected, collaboration between one of the North West's oldest theatrical institutions, Ol…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:59PMThursday, March 22, 2012
Guildhall theatre, DerbyIt has been estimated that if bees disappear, man has no more than four years left to live. Bee pollination accounts for a third of our diet; yet the sudden and inexp…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:44PMMonday, March 12, 2012
Octagon, BoltonWas Shakespeare party to the gunpowder plot? It seems a wild assumption, though David Thacker's production is supported by a programme note from Professor Richard Wilson that …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:29PMTuesday, March 6, 2012
Royal Exchange, ManchesterWe tend to think of lad culture as a relatively new phenomenon. Yet before there was Nuts magazine, before there was Oasis, before there was even rock'n'roll, …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:29PMTuesday, February 28, 2012
Library, ManchesterIt's remarkable that, until relatively recently, DH Lawrence's paintings were probably more esteemed than his plays. Lawrence never saw his depiction of marital warfare be…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:38PMThursday, February 23, 2012
Theatre Royal, YorkAnne Frank expressed a desire for immortality through her writing; though you sometimes wonder what she would have made of the kind of immortality she has achieved. In the…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:30PMWednesday, February 22, 2012
Playhouse, LiverpoolIt may seem perverse to praise a production of Tennessee Williams's classic on account of its lighting. But if you get the illumination right for A Streetcar Named Desire…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:55PMTuesday, February 21, 2012
West 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 01:29PMFriday, February 17, 2012
Live, NewcastleWhen is a frog not a frog? When it's a metaphor, I suppose, as there's much talk of small amphibians in Zoe Cooper's play, which contains a scene in which a disintegrating cou…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:30AMWednesday, February 15, 2012
The Wicker Man is a cult horror classic. Are the team of Scots who have turned the film into a musical – and rejigged its shocking ending – worried about offending fans?The Wicker Man is…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:31PMMonday, February 13, 2012
Derby theatreIt's rare to see The Taming of the Shrew performed without any shade of irony. Directors either include the framing device of the tinker's dream, which has the effect of placing…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:51PMFriday, February 10, 2012
Hull TruckSixty five miles is the distance that divides Sheffield and Hull. Matt Hartley's drama – the under-26 category winner in the first Bruntwood Playwriting competition – shuttles…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:15PMWednesday, February 8, 2012
West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsWaiting for Godot is a play whose co-ordinates rarely alter. There will be tramps engaged in circular conversations; there will be an overwhelming sense of fut…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:15PMThursday, December 1, 2011
West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsWe're facing six years of austerity and a wave of public sector strikes. So what better way to dispel the gloom than with a stirring dose of Annie, the musical…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:47PMFriday, November 25, 2011
At three minutes, this rediscovered sketch is probably too slight to work as a straight piece. So Giles Croft of the Nottingham Playhouse got the audience to direct itHands up if you've ever…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:43AMMonday, November 14, 2011
Alfred Hickling sits in on some very unusual auditions at West Yorkshire PlayhouseIt's open audition day at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, for the Christmas production of Annie. As&nbs…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:00PMTuesday, November 8, 2011
Crucible, SheffieldForty years ago this month, the Crucible opened in Sheffield. Not everyone welcomed it – too ugly, many claimed; a white elephant, and where were the curtains? The debut…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:55PMThursday, November 3, 2011
Hull TruckLast December, John Godber parted company with Hull Truck, the company he helmed for 26 years, on less than cordial terms. That the first touring product of the newly founded John …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:51PM 
