Friday, April 19, 2024
Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-AvonEmily Burns’ modern-day romcom, set on a Pacific island retreat, ramps up the silliness and makes accessible the text’s cloud-parting power …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:02AMThursday, April 18, 2024
National Theatre, LondonWith its heavy mood and gnomic song lyrics, this updated reimaging of Our Mutual Friend is like a 19th-century noir
Period drama is given some sharp edges in this ada…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:06AMMonday, April 15, 2024
A string of seven awards for Sunset Boulevard was hardly radical, and many more daring theatrical successes went unrewarded
The triumph of Jamie Lloyd’s reinvented Sunset Boulevard at this…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:12AMSunday, April 14, 2024
Almeida, LondonFive American friends gather to catch up in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ new play. It’s a portrait of midlife malaise, but also a subtle meditation on post-Covid life
A group …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMThursday, April 11, 2024
Noel Coward theatre, LondonMutating from head criminal in a gothic thriller to slippery music hall entertainer, showman McKellen has centripetal force in Robert Icke’s slick, modern dress …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:24PMWednesday, April 10, 2024
Birmingham RepExpressive performances and arresting effects heighten this mother-son tragedy, primarily told through British Sign Language
This drama opens with a lilting evocation of summer…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:42AMSunday, April 7, 2024
Royal Court Upstairs, LondonLydia Higman, Julia Grogan and Rachel Lemon’s play set around a 1604 witch trial is a vital and exciting piece of gig theatre full of improvisational spirit and…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:12PMFriday, April 5, 2024
National Theatre, LondonA dislikable version of Charlotte, jockeying for prominence and yearning to be as immoral as Byron, is the surprising focus of this quick-witted drama
As a drama abou…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:54AMWednesday, April 3, 2024
Wyndham’s theatre, LondonCox is thrilling as an overbearing patriarch but it’s Clarkson who steals the show in Eugene O’Neill’s agonising family drama
The overbearing patriarch in Eu…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:42AMSunday, March 31, 2024
Menier Chocolate Factory, LondonPaul Grellong’s gripping dialogue makes a brisk plot and unlikable characters immensely watchable as a Harvard professor invites a white supremacist for a d…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:42AMFriday, March 29, 2024
Hampstead theatre, LondonThere are shades of Blackadder in April De Angelis’s play about the great tragedian of 18th-century British theatre
There is a certain chutzpah to writing a comedy…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:12AMThursday, March 28, 2024
Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal, BathBourgeois boredom is pervaded by fantasy and betrayal in these one-act plays with an astute cast including David Morrissey and Mathew Horne
Truth, lies and…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:10PMTuesday, March 26, 2024
Gielgud Theatre, LondonSmith plays a Broadway star in the midst of a mental crisis in Ivo van Hove and Rufus Wainwright’s glittering and extravagantly original musical adaptation of the Ca…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:18PMFriday, March 22, 2024
Aviva Studios, ManchesterThis story involving an SS officer who fled to Syria after the war is simply staged but slippery, intriguing and full of nuance
The flight of Nazis including Adolf E…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:18PMFriday, March 8, 2024
Bristol Old VicAdaptation of David Nicholls’ novel about a student’s class-inflected coming of age scores for its songs but its energy becomes unhinged
Long before the post-university ro…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:12AMThursday, March 7, 2024
Jermyn Street theatre, LondonA tremendous cast capture the hope and despair of life in the ‘mother country’ in this powerful adaptation of the 1956 novel
Lyrical and loosely structured, …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:24PMWednesday, March 6, 2024
Olivier theatre, LondonSheen stars as Aneurin Bevan in Tim Price’s drama, unfolding in flashbacks from a hospital bed
This life story begins at the end, with Aneurin “Nye” Bevan in a h…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:02PMMonday, March 4, 2024
No one is banned from these shows – and for Slave Play’s run on the West End, they take up only two nights out of almost 100
Downing Street made a surprise announcement last week. No, no…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:12AMFriday, March 1, 2024
Swan theatre, Stratford-upon-AvonMark Ravenhill’s reimagining of the duo’s work on Gloriana exposes imbalances in the partnership but ultimately is a tragedy of thwarted ambition
In 1952…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:54PMThursday, February 29, 2024
Birmingham RepSoaring ballads and spirited movement abound in a charming show about teenage self-discovery
A team of bhangra dancers bound onto the stage in traditional sequined dress and fa…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:12AMWednesday, February 28, 2024
Donmar Warehouse, LondonHawes and Jack Davenport radiate as postwar lovers in Lucy Kirkwood’s cinephile postwar romantic drama set against the birth of the NHS
As debate on the future of t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:42AMSunday, February 25, 2024
Bush theatre, LondonBenedict Lombe questions ideas around abuse, grief and the Black body in this meet-again-cute starring Tosin Cole and Heather Agyepong
Would you want to revisit your firs…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:02PMFriday, February 23, 2024
Theatre Royal Stratford East, LondonThis feted battle of the sexes comedy follows defiantly upbeat Caribbean characters making a life in postwar Britain
This irrepressible ska musical, trans…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:42AMThursday, February 22, 2024
Good plays have the power to shake us out of our complacency. This recurring debate is a pointless skirmish in a culture war
CONTENT WARNING: This column may include opinions with which you …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:36PMWednesday, February 21, 2024
Lyric theatre, LondonAnaïs Mitchell’s musical melds two classical myths, folk and jazz with tremendous soul and offbeat spirit
This odyssey through the underworld, told with deep-voiced …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:24PMTuesday, February 20, 2024
Duke of York’s theatre, LondonRock’n’roll reimagining of Ibsen’s timeless corruption drama brings the audience into direct Question Time-style dialogue with Smith’s idealist revolu…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:12PMHampstead theatre, LondonJohn Logan’s play combines the stories behind two films made in the 1960s but each needs more space to truly hit home
Two pairs of directors and actors zigzag on s…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:24AMFriday, February 16, 2024
Almeida Theatre, LondonThe set is a marvel, the performances are electric and the ending – with Lear raging and trembling in a hospital gown on the heath – is profoundly tragic
Yaël Far…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:54AMThursday, February 15, 2024
Theatre Royal Haymarket, LondonAided by elaborate tech, multiple screens and an angelic wig, the Succession star gives a performance that is mischievous, swaggering and operatic
Does Sarah S…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:42PMTuesday, February 13, 2024
Old Vic, LondonJukebox show celebrating sweary Bob Geldof’s 1985 mega-fundraiser piles homily on cliche in a production in thrall to white saviour stereotypes
The breathless tagline invite…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:48PMSunday, February 11, 2024
Rose theatre, Kingston-upon-Thames Onjali Raùf’s morality tale for children, adapted by Nick Ahad, fluidly harnesses schoolkid energy, though important details are often reported rather t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:54AM 
