Sunday, August 12, 2018
Grosvenor Park Open Air theatre, ChesterThe fun moments cannot lift Bryony Lavery’s workaday productionSharks surge between the banked tiers of the temporary auditorium, dorsal fins glide …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:12AMSunday, August 5, 2018
Stephen Joseph theatre, ScarboroughThe playwright directs a terrific revival of his 1978 play centred around a happy couple who want for nothing…Written a decade after Iris Murdoch’s nov…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:06AMSunday, July 29, 2018
Milton Keynes international festivalA thrilling collaboration between a circus and dance company full of daring leaps and bounds, and a giant Jenga setBlock is one of five circus-inspired ev…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:42AMSunday, July 22, 2018
Williamson Park, LancasterThemes of kindness and inclusivity are threaded cleverly through a lavish, thrilling adaptation“All for one and one for all!” rings out the cry of the three mus…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:04AMSunday, July 15, 2018
New Vic, Newcastle-under-LymeAn action-packed production tells the story of the local man who invented big-top entertainment 250 years agoCircus is hopefulness in action. Objects fly, people…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:48AMSunday, June 24, 2018
Chester CathedralIn a break from tradition this year, Chester's Mystery Plays are performed inside the city's cathedral. The setting suits them – and they it. Stage lanterns blaze on to a …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:18AMSunday, June 17, 2018
Children’s Wood and North Kelvin Meadow, GlasgowNational Theatre of Scotland’s pioneering play transports the audience into the individual worlds of autistic performers“Embrace nature,…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:32AMSunday, June 10, 2018
Various venues, BoltonAn inventive adaptation of the Cliff Richard movie takes its audience all aboard for an unashamedly feelgood outingMany transport promises have been broken round these …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:42PMSunday, May 27, 2018
Paisley Arts CentreThe staple figure of Slavic folklore is wittily recreated as a noisy neighbour with magical powersAny Russians in the audience expecting to find the Baba Yaga of childhood…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:18AMSunday, May 20, 2018
West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsUnconvincing plotting and a tension-free narrative hamper this adaptation of Paula Hawkins’s novelA woman is missing. In a room, a detective quizzes two peop…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:48AMSunday, May 13, 2018
York Theatre RoyalJonathan Lewis stars in his own perceptive play about exam pressures within a familyThis timely four-hander explosively explores the pressures of our exam-obsessed educatio…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:24AMSunday, May 6, 2018
Everyman, LiverpoolCasting a woman as Othello was a brilliant move, but setting the play in the present day undermines itSince a play is a world of make-believe, gender-blind and colour-blin…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:24AMSunday, April 29, 2018
Octagon, BoltonLawrence Till’s adaptation of Bill Naughton’s short stories makes a fitting final production before the building’s refurbishmentWhat is a theatre but a little world wher…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:06AMSunday, April 22, 2018
Sherman theatre, CardiffAn estranged couple’s struggle to come to terms with past trauma is hampered by a poor choice of set designBrad Birch’s new play charts a series of aftershocks ex…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:33AMWednesday, April 18, 2018
Octagon, BoltonBuilding on the success of last year's Oliver Twist, Deborah McAndrew again teams up with composer Conrad Nelson to adapt one of Charles Dickens's sprawling novels. Their care…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:33AMSunday, April 15, 2018
New Vic, Newcastle-under-LymeDeborah McAndrew puts an intelligent new slant on a classic novel as Northern Broadsides add extra oom-pahCharles Dickens’s 1854 novel of life in a northern En…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:00AMSunday, April 8, 2018
West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsClough’s ill-fated tenure at Leeds United is turned into a finely performed, if loosely structured, three-handerIt’s a book, a film and a play. Their subje…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:00AMSunday, March 18, 2018
New Vic, Newcastle-under-LymeTheresa Heskins expertly blends the political and the personal in her version of Elizabeth Robins’s 1907 dramaLights go up on the dispatch boxes and mace at th…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:00AMSaturday, March 10, 2018
Home, ManchesterAnnie Baker’s emotion-driven play is not so much Chekhov as RD Laing-litePulitzer prize winner Annie Baker’s 2009 play was staged in 2013 by London’s Royal Court theatr…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:00AMSunday, March 4, 2018
The haves and have-nots meet to ramp up Spitfire production in Howard Brenton’s lively new playJust over 40 years ago, Howard Brenton wrote the first new commission to be performed in the …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:00AMSunday, February 18, 2018
Unity theatre, LiverpoolMoral conundrums abound in this ‘breath-holdingly taut’ tale of an dying millionaire who asks her nurse to end her lifeCarolyn is a 68-year-old multimillionaire l…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:59AMSunday, February 11, 2018
Sherman, CardiffSelf-pity and misogyny meet melodrama in Conor McPherson’s 2000 chamber piece about an alcoholic’s Christmas Eve search for redemptionDecorations feebly festoon the back …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:00AMSunday, February 4, 2018
Citizens, GlasgowRona Munro’s sharply observed portrait of three generations of women caught up in Belfast’s violenceA searchlight strafes the auditorium. A girl in a slip trembles out o…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:00AMSunday, January 28, 2018
Royal Exchange, ManchesterFour ramblers discuss Britishness and belonging in Testament’s arresting play set in the Peak DistrictIt takes a certain sass to open such a Yorkshire-rooted play…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:00AMSunday, January 21, 2018
Royal & Derngate, Northampton A well-intentioned adaptation of EM Forster’s classic lacks complexityEM Forster’s 1924 novel explores complex relations among and between Britons and I…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:00AMSunday, January 14, 2018
Jacksons Lane, LondonPart of the London international mime festival, this technically accomplished, cross-genre work inspired by animal movements impresses, but lacks definitionSurprising, a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:00AMSunday, December 31, 2017
Storyhouse, ChesterEnid Blyton’s gang of young sleuths drop the middle-class trappings in a show that is childlike but never childishOn the approach to the theatre, a young girl walking ah…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:33AMSunday, December 17, 2017
Crucible, SheffieldA superb staging of the L Frank Baum classic works its magic in plain view with picture-book clarityEvery good Christmas show has a transformation scene; The Wizard of Oz …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:24AMSunday, December 10, 2017
West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsMovement, puppetry, flight and design conjure a dazzling trip to Narnia that makes up for storytelling weaknessesThe auditorium of the West Yorkshire Playhouse…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:48AMRoyal Exchange, ManchesterRelocated to Harlem, this fine new production of Frank Loesser’s classic musical retains a threat of violence under a cartoon-bright exteriorLike the fantastical,…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:48AMSunday, December 3, 2017
Royal Lyceum Theatre, EdinburghA thrilling script and clever set give these ancient tales a dazzling new charmA rustle of sweet papers and expectation in the auditorium. House lights dim. �…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:33AM 
