Saturday, August 31, 2013
The second Samuel Beckett festival was a memorable five-day celebration of the great man's visionIt's eight o'clock in the morning. We stand on the island of Devenish, in what remains of a 1…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, August 24, 2013
Lyceum, EdinburghMeredith Monk's skilful work encourages us to reflect on our relationship with natureThe Edinburgh international festival sets off thought-provoking resonances. The Russian …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:10PMPlayhouse, EdinburghThe Beijing People's Art Theatre get heavy with Shakespeare's tragedyThe Beijing People's Art Theatre, established in 1952, specialises mainly in new writing. Its hallmar…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, July 27, 2013
Bush, London; Theatre in the Park, Chichester; The Shed, LondonActor Cush Jumbo's first play, Josephine and I, juxtaposes the lives of two performers. One is the phenomenal entertainer Josep…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMBush, London; Theatre in the Park, Chichester; The Shed, LondonActor Cush Jumbo's first play, Josephine and I, juxtaposes the lives of two performers. One is the phenomenal entertainer Josep…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, July 20, 2013
Young Vic, London; Royal Exchange, ManchesterPatrice Lumumba was democratically elected prime minister of Congo on 23 June 1960. Seven days later, the country gained independence from Belgia…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, July 13, 2013
Theatre Royal, BathGeorge Bernard Shaw's Candida, written and set in 1894, explores a love triangle in a north-east London parsonage. Incendiary emotions are played out beside the domestic h…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, July 6, 2013
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 07:02PMSaturday, June 29, 2013
Crucible theatre, SheffieldFunny, touching and magical, this brand new musical comedy, with book, lyrics and music all by Tim Firth, presents a view of one family's life at intersecting mome…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:01PMSaturday, June 22, 2013
Tramway, GlasgowThe Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner is, as many may know, a reality- and identity-bending, satirical novel written in 1824 by James Hogg, the Scottish s…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:04PMTheatre Royal, BathNoël Coward's 1951 comedy gets off to a heart-sinkingly creaky start: in a splendid library (splendidly designed by Stephen Brimson Lewis) a butler (Rory Bremner) and a l…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:02PMSaturday, June 15, 2013
Secret venue, ManchesterIt's hard not to warm to a show that quotes Percy Bysshe Shelley ("Shake your chains to earth like dew… Ye are many – they are few") and Thomas Paine ("We have it…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:04PMSaturday, June 8, 2013
Northern Stage, Newcastle upon Tyne; then touringThis portmanteau piece by a new company called Northern Spirit aims to challenge the cliche that it's grim up north. In four stories by four …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMHull Truck, Hull; and touringI almost never go to a performance only because I believe readers may find it interesting, yet that is what took me to this. The thought of participating in an e…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:04PMSaturday, June 1, 2013
West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsThe celebrated illusionist David Devant (1868-1941) recommended stringing magical feats like beads along a thread of dramatic interest. Writer Mark Catley does…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, May 18, 2013
Royal Exchange, ManchesterNew writing has a special kind of energy. It generates a particular charge, especially when it's performed, as here, by cracking actors in a solid production (joint…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, May 11, 2013
Royal Exchange, Manchester"I've discovered this Christmas that the law is not what I thought… and I can't accept that the law is right. If a woman cannot spare her old dying father… or s…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:04PMSaturday, May 4, 2013
Nottingham PlayhouseThis ponderous adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's 2003 novel is lightened by master musician Hanif Khan's on-stage tabla playing and by involving performances from its 10-st…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, April 27, 2013
Belgrade theatre, CoventryYou know those football matches where, from that very first touch of the ball at kick-off, you can tell this is going to be a good one – and then it really is? Th…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMHull Truck, HullTim Fountain's new piece operates on two levels: romantic and political. As a romance it plays out a standard story of lovelorn westerners finding fulfilment in the east. Deb…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, April 20, 2013
Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, ParisThe prose, poems, songs and reworkings of existing texts that make up Michael Ondaatje's 1970 meditation on the life of one of the United States's best-kn…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, April 13, 2013
Crucible Studio, SheffieldSixty people on a studio stage, hemmed on three sides by audience – they surge, they pulse; they shimmer like a shoal of fish changing direction, shiver into cont…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMPlayhouse, LiverpoolAll creatures are mysterious. A child with the kind of brain that doesn't allow for co-ordinated movement or communicative speech or gesture is more mysterious than most.…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:04PMSaturday, April 6, 2013
Studio, Old Vic, Bristol; and touringA magic dismemberment act in which a head appears to be removed from a body was once billed in a theatre programme as being "exceedingly amusing and in n…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, March 30, 2013
RSC, Stratford-upon-AvonA set should not be so distracting. An arrangement of earth and skulls – clustered in threes – borders the wooden floorboards of an old-fashioned gymnasium, where…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:05PMRSC, Stratford-upon-Avon Continue reading...
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:05PMSaturday, March 23, 2013
Brae Hall, ShetlandIt is night. We're sitting in cars facing darkly glittering water and a distant horizon. To our left, in the middle distance, flares flame: refinery burn-off, I guess…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:05PMSaturday, March 16, 2013
Ustinov Studio, BathIt's a fragile thing, this drama by multi-award-winning US playwright Richard Greenberg, written in 1990 and here receiving its British premiere. The 1960s action takes p…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:05PMSaturday, March 9, 2013
Hampstead, LondonWilliam Boyd is an award-winning novelist and screenwriter. Until now, though, he had never written a play. To get himself started, he decided, as he put it, to "stitch toge…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMOctagon, BoltonWalter Tull (1888-1918) was "the first black outfield footballer to play in the old First Division in England" and, later, a second lieutenant in the Special Reserve of office…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMOctagon, BoltonWalter Tull (1888-1918) was "the first black outfield footballer to play in the old First Division in England" and, later, a second lieutenant in the Special Reserve of office…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PM 
