Saturday, October 8, 2011
Lowry, SalfordLike East Is East (his 1990s stage and screen hit), Ayub Khan-Din's latest work is set in his native Salford. A large, rumbustious family is again at the heart of his story. Al…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, October 1, 2011
Stephen Joseph, Scarborough Fans of Hot Fuzz, the hilarious buddy-cop, bloodfest movie, know how fine is the line separating neighbourhood watch from Armageddon. In Alan Ayckbourn'…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMTheatre Royal, WakefieldBroken time is a resonant phrase in the history of rugby. The game initiated at the English public school of the same name in the 1820s was played by amateurs. Then, …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, September 24, 2011
Citizens, Glasgow; Tramway, GlasgowStunning sets are a feature of National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) productions and Colin Richmond's design for Men Should Weep is no exception. An enormous …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, September 17, 2011
Octagon, BoltonBefore writing this play Stella Feehily interviewed a great many people connected to the aid business. The lively but muddled result feels like a series of set pieces strung t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:31PMViaduct, HalifaxOut of the howling wind emerge three young women wearing bonnets tightly tied and shawls chest-clutched; in their midst a young man, wild-haired, booted, waistcoated and jack…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:30PMSaturday, September 10, 2011
Hull Truck, HullThe idea of "a play, a pie and a pint" began as a lunchtime filler at Òran Mór in Glasgow in 2004 and now features at other theatres and as an occasional tea-time special a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:04PMSaturday, September 3, 2011
Theatre by the Lake, KeswickThe contrast could hardly be greater, between the view from the theatre cafe out across the sunset-tipped ripples of Derwentwater and the steel-doored room w…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, August 27, 2011
York Theatre RoyalFrom its first appearance on 27 December 1904, the appeal of JM Barrie's story about "the boy who wouldn't grow up" was intergenerational. Children relished its adventures;…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, July 23, 2011
Stephen Joseph theatre, Scarborough Anton Chekhov's characters, like so many of their compatriots these days, it seems, are relocating to these shores. This autumn, his Three Sisters will be…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, July 16, 2011
The Lowry, SalfordFour years ago, performance artist Marina Abramović, born in Belgrade in 1946 and still very much alive, invited the celebrated American director Robert Wilson to co-creat…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMPavilion theatre, ManchesterEven with a tight brown casing of women's support underwear pulled on over his trousers, constricting flesh and cloth so that it looks as if a couple of sausage d…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, July 9, 2011
Royal Exchange, ManchesterGreg Hersov's clear, fast-paced, witty and occasionally wacky production is not, in fact, part of this year's Manchester international festival but the Royal Exchan…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, July 2, 2011
Stephen Joseph theatre, ScarboroughThe Stephen Joseph is one of the best of those undervalued national treasures – our regional theatres, all fighting hard to keep our communities provided…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:04PMSaturday, June 18, 2011
Murrays' Mills, Ancoats, ManchesterA practical problem imaginatively resolved – Charles Dickens would have approved. The Library theatre's old home is being renovated; its new home won't b…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, June 11, 2011
Stephen Joseph theatre, ScarboroughEven good actors have their limits. Sarah Parks excels at down-to-earth roles (crusty old Badger in Wind in the Willows; Linda in Corrie). So what made dir…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMRoyal & Derngate, Northampton, then on tourSet in 1912, this is a slight but well-constructed story of a prodigal daughter's brief return to the home of her country doctor father, her hopes …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:04PMSaturday, May 28, 2011
Crucible, SheffieldIt's almost 50 years since Samuel Beckett's genre-defying play had its world premiere at the Cherry Lane theatre, New York – a venue Bob Dylan played around that time. I…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMMacrobert, StirlingScottish Opera and Visible Fictions' adaptation of Philip Pullman's children's story is as cleverly contrived as an intricate mechanism of meshing cogs – and about as cu…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, May 21, 2011
Octagon, Bolton"David Lodge yokes together two warhorses, the campus novel and the novel of adultery, and uses them to pull an old debate – the rival claims of science and art – to tell …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:04PMSaturday, May 14, 2011
Everyman, LiverpoolTwo fissures in the broken-tiled concrete floor are filled with a foul-looking liquid, bubbling gloopily. A drifting smoke, from no seen source, hazes the air. Francis O'C…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSunday, May 8, 2011
Bardsea Malt Kiln, Cumbria"Augmenters of anecdotes" – if any there be who read this page – beware of calling on your mother for corroboration of exaggeration. Gary Bridgens, one of a pai…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:33AMSaturday, April 23, 2011
Royal Exchange, ManchesterBrad Fraser's new play, commissioned by the Royal Exchange, seems as if what it really wants to be is an issue-based TV miniseries dealing with addiction among a gr…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMBelgrade theatre, CoventryIf this production had a meter attached marked at one end "sublime" and at the other "ridiculous", its needle would lunge between the extremes, barely registering m…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:03PMMonday, March 21, 2011
The way theatre programmes segregate actors from the creative process undersells their contributionWhen did theatre companies start to use the headings "cast" and "creative team" in their pr…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:28AMSaturday, March 19, 2011
West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsAcross the back of the stage stretches a cyclorama, drenched in the hues of a changing sky (Paul Keogan's lighting). In front is suspended an enormous disc, ti…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:05PMSaturday, March 12, 2011
Traverse, Edinburgh, and touringOn to a towering set is projected an online exchange between a mother and her son. The mother has no idea how a computer "conversation" works. The son has to …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMNew Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme, and touringConrad Nelson's production for Northern Broadsides is a white-knuckle ride but, if you can keep your grip, it is as physically and spiritually exhil…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMThursday, March 10, 2011
UK dramatists are hugely popular overseas, where their work enjoys an exposure and longevity often denied it domesticallyFlying out to Slovenia for a new production of Simon Stephens's 2008 …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:40AMSaturday, February 26, 2011
Crucible theatre, SheffieldDavid Hare's 1990 play about the state of the Church of England seems like a cross between the 1960s TV comedy All Gas and Gaiters (featuring Derek Nimmo as a st…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMWest Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsIn the USSR of the 1950s, playwrights, like other artists, had to conform to Stalin's notions of socialist realism; in 1950s UK, it was the West End, "Aunt Edn…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:04PM 
