Saturday, June 2, 2012
Royal & Derngate, NorthamptonMemories of last year's riots are fresh. Jubilee celebrations have begun. Olympic torchbearers draw nearer to London. The time is right to run a set of play…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:03PMSaturday, May 26, 2012
Crucible, SheffieldHarold Pinter's 1978 play is both deeply personal and disquietingly universal. Its ostensible subject matter is the staple of bourgeois drama: publisher Robert (Colin Tier…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, May 19, 2012
Patti Pavilion, SwanseaThere's a lovely reading on YouTube of Dylan Thomas's short story Just Like Little Dogs. The text unfurls on the screen as the voice of – I think – Anthony Hopkins…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:04PMSaturday, May 12, 2012
Hull Truck, HullIn Ivan Viripaev's play, four performers in their 30s take turns to narrate the stories of two elderly and long-married couples. They begin at the ends of the lives and shutt…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:03PMSaturday, April 28, 2012
Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-AvonBefore the house lights went down, two men climbed on to the stage and began to sing. Their voices wavered, harmony faltered; they exited audito…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, April 7, 2012
Royal Lyceum, EdinburghDC Jackson's comic drama of sexual and financial shenanigans among Edinburgh's banking elite relies heavily on its two sources: Beaumarchais's 1784 comedy The Marriage…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, March 17, 2012
The Curve, LeicesterAs the brass and percussion strike the opening bars, period posters, their colours bleached to shades of grey, descend from the flies. The most prominent pictures a happy…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:01PMSaturday, March 10, 2012
Crucible, Sheffield"This is not art, it's mathematics!" complains Simon Wilson's exasperated architect in Michael Frayn's Benefactors, as he struggles to square daylight regulations with the…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMTuesday, March 6, 2012
Men still dominate the big jobs in performing arts. And I have noticed, shockingly, that female theatre students are still prone to cede to male classmates. But is change finally coming?In h…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:43AMSaturday, February 25, 2012
Liverpool PlayhouseIn a week when leading playwrights accused the subsidised theatres of preferring familiar fare to challenging work, Gemma Bodinetz, artistic director of the Liverpool Play…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, February 18, 2012
West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsIn his understated way, Ian Brown has done tremendous things during his decade as artistic director at West Yorkshire Playhouse. His departure later this summe…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, December 3, 2011
West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsMiss Hannigan, the orphanage overseer from hell, tantalises her charges with hope: "Today, you're not getting hot mush"; then dashes it with vicious glee: "You…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, November 12, 2011
Theatre Royal, York; and touringSex between a 12-year-old girl and a fortysomething man. This is the subject of David Harrower's 2005 play, explored through a dialogue between the pair meeti…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, October 29, 2011
Hull Truck, HullThe poster (weirdly featuring an image of a faceless young woman wearing nothing but her underwear and sheathed in see-through plastic) proclaims in big letters: "Yerma by Fe…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, October 22, 2011
Royal Exchange, Manchester In a 2004 Guardian article celebrating CP Taylor's "unique contribution to British theatre", his fellow playwright, the late Alan Plater, described Good as "a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, October 15, 2011
Derby theatre, DerbyThe jewel-like precision of David Wood's adaptation is immediately apparent: LP Hartley's oft-quoted opening line to his 1953 novel is subtly but significantly altered. "…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, October 8, 2011
Liverpool PlayhouseThe gangster Alberto Ui is a connoisseur of violence; just like his real-life counterpart, Adolf Hitler. Bertolt Brecht's play charts the rise to power of both. Fictional …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMLowry, 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 07:04PM 
