Saturday, 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 07:04PMSaturday, February 19, 2011
York Theatre Royal, and touringHarper Lee's 1960 story of a young girl's growing understanding of the dark complexities of human nature is one of the most powerfully compassionate novels ev…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:04PMSaturday, February 12, 2011
Octagon theatre, BoltonAs packed with paradox as Shakespeare's play itself, this production is heart-stoppingly poetic yet jarringly mundane. The audience is arranged, as if in an arena, aro…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:04PMSaturday, February 5, 2011
Royal Exchange, Manchester"So why," I asked, "does your municipal theatre [Münster, Germany, population approx 280,000] get as much subsidy as our RSC?" The technical director of the German…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:04PMSaturday, December 18, 2010
Crucible theatre, SheffieldAs the train pulled out of Sheffield, the couple on the other side of the table declared this was best Me and My Girl they had ever seen – and they had seen a fe…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMLiverpool PlayhouseIn front of a battered brick wall covered with remnants of things that once were – doors, windows, peeling remnants of adverts for safety matches – floats, or seems to…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:04PMSaturday, December 11, 2010
National Theatre Wales, PenygroesThe Weather Factory is not a factory but a three-storey house. A fixed-price ticket (£20/£15) permits between one and six people to visit for a fixed perio…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMOctagon, 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 07:04PMSaturday, December 4, 2010
York Theatre RoyalTutti frutti, the Leeds-based children's touring company, teams up with Theatre Royal in this spirited adaptation of the picture book (Jutta Bauer's drawings, Peter Stamm's…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:04PMStephen Joseph theatre, ScarboroughWhite lines trace two shapes at head height on blackboards to either side of the stage: mushrooms? muffins? A Jumbly boy and girl ("Their heads are green a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:02PMSaturday, November 27, 2010
Royal Exchange theatre, ManchesterOn to a sand-coloured floor, browned at the perimeter as if scorched by newly dead fires, strides the god Dionysus (divinely embodied by Jotham Annan, in fl…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:07PMSaturday, November 20, 2010
Live theatre, NewcastleRemember Look and Learn, the children's comic that aimed to educate as it entertained? It's been on my mind a lot in the past few weeks, watching plays where character…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:04PM 
