Whatever happened to lunchtime theatre? Is it dead and buried, just like the traditional lunchbreak? It seems to be in terminal decline in London, a victim of a world in which people have to…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 04:56PMIs there a scientific basis for coincidence? I have absolutely no idea. In fact since passing my O level physics in 1964 I have struggled to understand science. I once found myself on a plan…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 05:40AMAnother very disappointing evening at the Roundhouse, following Twelfth Night a few days ago. All I can say about David Farr's over-designed and under-acted production is that the phrase 'Sh…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 10:27AMIt must be a fairly rare event for a first play by an unknown writer to get its premiere not in the Cottesloe but in the National Theatre's much larger Lyttelton. But director Howard Davies'…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 06:15AMTwo years ago Shakespeare's Globe delivered a cracking production of Henry IV, with Jamie Parker playing the young Hal opposite Roger Allam's Olivier-winning Falstaff. Now Parker moves on to…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 10:30AMI have a modest 'back to basics' proposal for the Royal Shakespeare Company's new boss Greg Doran: despatch all the company's set and costume designers, composers, technical panjandrums and …
SOURCE: John Morrison at 09:41AMAh well, you can't win them all. The Globe's magnificent worldwide Shakespeare season is coming to an end with a real stinker. I do not think I have ever seen a version of Shakespeare as bad…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 01:01PMDirector Polly Findlay told the NT Platform audience before last night's performance of Antigone that she was hoping to recreate the atmosphere of an HBO television drama, using the Olivier'…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 05:30AMPerhaps it was the offer from the blog-friendly Almeida theatre of a free ticket and a glass of white wine; or perhaps it was the bikini-clad young woman on the poster which drew me to see M…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 07:23AMI've just watched Off By Heart, a really stimulating BBC2 programme about nine talented teenagers acting their socks off at the RSC in Stratford with soliloquies from Romeo and Juliet, Henry…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 06:10PMYes, it was charming. That's not an adjective I often use in the theatre, and it's probably inadequate to explain the appeal of this highly sophisticated Georgian production at Shakespeare's…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 04:35PMAfter being electrified by Andrew Hilton's Bristol-based company's production of Richard II last year, I jumped at the chance to see their well-reviewed production of Chekhov's last play on …
SOURCE: John Morrison at 07:34AMImagine an African duo with the comic skills of The Two Ronnies or Morecambe and Wise taking on Shakespeare, and you will get some idea of how funny this production is. Denton Chikura and To…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 06:25AMAnal rape, blowjobs, fright wigs, bare bums, cocaine snorting, pill popping, vodka swilling and witches miming to 'I will survive'. This production of Macbeth had everything schoolchildren l…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 05:02AMIt's not just the recession that makes me combine the three plays I saw yesterday in one post. It would be hard to find a greater contrast between the joyous freewheeling style of actors fro…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 06:24AMGoing with my wife to see Mike Bartlett's new play about a baby boomer couple who met at Oxford in the late 1960s when they were 19 was a strange experience. Imagine the Queen watching The K…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 06:32AMAfter a quarter of a century, the story of the western hostages seized in Lebanon in the 1980s has faded from popular memory. What remains is Frank McGuinness's classic play about three men …
SOURCE: John Morrison at 04:40AMImagine a notoriously corrupt country where the autocrat hands over to his deputy for a period before suddenly returning to resume his place at the top. No prizes at the front of the class f…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 02:40PMShakespeare's Globe has started its international multilingual festival with a real sizzler despite the rain. This wonderful production by the South African company that brought Carmen, The …
SOURCE: John Morrison at 04:48AMhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2012/apr/20/touts-pushing-theatregoers-out
SOURCE: John Morrison at 08:26AMSummarising this show is tricky; it leaves the audience goggle-eyed, visually and aurally ravished by its theatrical imagination. A one-man show in the cavernous space of the NT's Lyttelton …
SOURCE: John Morrison at 06:45AMThis is an interesting revival of a play which came first out of two thousand entries in a new stage writing competition run by The Observer in 1957 and organised by Kenneth Tynan. Set in Tr…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 07:33AMDavid Suchet is a great actor who has been nominated umpteen times for Olivier Awards Best Actor but has never actually won it. His harrowing performance in a role which Olivier himself once…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 05:34AMThe Royal Court Theatre has always shone a sharp light on the English class system, ever since the days of Wesker and Osborne. Laura Wade's excellent drama Posh about the rioting upper class…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 10:53AMI'm still in two minds about Philip Ridley after seeing his new play at Southwark Playhouse. Two weeks ago I really enjoyed the Arcola's revival of The Pitchfork Disney, somewhat against all…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 10:12AMEveryone with any common sense knows that Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margarita is exactly the kind of magical realist novel it's impossible to put on stage. Which is why Simon McBurney an…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 08:39AMMichael Attenborough's production of this play didn't work for me, and I'm trying to puzzle out why. There's a splendid central performance by Samantha Spiro as Filumena, the Neapolitan ex-p…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 04:31AMChurch incense wafts across the stalls and up into the circle as masked and hooded figures wearing crosses and carrying candlesticks pad their way on to the stage. Jamie Lloyd's new producti…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 05:24AMOne of the best signs that a production really works is that you leave the theatre thinking the playwright is absolutely brilliant. George Farquhar, who wrote this play just over 300 years a…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 02:36PMImagine London if things get much, much worse. The streets of central London are a third world crime zone, a bit like Travis Bickle's New York, where visiting American 'grockles' are hustled…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 12:12PMI was a bit mystified by this play when I saw a student production a few years ago but I'm glad I jumped out of my theatrical comfort zone to see this new version of it at the Arcola. Philip…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 06:43AM
