Thursday, December 12, 2019
Playhouse, LiverpoolThe hard-working cast bring enough enthusiasm and gusto to this musical adaptation to disguise its weak score
The word “believe” has been projected in big letters up …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:18PMWednesday, December 11, 2019
Tramway, GlasgowTreating Carlo Collodi’s allegory with the seriousness it deserves, this sincere and playful production draws a vulnerable boy into the tale’s darkest corners
Don’t be …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:36AMFriday, December 6, 2019
Northern Stage, NewcastleSpectacle trumps subtlety as Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of lost innocence is stifled by a topical plot and noisy percussion
You can see the temptation. You’…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:36PMThursday, December 5, 2019
Hull TruckMaking Wendy younger gives a different dynamic to Deborah McAndrew’s engaging adaptation, with Baker Mukasa’s spontaneous Peter
She’s a theatrical sort, is Vanessa Schofield…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:03AMWednesday, December 4, 2019
Traverse, EdinburghFrom a man sneezing out frog-like creatures to a husband restored to life with the phlegm of a beggar, these supernatural fables are uncanny
Being human is a risk. You nev…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:24PMSunday, December 1, 2019
Leeds PlayhouseDorothy turns eco-warrior, seeking justice in an unjust world, in this visually exciting production of the children’s classic
Check out the internet theory that Greta Thunbe…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:48PMFriday, November 29, 2019
Curve, LeicesterThe classic musical gets a bold makeover in this stylish and intimate production directed by Nikolai Foster
It’s not every show that comes with an endorsement from the loca…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:54AMThursday, November 28, 2019
Dundee RepThe Scottish comic-strip transfers to the stage in a witty show addressing cultural anxieties about belonging, driven by a rock, gospel and bhangra score
It would be a stretch to c…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:48AMMonday, November 25, 2019
New Vic theatre, Newcastle-under-LymeSisters Danielle and Nichole Bird create a dreamlike mirror image in a superbly staged production, alive with music, wit and spectacle
It was written as …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:12AMSunday, November 24, 2019
Coliseum, OldhamWhat used to be one boy’s coming-of-age struggle with a tyrannous ogre is now a free-for-all
Boisterous, full-throttled and cheery it may be, but it’s hard to locate the …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:33PMWednesday, October 23, 2019
Paisley Arts CentreA shipyard electrician and his wife suffer the debilitating effects of a preventable, man-made disease in Frances Poet’s play
In 1898, factory inspector Lucy Deane Strea…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:42PMFriday, October 18, 2019
Byker Community Centre, NewcastleThis explosive, techno-soundtracked assault on the military machine cuts between war-zone combatants and anxious families in the weapons industry
Two men loo…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:42PMSunday, October 13, 2019
Traverse, EdinburghAnna Russell-Martin gives a magnetic performance as Anais, the 15-year-old resident of a care home, who dreams of reinventing herself
Anna Russell-Martin doesn’t crack a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06AMThursday, September 19, 2019
Royal Exchange, ManchesterLucy Ellinson stars as a lean, mean and moody Macbeth in Christopher Haydon’s noisy, dystopian production, with Ony Uhiara as a high-spirited wife
Let’s number …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:03AMWednesday, September 18, 2019
Northern Stage, NewcastleArts employee Rosa Postlethwaite sets out to satirise the corporate machinery of modern theatre – but deadpan irony gets it in the way
Do you remember a time befor…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:54AMTuesday, September 17, 2019
A hip-hop history lesson, a dizzy Dahl musical and a continent-hopping barbershop … we pick the finest new works of theatre since 2000
Jez Butterworth: the sage behind our No1 Continue rea…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:18PMSunday, September 15, 2019
Royal Lyceum, EdinburghDavid Greig follows Tarkovsky and Soderbergh with this bold, rewarding take on Stanisław Lem’s novel about a sentient planet speaking to its visitors
If a sentient …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:12AMFriday, September 13, 2019
Derby theatreSarah Brigham’s revival of Richard Bean’s brilliant and chaotic comedy hoodwinks the audience into its games, but lacks the original’s taste for danger
Such was the air of…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:24AMWednesday, September 11, 2019
New Vic, Newcastle-under-LymeWith modern-day parallels and an excellent ensemble, this play about two powerful women tests the limits of intolerance and compassion
How refreshing to be plung…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:36PMMonday, September 2, 2019
Dundee RepPeter Arnott’s brilliant vignettes about a 1879 railway bridge disaster imagine the lives and hopes of passengers stalked by death
Peter Arnott has written enough plays to know y…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:03AMSunday, September 1, 2019
Pitlochry Festival theatre, Port Na CraigRarely has theatre seemed so much part of the public sphere as in this electrifying adaptation of the Elizabeth Gaskell novel
There is a thrilling tr…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:36PMTuesday, August 27, 2019
The festival is over for another year but plenty of its theatre, comedy and dance hits have announced dates around the UK
CollapsibleBreffni Holahan gives a searing performance as Essie in M…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:54AMFriday, August 23, 2019
Scottish Storytelling Centre, EdinburghDrawing on her dual Scottish and Kenyan heritage, Mara Menzies weaves together an exquisite set of stories about the power of language to liberate and …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:12PMRoyal Lyceum, EdinburghThis full-blooded agitprop cabaret comprises 10 monologues about resistance and emancipation, based on true stories about the treatment of women in Nigeria
In a week w…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:48AMSummerhall, EdinburghLaura Dalgleish is magnetic as a woman marauding through the Newport night after family pressures become too much
Theatre is a laboratory where we put a character centre…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:48AMWednesday, August 21, 2019
Festival theatre, EdinburghThe avuncular storytelling sage leavens seven-and-a-half-hours of myth-recounting with boyish enthusiasm and silly voices
Stephen Fry is lying prostrate on the st…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:24AMTuesday, August 20, 2019
Summerhall, EdinburghTim Etchells’ thought experiment doggedly asks what if you could go back and right the wrongs of your past?
Tim Etchells is surely a master of the late-night pub conve…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:33PMMonday, August 19, 2019
Drawing from folk music, Celtic myth – and a drunken night out, three plays are imbued with a deep sense of terrain
Karine Polwart’s Wind Resistance, which makes a welcome return to Edin…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:36AMSunday, August 18, 2019
Summerhall, EdinburghAhmed El Attar’s bruising two-hander dives into the long lead-up to 2011 in an attempt to determine what causes mass revolt
What causes a people to rise up? Is it a si…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:18PMFriday, August 16, 2019
Kings theatre, EdinburghAn updating of Sophocles’ classic, set on election eve, has such political resonance you can imagine Boris Johnson not far away
The play has hardly begun and alread…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:36AMThursday, August 15, 2019
Royal Lyceum, EdinburghSasha Frost sparkles as a curious and vulnerable Kay searching for her birth parents, but this unfocused production fails to capture the intimacy of the soul-searching…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:03AM 
