Monday, November 14, 2016
How do you top a hit play about global politics? By tackling the end of the world – from nuclear meltdown to Brexit and Trump. The writer talks eavesdropping and honestyWomen who go to see…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:24AMTuesday, November 1, 2016
From One Man, Two Guvnors to Noises Off and What the Butler Saw, trouser-dropping and door-slamming is back with a vengeance in the West End and on Broadway. How come?On radio phone-ins at t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:36AMSaturday, October 15, 2016
The playwright discusses referendum gloom, turning down I’m a Celebrity, and why his third volume of diaries may be his last. Read an extract hereHaving been a Spitting Image puppet, voice…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:15AMFriday, October 7, 2016
Part motivational seminar, part big-budget Blue Peter feature, this somersaulting lecture about human survival is unlike anything on the planetSuspended on wires high above Wembley arena, ru…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:06AMSunday, October 2, 2016
London Palladium The Dynasty star treads a line between spontaneity and laziness in the company of her fifth husband and an adoring audienceAlthough the London Palladium is famous for hostin…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:25AMWednesday, September 21, 2016
The daughter of a Vietnam vet, Suzan-Lori Parks has now written an epic trilogy set during the American civil war. She talks about the military, Obama-era racism and loving Downton AbbeyAs a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:09PMSaturday, September 17, 2016
The three-time Pulitzer prize-winning playwright had an extraordinary career trajectory that saw him conquer critics and alcoholism to win more trophiesPerhaps the most remarkable achievemen…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:00AMFriday, September 16, 2016
G is for The Goat, L is for lizards and U is for umbrella … As A Delicate Balance returns to Broadway, dip into our guide to the great American playwrightAfter being born – on 12 March 1…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:10PMFrom Dan Brown to Graham Greene, the papacy has long proved fascinating to writers. Mark Lawson examines the mysteries around this powerful figure and the church he leadsThe first duty of a …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:08AMTuesday, September 6, 2016
After his success with E4's Glue, Thorne is returning to the theatre with Hope, a drama at the Royal Court about local government budget cutsDespite having been up late last Monday night at …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:48PMSunday, September 4, 2016
Soho theatre, LondonMaria Alyokhina’s dramatisation of artists targeted by Putin is most powerful when it evokes the dark political farce of PinterThe arrest and imprisonment of the Russia…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:55AMTuesday, August 30, 2016
John Osborne’s classic allegory The Entertainer is back. But the UK is now so fragmented that no modern playwright could pen a drama to sum up who we areKenneth Branagh, whose career has o…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:02AMFriday, August 19, 2016
Screenwriters often find themselves in a straitjacket – but comedy shows written for the theatre have free rein to be as foul-mouthed and foul-minded as they like. The world needs more of …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:36AMTuesday, August 16, 2016
From the Brexit vote to the US presidential race, the tumult of the year’s news shows how nimble – or lucky – artists need to be to stay relevantMost would agree that timing is vital t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:34PMThursday, July 21, 2016
As previews of the West End show reveal its gasp-inducing illusions, hanky-inducing scenes and Harry as a 40-year-old dad, the producers behind the darkest ever Potter project discuss secrec…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:26PMMonday, July 11, 2016
As she prepares to appear in the Young Chekhov trilogy, the star of Last Tango in Halifax and W1A talks about playing outsiders, growing up surrounded by white faces – and how it feels to …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:09PMSaturday, July 9, 2016
A lifetime achievement in musical theatre acknowledges Lansbury’s prolific career spanning seven decadesPeople like to pass landmark birthdays in meaningful places, so it seems right that …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:43PMSunday, June 19, 2016
Life with Father, about a sexist patriarch and submissive wife, holds the record for the longest-running non-musical play in New York. Now, 75 years after it premiered, Mark Lawson…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:51PMThursday, June 16, 2016
Minerva, ChichesterMark Hayhurst’s play about a court-martialled first world war soldier is sharply intelligent and emotionally joltingThe canon of first world war drama is already vast. M…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:34PMSaturday, June 11, 2016
With gift for solitude, and dialogue, prolific award-winning scriptwriter is unusually natural collaborator for Harry Potter playTelevision and theatre playwrights who spend a lot of time al…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:18AMThursday, June 9, 2016
Wales Millennium Centre, CardiffThe singer has co-authored a fascinating update on Hans Christian Andersen, pitting her sea nymph against marine pollution and malign capitalismWhile church m…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:07PMMonday, June 6, 2016
The playwright was a commercial success, but his works could only have been created in subsidised venuesPeter Shaffer obituaryFew writers achieve the lucrative double of writing an internati…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:49PMShakespeare’s Globe, LondonAoife Duffin is an electrifying Kate in Caroline Byrne’s splendid Irish version, which injects touches of Yeats, Wilde and Beckett Shakespeare’s comedy of Pe…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:15AMWednesday, June 1, 2016
St James theatre, LondonAn attempt to adapt the Oscar-winning film for the stage cannot disguise its origins sufficiently enough to work as theatreIgnoring the biblical warning against putti…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:43PMFriday, April 22, 2016
Criterion, LondonThis thrillingly inventive piece about bed-hopping gem thieves is a slapstick delightThe financial prospects of young actors are probably only studied by economists as a hor…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:45AMFriday, April 15, 2016
Revivals from Arnold Wesker’s heyday prove the enduring quality of his work, where autobiographical detail went hand in hand with experimental stagecraftCelebrated playwrights often seem t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:10AMWith a sexually confused Putin and a Bond villain Blair, Corbyn the Musical has some pretty broad caricatures – but it’s even-handed in its politics. And it’s not the first musical to …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:55AMSunday, April 10, 2016
Victoria Palace Theatre, London Director Stephen Daldry made amusing artistic virtue of legal necessity and Sir Elton John savoured the show’s success Even before sampling the refreshments…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:33AMMonday, April 4, 2016
Dench deserved to break records for her psychologically probing in turn The Winter’s Tale, and Rufus Norris saw his vision for the National Theatre validated. But the Oliviers still need t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:52AMMonday, March 28, 2016
On May 8 1956, John Osborne's Look Back in Anger premiered at the Royal Court in London. It shocked the theatre world, some acclaiming it as the voice of a new generation, others damning it …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:13PMThursday, March 24, 2016
The storyline is contrived around a string of pop hits in this homage to the photo-stories and problem pages of the classic teenage girls’ magazine Aimed at a largely female audience with…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:15PM 
