Tuesday, July 13, 2021
Starring in a Zoom production of the play Masks and Faces tested my acting skills – not to mention my singing
About six weeks ago a small bombshell landed in my inbox. Headed “A Job Offe…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:03AMWednesday, July 7, 2021
The duo’s shows boast catchy songs but pose problems for directors. As South Pacific and Carousel return this summer, our writer looks back on enchanted evenings with the odd couple’s mu…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:12PMTuesday, June 29, 2021
A new production of King Lear, drawn from the world of opera, aims to put paid to the notion that great singers make second-rate actors. We speak to its stars
I had coffee recently with King…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:12PMMonday, June 14, 2021
The Royal Shakespeare Company is letting the public watch the usually secret processes towards performance – from clapping games to verse sessions
The creative process normally takes place…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:42AMMonday, April 19, 2021
On his centenary, the veteran producer recalls adding punch to Coronation Street, bringing Brideshead to the screen and his ‘turbulent’ relationship with one of the acting world’s grea…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:54AMFriday, March 19, 2021
The Royal Shakespeare Company survived establishment resistance and economic storms to become a powerhouse. How should it now change?
What’s in a name? Quite a lot, as it happens. In 1960 …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:12PMSunday, March 7, 2021
There has always been a strong affinity between acting and cricket, and my friend Alan Curtis, who has died aged 90, was a perfect example of that. He combined a long theatrical career with …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:06PMFriday, February 26, 2021
The actor, who has died aged 80, had a thriving screen career but was also a terrific stage star and an essential member of Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre company
Ronald Pickup, who h…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:18AMMonday, February 15, 2021
The star’s long career, from her stage debut at 15 to her film, TV and literary success, reveals a shrewd talent who has risen to many a challenge
Acting must be the best rejuvenation pill…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:18AMMonday, February 1, 2021
Theatre Royal Stratford East’s colourful history is documented in more than 100 boxes of material collected by actor Murray Melvin
It is cheering to learn that the Murray Melvin Archive, d…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:03PMThursday, January 7, 2021
The play Rossum’s Universal Robots clearly belongs to the 1920s but its satirical take on the meeting of humans and machines is all too relevant today
Not many plays introduce a new word t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:12AMMonday, December 28, 2020
A new exhibition is devoted to the visual flair of a debonair playwright whose tastes are almost impossible to define
Noël Coward was the epitome of style. Fittingly that is the subject of …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:54AMFriday, December 11, 2020
The late actor took on Brecht, Falstaff and panto and will be remembered for her collaborations with Joan Littlewood
Peter Bradshaw on her film career
Fame is a funny thing. Barbara Windsor …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:03PMWednesday, September 9, 2020
Harwood’s witty tribute to actors’ endurance, with its echoes of King Lear, is likely to be his permanent claim on posterity
I last saw Ronald Harwood, who has died aged 85, at Harold Pi…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:03PMMonday, September 7, 2020
The giant street party has been cancelled. But there are still plans to celebrate the theatre that wowed young crowds, championed black playwrights and conjured finales from Italian cuisine
…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:32PMSunday, August 16, 2020
Our series ends with a passionate play about gender politics and women’s rights that still rings true
When Elizabeth Robins’s play was first produced in 1907, it was billed as “A Drama…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:06PMMonday, August 10, 2020
James’s rich dialogue and clashing-cultures theme make his country-house play worthy of a renewed offer
Henry James had a love-hate relationship with the theatre. He had boyhood dreams of …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:24AMSunday, August 2, 2020
The Peter Pan author caught Hitchcock’s eye with a Hebridean ghost story about the intensity of mother-son relationships
Read the rest of our Forgotten plays series
I have neglected Scotla…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:12PMMonday, July 27, 2020
A drama in which the spirit of Jonathan Swift haunts a seance and an astonishingly brief update of the Oresteia confirm the poet’s remarkable skills as a playwright
Few plays are more forg…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:03AMFriday, July 24, 2020
She has given unforgettable performances in Shakespeare, Chekhov and Shaw over her extraordinary 70-year career. Where’s this great actor’s damehood?
The concept of the classical actor i…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:54AMThursday, July 23, 2020
She has played cops, rockers, monarchs and murderers. As Helen Mirren turns 75, we celebrate her astonishing career – and remember her letter to the Guardian that led to questions in parli…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:12AMMonday, July 20, 2020
The critics howled derisively but this challenging story of the violence lurking beneath society’s surface was a game-changer
Where does it all begin? Is there a moment that marks a radica…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:42AMSunday, July 12, 2020
Reckord’s unflinchingly honest social document pinned down the flaws in a UK education system that consigned an underclass to a dead-end future
Why are there so few good plays about school…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:36PMSunday, July 5, 2020
The collapse of the 1968 protests left this incisive political dramatist searching for answers – and his response delved brilliantly into the dilemmas of revolution
Aside from Comedians (1…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:12PMFriday, July 3, 2020
It’s time to accept artists know more about art than politicians. Without a proper plan, the industry will be decimated
Dear Oliver Dowden,
You presumably heard Boris Johnson, when asked a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:18AMSunday, June 28, 2020
The writer unleashed her gift for black comedy to excoriate British attitudes to property and possessions in this sprightly drama
Caryl Churchill is rightly admired for many qualities: her f…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:36PMMonday, June 22, 2020
This magnificently honest play about the Shelleys and Byron’s summer of sexual experimentation raises difficult questions about the cost of utopian aspirations
Howard Brenton’s output is…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:03PMFriday, June 19, 2020
Acclaimed actor whose dazzling career included memorable roles in Alien, Chariots of Fire and The Lord of the Rings
Ian Holm, who has died aged 88, was a brilliant actor in all media whose c…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:48AMMonday, June 15, 2020
A Caribbean-set ‘play of revolutionary dreams’ acquires a chilling new relevance when protests confront the legacy of colonialism
Although I admired its ambition, I was sceptical about T…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:54AMMonday, June 8, 2020
Our series on forgotten theatre classics continues with Wertenbaker’s stylish dissection of Thatcher-era morality
I recently caught on BBC Four a repeat of Andrew Marr’s History of Moder…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:48AMMonday, June 1, 2020
Our new series on lost theatre classics begins with an exceptional play about the dashed hopes of a middle-aged Jamaican woman
When the theatrical lockdown ends, I suspect there will be a te…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:54AM 
