Tuesday, September 20, 2022
An immense task awaits the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new artistic directors who must attract top talent, prioritise verse-speaking and combine classic repertory and contemporary drama
It…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:55PMWednesday, September 14, 2022
The whodunnit starring Saoirse Ronan is a fun spoof but tinkers with history and never captures the unique way Agatha Christie’s play fascinated audiences in the 50s
The smell of greasepai…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:49PMMonday, September 12, 2022
Mike Bartlett’s 2014 play anticipated a constitutional crisis, while playwrights including Shakespeare and Chekhov have shown how traumatic a transfer of power can be
What does the future …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:03AMFriday, September 9, 2022
The monarch was sympathetically depicted by dramatists and at a 1999 production of Oklahoma! her eyes lit up when she recalled her own theatrical outings
“I’ve never been fond of the the…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:49AMThursday, September 8, 2022
Michael Frayn’s comedy is not just extremely funny but also acknowledges the fragile artifice of order – in theatre and the world beyond
All plays, wrote critic John Lahr, are dated. He …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:33AMMonday, August 8, 2022
The two titans of modern drama were both cricket obsessives. What if they had faced the fast bowlers together? Playwright Shomit Dutta explains why he made it happen – with darkly comic dr…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:54AMMonday, July 25, 2022
An actor of innate tenderness and grace, Warner had a theatre career of two halves, each with superb performances at the RSC
I have never forgotten my first sighting of David Warner, who has…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:18PMMonday, July 4, 2022
In our many meetings, the director’s conversation was as invigorating as the way he led audiences through the night in his staging of The Mahabharata
In 1979, Peter Brook made a film of Gu…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:03PMMonday, June 13, 2022
Sam Mendes’s The Lehman Trilogy and Marianne Elliott’s Company took 10 prizes between them and demonstrated the power of UK subsidised theatre
“Brits Triumph on Broadway” is one of t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:00AMTuesday, June 7, 2022
A meeting of minds at the National Theatre showed ways to stage drama along environmentally sound lines. But is everyone on board?
‘Theatre will be measured by its response to the climate …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:42PMFriday, May 27, 2022
A provocative new film at Cannes featuring Ian McKellen attempts to de-romanticise the Dane but lags behind what theatre productions have been telling us for decades
TS Eliot called Hamlet …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:37AMMonday, May 23, 2022
Beth Steel’s The House of Shades unites national politics and private lives through the fortunes of a working-class family from 1965 to 2019
Old myths die hard. One of the greatest in thea…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:03PMMonday, April 25, 2022
Gregory Doran has achieved much at the RSC and directed some fine productions. Let’s have an actor in charge next: how about Adjoa Andoh or Simon Russell Beale?
When the boss of a big thea…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:18AMThursday, April 14, 2022
Bertie Carvel is brilliant in The 47th, Mike Bartlett’s ingenious play about the former US president, but the real parallel is not with the Bard’s kings but his hollow braggarts
If you w…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:12AMWednesday, March 16, 2022
Criticised for moral ambiguity on its premiere, the 1965 drama – about a woman in a masculine world of aggression and pretence – is back to provoke and disturb
Call a play a “modern cl…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:54PMMonday, March 14, 2022
Owen Horsley’s new production of Henry VI, Parts 2 and 3, uses a cast of 120, including professionals and community participants, with some of them filming the action on stage
I discovered…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:18AMFriday, March 11, 2022
Ian Smith’s moving tribute to the late Colin Cowdrey is a gentle reminder of the abiding link between the stumps and the stage
Cricket and theatre have long been intimate bedfellows. Strol…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:12PMTuesday, January 25, 2022
The Tragedy of Macbeth follows in the footsteps of Orson Welles’s 1948 film, which showed how imagination can turn Shakespeare’s text into more than a costume epic
With Joel Coen’s The…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:12AMTuesday, January 18, 2022
Despite some clever reimaginings of Tartuffe, UK stages remain depressingly inattentive to one of the greatest playwrights
In France the 400th anniversary of Molière’s birth is being cele…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:54AMTuesday, January 11, 2022
Edmond Rostand’s great romantic has drawn actors including Ralph Richardson, Antony Sher and James McAvoy to its lead role. It is a tale of glorious theatricality, glittering poetry and he…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:12AMThursday, January 6, 2022
The Scottish theatre-maker, who has died aged 79, brought us an epic 12-hour production of the Mysteries and the world premiere of Glengarry Glen Ross
Bill Bryden, who has died aged 79, was …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:48PMThursday, December 30, 2021
In a surprisingly class-conscious stage adaptation of the HG Wells-inspired musical from the Downton Abbey creator on Sky, Charlie Stemp radiates kindly innocence
What’s in a name? Quite a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:18PMMonday, December 13, 2021
The super-producer, celebrating his 75th birthday with a retrospective on TV, talks about the pandemic’s effect on commercial theatre – and his fury with government
Cameron Mackintosh wi…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:48PMFriday, December 3, 2021
Colin Murphy’s remarkable play takes us behind closed doors as high-stakes negotiations for Irish independence take place
‘I wanna be in the room where it happens,” sings Aaron Burr in…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:06PMOne of the most gifted actors of his era, Sher – who has died aged 72 – combined psychology and a keen sense of the visual in soul-baring performances
Antony Sher, who has died at the ag…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:54AMTuesday, November 30, 2021
Half a century ago, Colin George faced down the doom-mongers and campaigners to bring the city a radical alternative to proscenium theatre: the open, thrust stage
Entering Sheffield’s Cruc…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:48AMMonday, November 29, 2021
Discover the musical theatre titan through the life-changing cast album of Company, Imelda Staunton’s phenomenal turn in Gypsy, birthday concerts and his essential book on lyric writing
So…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:24PMFriday, November 5, 2021
He gained household fame on Give Us a Clue but the all-round entertainer was a world-class hoofer who could hold his own alongside Sammy Davis Jr
Lionel Blair, who has died aged 92, was that…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:42PMThursday, November 4, 2021
His complex, ambivalent plays are regularly revived – and now a campaign aims to improve the playwright’s resting place in a London cemetery
What is the best tribute to a dead playwright…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:32AMSaturday, October 9, 2021
From Anne Enright’s novel about an actor’s daughter to the diaries of former National Theatre director Peter Hall, the theatre critic chooses his favourite titles about the stage
Theatre…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:06AMMonday, October 4, 2021
With three new versions on stage this month, the ancient Greek classic – and its reflections on authority and devotion – remains as compelling as ever
This October sees a rash of product…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:24AM 
