Wednesday, 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…
Linked From 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
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Linked From 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…
Linked From 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 …
Linked From 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…
Linked From 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…
Linked From 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…
Linked From 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…
Linked From 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…
Linked From 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…
Linked From 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…
Linked From 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…
Linked From 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…
Linked From 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…
Linked From 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…
Linked From 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…
Linked From 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…
Linked From 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…
Linked From The Guardian at 03:54AMWednesday, May 13, 2020
He was our ‘greatest theatrical architect’, the creator of 150 magnificent buildings that delighted crowds from Glasgow to Blackpool to London. On the centenary of his death, we celebrat…
Linked From The Guardian at 02:36AMFriday, April 17, 2020
A lengthy 2017 interview, to be streamed online, shows the acting great opening up about her craft and sharing priceless memories
One of the many tantalising shows lost to the lockdown was …
Linked From The Guardian at 10:06AMFriday, April 3, 2020
Dramatists have long focused on the agonies and irritations of self-imposed or enforced isolation
‘I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space,” says Hamle…
Linked From The Guardian at 01:42AMThursday, March 19, 2020
This is the art form that makes us feel most acutely human. We are going to need it more than ever
How will society cope with the total shutdown of theatres for the foreseeable future? It wi…
Linked From The Guardian at 10:18AMMonday, March 16, 2020
A versatile master of stage, radio and TV, Hudd survived changes in popular taste through his good-hearted skill
I last saw Roy Hudd, who has died at the age of 83, at a lunch organised by t…
Linked From The Guardian at 02:48PMThursday, March 5, 2020
From Olivier’s strangled fury to Ralph Fiennes’ Oedipal embraces, this complex political play is extraordinarily flexible
‘The tragedy of Coriolanus is one of the most amusing of our a…
Linked From The Guardian at 01:33AMMonday, March 2, 2020
To kick off our critical tour of Europe’s cultural hotspots, Michael Billington reports on thrilling theatre in a post-slump Greece – from a minimalist Doll’s House to Beckett like he…
Linked From The Guardian at 11:03AMThursday, February 27, 2020
The playwright’s new work has been seen as a departure from his intellectual stock-in-trade. But look deeper, and passion has always been present
What kind of writer is Tom Stoppard? In co…
Linked From The Guardian at 05:54AMTuesday, February 18, 2020
The Royal Shakespeare Company has vowed to drill the Bard’s rhythms into its actors – but our alienation from his language runs deeper
‘Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced i…
Linked From The Guardian at 07:03AMTuesday, February 4, 2020
The former RSC director had a stellar career, seeing the depth in derided plays and restoring the Histories to their rightful stage
I was saddened to hear of the death of Terry Hands at the …
Linked From The Guardian at 10:36AMMonday, January 20, 2020
From Rome to Paris to London, Uncle Vanya delivers fresh meanings wherever and whenever it’s performed
Which is Chekhov’s greatest play? It tends to be the one you’ve seen most recentl…
Linked From The Guardian at 08:42AMThursday, December 19, 2019
Royal and Derngate, NorthamptonAstrid Lindgren’s nine-year-old rebel is suitably anarchic and altruistic in a festive musical show that leaves you chuckling
I’ve come late in life to Ast…
Linked From The Guardian at 11:42AMTuesday, December 17, 2019
Katori Hall gave us a miracle, Caryl Churchill delivered a dark quartet and Tom Hiddleston astounded in Betrayal. But the year’s highlight was a breathtaking Ibsen with Hayley Atwell
More …
Linked From The Guardian at 05:33AM 
