Thursday, June 22, 2017
"Sawyer, you're going out a youngster but you've got to come back a star." So Ruby Keeler was famously told by Warner Baxter in the movie of 42nd Street. And that classic line about understu…
Linked From The Guardian at 10:36AMHampstead theatre, LondonThere are shades of Neil LaBute’s In the Company of Men in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ merciless modern satire, set in the offices of a Manhattan magazineNothing can…
Linked From The Guardian at 08:48AMSaturday, June 17, 2017
Courtyard, Stratford-upon-AvonAs a director Lucy Bailey is clearly at home in ancient Rome: she gave us a blackly sardonic Titus Andronicus at Shakespeare's Globe; now she comes up with a vi…
Linked From The Guardian at 05:24AMFriday, June 16, 2017
The Kids Company inquiry becomes a musical, Olivia Colman and Olivia Williams star as sisters, Sienna Miller and Jack O’Connell hit the roof and rhinoceroses rampage through Edinburgh• S…
Linked From The Guardian at 01:06AMThursday, June 15, 2017
Minerva, ChichesterO’Brien has revised her 2011 stage adaptation of her evocative novel about two friends who move from rural Ireland to DublinRitually burned in the grounds of her local p…
Linked From The Guardian at 12:33PMTuesday, June 13, 2017
Cottesloe, LondonHaving written plays about the Suez crisis and Thatcher's childhood, James Graham now turns his attention to the Labour government's precarious ability to survive a hung par…
Linked From The Guardian at 02:33PMJermyn Street theatre, LondonAnthony Biggs directs the British premiere of Maxim Gorky’s chaotic and overloaded 1907 play with a bullying Russian patriarch at its centre Written in 1907 in…
Linked From The Guardian at 10:48AMMonday, June 12, 2017
Two US companies have pulled their sponsorship from a New York production of Julius Caesar because it depicts a Trump-like character – grisly ending and all. But the bard has other charact…
Linked From The Guardian at 09:33AMRoyal Court, LondonAlice Birch’s radically experimental play, directed by Katie Mitchell, tests the theory that trauma can pass across three generations of womenWhat determines our charact…
Linked From The Guardian at 07:18AMSunday, June 11, 2017
Chichester Festival theatreHarden is excellent in a sprawling yet skilful production of Tennessee Williams’s Gulf Coast melodramaThis is a strange play to find on the sprawling Chichester …
Linked From The Guardian at 12:24PMThe Swan, Stratford-upon-AvonOwen Horsley’s inventive production sheds little light on what it means to be gay today, but highlights Wilde’s passionate, transgressive textEveryone curren…
Linked From The Guardian at 07:33AMThursday, June 8, 2017
Dorfman theatre, LondonInua Ellams’s invigorating and richly enjoyable drama, set in six hairdressers in two continents, offers sharp debate on family, politics, race and sportBijan Sheiba…
Linked From The Guardian at 08:36AMWednesday, June 7, 2017
Olivier, LondonAnne-Marie Duff shines in a rich, strange and often baffling drama that shows the privatisation of land as a pivotal moment in our nation’s history‘We are not here for rea…
Linked From The Guardian at 08:54AMMonday, June 5, 2017
Piccadilly theatre, LondonAn ingenious jigsaw-like design and strong performances lift this revival, but the main draw, Miranda Hart, is just too likable and the politics seem datedAt the cu…
Linked From The Guardian at 06:06PMTuesday, May 30, 2017
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-AvonThis, of all Shakespeare's plays, badly needs a shot in the arm – and it receives a powerful one in this production by Gregory Doran, the RSC'…
Linked From The Guardian at 10:54PMMonday, May 29, 2017
Finborough, LondonAn Iranian teacher is confronted by one of her former pupils in Matt Parvin’s claustrophobic two-hander about social and racial prejudiceMatt Parvin is a young, Dorset-bo…
Linked From The Guardian at 06:36AMFriday, May 26, 2017
Orange Tree, RichmondBranden Jacobs-Jenkins’s extraordinary play is both an adaptation of a 19th-century melodrama and a dazzling postmodernist critique of itIf I say that this bizarrely b…
Linked From The Guardian at 11:24AMThursday, May 25, 2017
Shakespeare’s Globe, London Sailor-suited dancers and a disco soundtrack add a party atmosphere to Shakespeare’s comedy but drown out its melancholyThe peremptory treatment of Emma Rice …
Linked From The Guardian at 11:33AMTuesday, May 23, 2017
Old Vic, LondonWhereas Georg Büchner’s original masterpiece allows audience to fill in the blanks, Thorne’s adaptation piles the pressure on the title characterThis production has a lot…
Linked From The Guardian at 08:12PMSunday, May 21, 2017
Attenborough Centre, BrightonRichard Nelson prophetically captures sense of unease as early as first play when character asks: “Do you feel like something really bad is about to happen?”…
Linked From The Guardian at 08:24AMFriday, May 19, 2017
The Swan, Stratford-upon-AvonPhil Porter’s take on Plautus’s bombastic farce is a crowdpleasing show that reminds us of the ancient playwright’s immense influence on modern comedyThe R…
Linked From The Guardian at 08:54AMThursday, May 18, 2017
Menier Chocolate Factory, LondonMaureen Lipman’s brisk bureaucrat is a perfect complement to Felicity Kendal’s gutsy exhibitionist in a revival of Peter Shaffer’s heritage satireYou mi…
Linked From The Guardian at 07:12AMWednesday, May 17, 2017
Young Vic, LondonThe Atonement director presents the story of the astronomer with a kaleidoscopic theatricality that increasingly detracts from Brecht’s textIt is a sign of Bertolt Brecht…
Linked From The Guardian at 07:18AMSwan, Stratford-on-AvonA reactionary pope dies, only to be succeeded by a seeming liberal who soon reverts to institutional conservatism. You could hardly have a more topical play than this.…
Linked From The Guardian at 06:06AMTuesday, May 16, 2017
Octagon, Bolton Cathy Tyson stars in Timberlake Wertenbaker’s ambitious play which debates the choices politicised women face, from ancient Athens to modern BritainTimberlake Wertenbaker…
Linked From The Guardian at 07:42AMMonday, May 15, 2017
Arcola theatre, LondonHicks has the power to give individual words a wealth of meaning in his portrayal of a villain driven by infantile dreams and private demonsHot on the heels of an accla…
Linked From The Guardian at 07:48PMFriday, May 12, 2017
Minerva, ChichesterA Jewish boy and his family’s black maid are at the heart of this witty, pulsing musical that takes in everything from klezmer to Tamla MotownSince this musical has book…
Linked From The Guardian at 09:06AMApollo, LondonFriends of Dorothy may be diverted by this musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz. But, although it has been a hit in New York, it seems all too typical of the modern Broadway mus…
Linked From The Guardian at 03:33AMThursday, May 11, 2017
Theatre Royal Stratford East, London A moving adaptation of the award-winning novel, with added songs, explores the mental toll on an abducted woman and her childMy queasiness about the subj…
Linked From The Guardian at 07:24AMWednesday, May 10, 2017
Wyndham’s, LondonTim Pigott-Smith gives the performance of his career in Mike Bartlett’s intelligent meditation on the pressures and purpose of monarchy today• King Charles III: a West…
Linked From The Guardian at 05:54PMOlivier, LondonThe celebrated writer-director’s attempt to radically update and reclaim the story is hamstrung by a terrible text and an over-complex stagingIt’s not been a great month f…
Linked From The Guardian at 10:05AM 
