Monday, March 6, 2017
Chichester Festival TheatreTrevor Nunn's fine production of Tom Stoppard's 1966 play begins with a striking image: the two heroes seen against the stark background of a leafless tree. The Be…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:32AMAudiences have been asked not to consume food at a new show. Theatre is a collective act of concentration – it’s spoiled by constant chomping and slurpingHallelujah! Imelda Staunton has …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:12AMSaturday, March 4, 2017
Swan, Stratford-upon-AvonThe ghost of a wronged widow hovers over a modern industrial town in the RSC’s intriguing update of a 13th-century playThis is a genuine curiosity. As part of its …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:32AMThursday, March 2, 2017
Hull Truck theatre, HullStaged for Hull’s year as UK City of Culture, this One Man, Two Guvnors-style farce is a merry take on local historyThe road to Hull, they say, is paved with good i…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:24AMWednesday, March 1, 2017
Richmond theatre, LondonSally Cookson directs a fine ensemble in a witty and inventive high-wire production with a modern edgeThe last attempt to stage Fellini’s Oscar-winning 1954 movie h…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:12AMTuesday, February 28, 2017
Almeida, LondonRobert Icke’s staging of Shakespeare’s tragedy has fine performances and highly intelligent touches but some of its ideas are eccentrically wrong-headedBy a strange irony …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:06PMSunday, February 26, 2017
Trafalgar Studios, LondonPatsy Ferran shines in Stephen Karam’s shapeshifting off-Broadway hit about teenage dilemmas and predatory adults set around a school rhetoric contestFirst seen of…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:12AMFriday, February 24, 2017
Young Vic, London Simmering hatred, lust and violence are never far away in a disturbing production that delves deep into the collective unconsciousRomantic Victorian versions of Shakespeare…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:36AMThursday, February 23, 2017
Olivier, LondonSimon Godwin’s inventive gender-fluid production of Shakespeare’s most perfect comedy has a vital elan and some great performancesThe casting of Tamsin Greig as Malvolia i…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:03AMArcola, London Trevor Griffiths’ version of the masterpiece is staged in London for the first time in a modern-dress production implying we too are on the brink of changeThis enterprising …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:36AMTuesday, February 21, 2017
Phoenix theatre, London The Take That star and Tim Firth have collaborated seamlessly on a show that is far superior to its predecessors on stage and screenIt might be fair to assume that th…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:03PMThe Other Palace, LondonThis musical adaptation, based on Joseph Moncure March’s racy 1928 poem, is so frenzied it leaves you exhausted Andrew Lloyd Webber acquired what used to be the St …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:12AMSunday, February 19, 2017
Arcola, LondonOladipo Agboluaje hits close to home as he shows the darkly comic side of the fight for revolutionary changeDriving home after the play, I caught an item on Radio 4’s The Wor…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:54AMFriday, February 17, 2017
Shedding his clothes and seducing the audience, Lars Eidinger’s Gloucester is the classic charming narcissist – but why soften the play’s political bite at such a crucial time?I have a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:18PMTuesday, February 14, 2017
Crucible, SheffieldDan Gillespie Sells has a lot to offer musical theatre, but this Billy Elliot-style story about a northern teen drag queen lacks dramaA northern working-class lad strikes …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06AMMonday, February 13, 2017
Finborough, LondonThis new play heightens our awareness of the city as a sterile Shangri-La, but the arguments would carry greater weight if it was more balancedAlongside all the promotional…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:24AMSunday, February 12, 2017
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, LondonThis superbly performed production of Pearl Cleage’s drama gives a fierce sense of the conflict between belonging and the desire to escape Given the bi…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:12AMSaturday, February 11, 2017
National, LondonEvery 20 years or so we rediscover Harley Granville Barker's astonishing play. Following revivals at the Royal Court in 1965 and the National itself in 1989, we now have Pete…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:31AMFriday, February 10, 2017
Duchess, LondonLenny Henry has won his spurs as a Shakespearean actor in Othello and The Comedy of Errors. Now he takes on the titanic role of Troy Maxson in August Wilson's Fences which won…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:03PMBarbican, London With dazzling virtuosity, this Complicite/Schaubühne staging of Stefan Zweig’s novel brilliantly evokes a doomed romance and the imminent horror of warBalzac, about whom …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:48AMThursday, February 9, 2017
Royal Court, LondonLinda Bassett, Kika Markham, June Watson and Deborah Findlay deliver pitch-perfect performances in Churchill’s apocalyptic conversation piece Related: Here We Go review …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:32PMWednesday, February 8, 2017
Theatre Royal Stratford East, LondonA black dancer meets police prejudice and industry stereotyping as she bids to make it on Broadway in a lively, inventive storyIt has taken 17 years for t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:24PMTuesday, February 7, 2017
Stage and screen actor known for his role as the assiduous sleuth in the Hitchcock film FrenzyAlec McCowen, who has died aged 91, was an actor of dazzling technical brilliance whose career e…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:36PMSouthwark Playhouse, LondonAlex MacKeith’s debut play deals with the nuts and bolts of a test-driven education system and acts as a metaphor for other hard-pressed professionsPlays about s…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:18AMFinborough, LondonTitas Halder’s strange one-man play, starring Ben Aldridge, looks to the urban fox to illustrate a life in free-fallA fascination with foxes runs through our literature, …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:12AMFriday, February 3, 2017
Hampstead theatre, LondonEmilia Fox and Theo James star in Laura Eason’s two-hander about an implausible relationship between writers in a Michigan B&BThe title is certainly titillatin…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:18AMThursday, February 2, 2017
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, LondonGemma Arterton brings beauty, determination and moral goodness to one of the great female rolesA new theatre is often a challenge. Until weathered and worn by …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:24PMSam Wanamaker Playhouse, LondonAnnie Ryan’s production does full justice to the sinewy, aphoristic language in Webster’s sinister portrait of corruptionWebster’s dark Jacobean tragedie…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:12AMTuesday, January 31, 2017
Theatre 503, LondonMichael McLean gets under the skin of his characters’ lives in Skelmersdale but his play skimps on the bigger pictureWhat happened to the social utopias of the 1960s, bu…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:36AMMonday, January 30, 2017
The NT usually manages a balance between revivals and new work. Now, classic plays are disappearing from its stages – and from regional reps tooDavid Hare has made the headlines with a dam…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:12AMSunday, January 29, 2017
Hurt, who has died aged 77, was a superb, if too infrequent, stage actor. In plays by Beckett, Pinter and Stoppard, he had an intuitive understanding of outsidersI last saw John Hurt six mon…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:18AM 
