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 07:18AMArts theatre, LondonRichard Marsh and Katie Bonna’s verse romcom is a wry, sweet-natured account of a totally believable relationshipHaving started out as a 10-minute pub poetry duet in 20…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:18AMDorfman, London Emmet Kirwan stars in his play about rave-addicted Dublin youths, which displays a lust for language but offers little more than a sensory impressionWords, words, words. That…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:12AMYoung Vic, LondonCarrie Cracknell's production certainly puts a new spin on Ibsen's 1879 classic. As if to remind us that this is a play about domestic revolution, Ian MacNeil's design revol…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:24AMCharing Cross theatre, LondonThom Southerland gracefully directs this strange musical, but the delightful songs and touching performances merely decorate a story that lacks biteLove is as st…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:18AMGate theatre, LondonChristopher Haydon ends his Gate reign on a high note with gripping story of a young African woman’s conversion to CatholicismChristopher Haydon’s final production at…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06AMRoyal Court, LondonAs someone who bemoans the dearth of political drama, I welcome the arrival of Anders Lustgarten's polemical bombshell. But while the play has bags of vigour and offers a …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:48PMOrange Tree, LondonA middle-class family accept a stranger for Christmas, but is he what he seems? This radical, transfixing play is about Germany but has universal relevanceThe timing is pe…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:24AMRoyal Court theatre, LondonTim Crouch's show explores our obsession with artists' lives, but occasionally lets the form get in the way of its message• Playwright Tim Crouch: 'Avoiding the …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:54AMSouthwark Playhouse, London A revival of Neil Simon’s adaptation of the Billy Wilder classic, with songs by Bacharach and Hal David, is well performed but gratingly anachronisticThis music…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:18AMArcola, London A cast of 18 bring the Russian writer’s drifters and derelicts vividly to life in a production that captures his blend of compassion and crueltyMaxim Gorky’s 1902 play is …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:12AMTheatro Technis, LondonTayo Aluko’s tribute to Tunji Sowande mixes politics, music and cricket for a tuneful portrait of a legal pioneerTayo Aluko wrote and performed the remarkable Call M…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:33AMTrafalgar Studios, LondonStuart Slade’s play about a survivors’ group recalling a horrific incident is a thoughtful, arresting and blackly funny study of how we cope with tragedyHow woul…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:18AMFinborough, LondonA Vietnam vet plots to kill the US president in a tense three-hander that trains a spotlight on human rights abuses and ex-soldiers’ mental healthDonald Freed’s play wa…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:12AMWyndham’s, LondonMatthew Spangler’s workmanlike adaptation of the bestselling novel about Afghanistan does a decent job but reduces it to a series of chronological eventsIt’s an old pr…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:18PMRoyal Court, LondonEcstatically received on the Edinburgh fringe, Fiona Evans's play has been expanded here. First, we get a close-up study of a female teacher-boy pupil relationship during …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:33PMHamilton comes to London, Sherlock villain Andrew Scott adds Hamlet to his CV, Damian Lewis falls in love with a goat, and Ivo van Hove directs Jude Law in a tale of lust, greed and murder M…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:18AMAs Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire opens in the West End, we celebrate a writer with a strong social conscience who saw the human condition – especially his own – as faintl…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:04PMFinborough, LondonTony Harrison’s collision of high and low art fashions a Greek satyr play into a barbed comment on the lack of imagination in contemporary cultureMy abiding memory of Ton…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:24AMOld Vic, LondonBilled as a "Victorian thriller", Patrick Hamilton's Gaslight was written in 1938. But it is that rare thing: a re-creation of an old form which works in its own terms. And it…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:04AMFrom the archive: The first night review, published on 16 October 1996, for Yasmina Reza’s play at Wyndham’s theatre in LondonYasmina Reza’s Art, translated from the French by Christop…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:54AMHow better to make sense of this turbulent year than through the art and literature it has produced? Our critics choose the works that sum up the last 12 monthsIf there is one film that hold…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:36AMRoyal Court, LondonEnda Walsh has invented a new cast of fairground misfits to stretch Dahl’s tale for the stage, but the titular couple are still the funniest thing in this anarchic farce…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:33PMIn plays by David Storey and Anthony Shaffer, Clarke was something special on stage. If only theatre had made more use of him…• Warren Clarke: a life in clipsWarren Clarke had a rich and…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:48PMOld Vic, LondonTim Key and Paul Ritter are equally strong in a tale of shifting power alliances between a trio of men following the purchase of an extortionate paintingLife may sometimes be …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:36AMDonmar Warehouse, LondonJosie Rourke’s update of the Shaw classic sets Arterton’s determined spiritual warrior against a boardroom full of male bankers, warmongers and Daily Mail-reading…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:54AMOlivier, LondonThe end crowns all. For much of its length I found this production of Shakespeare's early masterpiece slightly strenuous fun as if its director, Dominic Cooke, on his National…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:36PMTheatre Royal Haymarket, London Christopher Luscombe’s double dose of comedies begins elegantly, but when Lisa Dillon and Edward Bennett let fly in Much Ado, it becomes a festive romp3/5 …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:18PMAlmeida, LondonSharing the roles of Elizabeth and her Scottish cousin, Stevenson and Williams are a pleasure to watch but Robert Icke’s production lacks subtlety elsewhereJuliet Stevenson …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:36AMLondon PalladiumPaul O’Grady, Nigel Havers and Amanda Holden are among the stars in an outrageous and deeply knowing pantomimeWith Paul O’Grady and Julian Clary in the leads, pantomime p…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:54AMDorfman theatre, LondonAlexander Zeldin’s devised piece depicts the endurance and needless suffering of two families living in temporary accommodationIn Beyond Caring, Alexander Zeldin cre…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:42AM