Wednesday, December 14, 2016
Dorfman 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 07:42AMTuesday, December 13, 2016
Lyttelton, London Ruth Wilson superbly conveys the desolation of Ibsen’s ahead-of-her-time aesthete in Ivo van Hove’s invigorating modern-dress versionThe extraordinary Ruth Wilson stars…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:36AMMonday, December 12, 2016
Wilton’s Music Hall, LondonThe veteran comic is the chief delight of a warm-hearted production mixing morality, melodrama and magicIt’s been a vintage year for 80-year-olds in the Britis…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:42AMSunday, December 11, 2016
Park theatre, LondonThis adaptation of CS Lewis’s collection of sardonic letters from a senior to a junior devil is excessively and noisily theatricalThe big question is whether CS Lewis�…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:48AMNew Diorama, London"Our aim," says Mark Leipacher, director of the young Faction company, "is to create big, bold, bombastic theatre with limited resources." I'm not sure about bombastic; on…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:24AMFriday, December 9, 2016
Hampstead theatre, LondonMichael Frayn excavates Chekhov’s six-hour drama, written when he was 20, for this bittersweet comedy about a schoolteacher torn between romantic rivalsIt is stran…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:04AMThursday, December 8, 2016
Menier Chocolate Factory, London The cult 1960s show lives up to its Broadway pedigree and the performances are perfectly pitched in this skilful, intimate staging “This may be the best pr…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:02AMWednesday, December 7, 2016
Young Vic, LondonPlaying a studio mogul at the dawn of the talkies, Enfield makes an assured theatre debut but this production puts visual bravura before verbal precisionHarry Enfield, as we…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:02AMTuesday, December 6, 2016
Glenda Jackson ruled as Lear and Harry Potter left the West End spellbound but a three-hour drama in an empty cinema tops our critic’s pick of the year’s theatreMore on the best culture …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:31AMSunday, December 4, 2016
Olivier, London Sally Cookson’s inventive playfulness reinforces the hero’s devotion to fun and games but remains true to the melancholy spirit of JM Barrie’s playJM Barrie’s play is…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:42AMFriday, December 2, 2016
Swan theatre, Stratford-upon-AvonAnders Lustgarten’s play pits the biblical morality of an Italian masterpiece against the cruelty of current housing policies with ingenuity and humourAnde…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:24AMThursday, December 1, 2016
Trafalgar Studios, LondonHarris impresses as a whiskey-soaked old wreck in Shepard’s gothic story of loveless inertia and poisonous guilt in a dysfunctional familyIt is good to see Hollywo…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:24PMWednesday, November 30, 2016
Garrick, LondonGraham captures the daily machinations of politics, and raises questions about our current parliamentary system, in this account of Labour’s 1970s strugglesIt has taken four…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:48PMTuesday, November 29, 2016
Orange Tree, Richmond Maugham’s 1933 play – about a man whose charitable giving horrifies his family – beautifully skewers the self-interestedness of society then and nowSomerset Maugh…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:42AMMonday, November 28, 2016
Finborough, London Oscar Toeman directs Rodney Ackland’s most autobiographical work, which painfully records the reckless optimism that accompanies any theatrical ventureTime has lent a pa…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:24AMFriday, November 25, 2016
Harold Pinter theatre, LondonRylance plays a goofball novice on an ice-fishing trip in a play that feels derivative and slides into absurdismMark Rylance and Louis Jenkins have fashioned a p…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:42PMRoyal Court, LondonFrancesca Annis, Ron Cook and Deborah Findlay give fine performances in a post-apocalyptic play that is genuinely disturbingLucy Kirkwood astonished us in 2013 with the ep…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:12AMWednesday, November 23, 2016
A refurbished version of the 1963 Tommy Steele vehicle has opened in the West End and joins a string of stellar homegrown hitsIt is an odd, but intriguing, fact that Oh! What a Lovely War an…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:12AMMonday, November 21, 2016
Following the hip-hop musical’s special message to the US vice-president elect, here’s a selection of great American shows that could enlighten him and his bossEveryone knows what happen…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06AMFriday, November 18, 2016
Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-AvonFears that digital technology would upstage the actors are scotched in this RSC production starring Simon Russell BealeSimon Russell Beale’s r…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:06AMThursday, November 17, 2016
Royal Court, LondonIn EV Crowe’s teasing tale, the suspicion and rebellion among rural women in 1700s England lead to troubling questions about the modern worldEV Crowe tends to write abou…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:12AMWednesday, November 16, 2016
Union theatre, LondonThe story of Women’s Institute members fighting to decriminalise sex work did not deserve the Carry On treatmentThere is a good show to be written about the 10-year ca…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:18AMTuesday, November 15, 2016
Gate, LondonJonas Hassen Khemiri’s disturbing, topical exploration of what it’s like to be a foreigner in the aftermath of a terrorist attack is stalled by a series of flashbacksWhat mus…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:42AMMonday, November 14, 2016
New London TheatreWhen Lloyd Webber and Julian Fellowes let down their hair, the results are hardly anti-establishment. But the kids are genuinely talented and this is good-natured entertain…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:36PMSaturday, November 12, 2016
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, LondonClaire van Kampen mixes story and song superbly in a tale about the celebrated castratoPlays about mad kings are always popular. After Alan Bennett’s portrai…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:36AMChichester festival theatreEverything slots perfectly into place in this glorious evocation of American vaudeville’s tackinessIf proof were needed of the power of the traditional Broadway …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:12AMWednesday, November 9, 2016
Southwark Playhouse, LondonMatt Grinter’s play vividly captures the pressure to conform as a girl in an isolated fishing community tries to prevent a devastating mythical ritual The Papata…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:31AMTuesday, November 8, 2016
King’s Cross theatre, LondonDavid Bowie and Enda Walsh’s sequel to The Man Who Fell to Earth is staged with visual sophistication by Ivo van Hove but it’s rarely emotionally engagingHe…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:36PMJermyn Street theatre, LondonTwo short plays by the Swedish dramatist show that his female characters can be just as varied and vivid as the menThe title sounds like a provocation, given Str…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:06PMMonday, November 7, 2016
Park theatre, LondonJonathan Maitland’s new work about an ambitious runner and her coach shows that there is no such thing as a level playing field in sportJonathan Maitland, as a journali…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:06AMSaturday, November 5, 2016
Minerva, ChichesterThis return to star-driven Shakespeare has in Frank Langella a commanding Lear still driven by a craving for loveWe are used to director’s Shakespeare. This production, …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:42AM 
