Monday, August 8, 2016
Traverse, EdinburghRochelle Bright’s ‘play with songs’ starts out as a promising love story but despite vigorous performances and a lively band it never quite bloomsSubtitled “a play…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:14AMKing’s theatre, EdinburghJohn Tiffany’s superb production stars Cherry Jones as a woman who clings tenaciously to the memory of her aristocratic past Related: From Black Watch to Harry P…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:07AMSunday, August 7, 2016
★★★★/★★The Lyceum, EdinburghWe’re Peeping Toms for Vanishing Point’s riveting but disastrous dinner party, but the company’s media critique, The Destroyed Room, isn’t as …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:55PMFriday, August 5, 2016
Young Vic, LondonIn a bravura display, Piper lays bare the soul of a woman who is unable to have children – even if Simon Stone’s update is less powerful than Lorca’s original playThe …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:16AMThursday, August 4, 2016
David Hare’s versions of Platonov, Ivanov and The Seagull, now at the National Theatre in a superb production by Jonathan Kent, leave you exhilaratedI have spent many all-day sessions in t…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:49AMFriday, July 29, 2016
St James theatre, LondonA snapper falls under the spell of a Mephistophelian PR man in Mike Dyer’s energetic story, which takes a turn for the absurd despite some decent songsThe Faust leg…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:45AMThursday, July 28, 2016
Theatre Royal Haymarket, London The pop singer brings verve and musicality to the glamorous enigma, with admirably conflicted support from Matt Barber – it’s Truman Capote’s story itse…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:27PMLyttelton, LondonThe women are exceptionally strong in this production of O’Casey’s great Easter Rising drama, which draws out the complex humanity of its charactersI found it took time …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:16AMMonday, July 25, 2016
Palace theatre, LondonIt’s convoluted, but the latest expansion of the Potter universe is thrillingly staged, with time travel and age-old quests given a dash of post-Freudian guilt“Keep…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:04PMWednesday, July 20, 2016
Ireland’s international festival has shown the merits of merging different art forms while reawakening enthusiasm for a much-reprised Beckett classicThey were dancing in the streets last w…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:43AMTuesday, July 19, 2016
Leisureland, Salthill, GalwayThe playwright embraces a new form of category-defying theatre in a story of love and oppression that echoes Orwell’s 1984No Galway international arts festival…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:19AMSunday, July 17, 2016
Minerva, ChichesterAnne Reid and James Bolam star in Beaton’s dark comedy about fracking that becomes an outright plea for direct actionAlistair Beaton’s forte is topical satire. His mos…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:31AMFriday, July 15, 2016
Park theatre, London Anne Archer plays the actor and activist in a drama that revisits the consequences of Fonda’s visit to North Vietnam in 1972Terry Jastrow’s play speculates on what h…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:31AMThursday, July 14, 2016
Southwark Playhouse, LondonRay Rackham’s musical brings us three Garlands at different periods of her life and deals with the causes and the symptoms of the star’s declineI once said tha…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:00AMWednesday, July 13, 2016
Producer Cameron Mackintosh turned the West End musical into a global franchise. And he's not finished yet. New shows are opening round the world, new theatres are being purchased ... the em…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:55PMMenier Chocolate Factory, LondonFiasco’s inventive, vigorous version of Stephen Sondheim’s modern fairytale doesn’t entirely mask the problems of James Lapin’s convoluted bookFiasco …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:25AMTuesday, July 12, 2016
Arcola, LondonHicks confirms his gift for exploring unbalanced minds in this riveting adaptation of the Russian author’s novella, directed by John TerryWhen Nancy Harris’s adaptation of …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:44AMSunday, July 10, 2016
Royal Court, London Matt Smith gives a fine performance but this movie industry satire is unbalanced by one character’s eruptionThere is a long history of theatrical satires on the movie b…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:49AMFriday, July 8, 2016
Barbican, LondonRobert Lepage’s wry and haunting 1991 piece about various brands of addiction was inspired by two great artists, and it lives up to their brillianceRobert Lepage has revisi…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:23AMThursday, July 7, 2016
Young Vic, LondonThe ordeal of 13 Syrian women is powerfully re-created through horrific personal testimony and heartbreaking nostalgiaIt seems faintly obscene to slap star ratings on a show…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:28PMWednesday, July 6, 2016
Barbican, LondonCardboard Citizens’ remarkable version of the TV drama was followed by a fiery discussion in which Loach condemned the government’s ‘conscious cruelty’Can art change …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:49AMTuesday, July 5, 2016
Theatre Room, LondonThis two-woman update of Life Is a Dream is brilliantly performed and looks at the Spanish play from a fresh perspectiveThis two-woman version of Calderón’s Spanish cl…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:12AMIn exposing our leaders’ fallibility, it’s natural to invoke Shakespeare but that crowns them with borrowed grandeur. A better reference point would be Dryden’s brand of mock-heroic sa…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:06AMThursday, June 30, 2016
Bush Hall, London Melissa Bubnic’s song-filled attack on the City of London is played with great brio by an all-female cast but stops short of landing a knockout blowMelissa Bubnic’s pla…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:21AMWednesday, June 29, 2016
Donmar, London A lost world of showbiz exiles is evoked through powerful monologues, hauntingly delivered by Stephen Dillane, Gina McKee and Ron Cook Brian Friel’s magical play can be seen…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:22AMAlmeida, LondonThe fierce intelligence of the Almeida, Headlong and Nottingham Playhouse's spin on George Orwell shines through - but the play contributes to a worrying theatrical trendIt is…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:32AMTuesday, June 28, 2016
From Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ to Macbeth’s ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’, Shakespeare’s lines present an infinity of choicesEarlier this month, I took part in a fas…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:39AMFriday, June 24, 2016
Shakespeare’s Globe, LondonRay Fearon and Tara Fitzgerald give feverish performances but this production has an aura of perverse oddity – why do the Macbeths have a child?Iqbal Khan’s …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:51AMThursday, June 23, 2016
Open Air theatre, Regent’s Park, LondonMichelle Terry is riveting as Shakespeare’s wartime king in a production that emphasises how roleplaying is integral to monarchyAside from Hamlet, …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:14AMWednesday, June 22, 2016
Hampstead theatre, LondonEdward Snowden-a-like Andrew is visited by two shadowy WikiLeaks employees in Mike Bartlett’s intelligent new play, exploring the 2013 revelationsMike Bartlett’s…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:57AMRoyal Court, LondonMega-fame and limitless cash can turn a man into a monster, and Simon Stephens's new play excellently evokes its hero's spiritually shrunken worldNo one will be surprised …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:34AM 
