Saturday, September 1, 2012
Lowland Hall, Royal Highland Centre; Royal Lyceum; Assembly Hall, Edinburgh"We have waited 48 years to come to the Edinburgh international festival," said Ariane Mnouchkine. Audiences have w…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, August 25, 2012
Holkham, Norfolk; Theatre Square/Pop-up Workshop, National Theatre, LondonWhat is most annoying about Robert Wilson's Walking? The adamantine amiability? The aura of sacredness? The meagre n…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, August 18, 2012
Lowland Hall, Royal Highland Centre; Royal Lyceum theatre, EdinburghThree shows: one exciting and splashy, one meretricious and one a work of quiet distinction. Not a bad tally for Edinburgh…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, August 11, 2012
Hangar 858 Picketston, RAF St Athan, Vale of Glamorgan; Swan, Stratford-upon-AvonIt's two years, almost to the day, since Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes brought Aeschylus to the Brecon Beacon…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, August 4, 2012
Cottesloe; Donmar; Criterion, LondonIt's almost perverse. To take a story whose hero cannot lie, for whom metaphor is a foreign land, and put it on that most metaphorical of places, the stag…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMThe Observer's theatre critic chooses her favourite scenes of onstage dining, from Danish indigestion to a feast of ShawFestenA bourgeois Danish family gather around the table for a patriarc…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:01PMFrom Danish indigestion to gruesome Shakespearean revengeSusannah Clapp
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:01PMSaturday, July 28, 2012
Globe; Lyttelton; National; LondonThis is an extraordinary period in the theatre. Within 10 days Britain's two most captivating Shakespearean interpreters have taken to the stage to recreate…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, July 21, 2012
Olivier, London; Cuckmere Haven, Sussex, and other venues; Southwark Playhouse, LondonSuddenly Timon of Athens looks essential. Nicholas Hytner's aggressively witty production, which transfo…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, June 30, 2012
Royal Court, London; Chichester Festival theatre; National, LondonA man gets pregnant. The Royal Court's publicists have been discreet about the subject of Joe Penhall's new play, but to lit…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, June 16, 2012
Noël Coward; Royal Court; Roundhouse, LondonIt is an act of extreme daring. New York's Elevator Repair Service has put on stage The Great Gatsby's maddening, self-destructive, languorous an…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, June 9, 2012
Royal Shakespeare, Stratford-upon-Avon; Donmar; Peacock, LondonNot only despots and murderous conspiracy but prophecy and magical portents. In setting Julius Caesar in a riven African state,…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:08PMSaturday, June 2, 2012
ThreeSixty theatre, Kensington Gardens; Open Air, Regent's Park; Olivier, LondonWhat is Rupert Goold up to? He has given the theatre some of the most exciting excursions of the past five yea…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, May 19, 2012
Savoy, London; Holt hotel, Norfolk; Cottesloe, LondonOn the screen in 1975 it was Walter Matthau and George Burns. In a 1996 television adaptation it was Woody Allen and Peter ("Columbo") Fa…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, May 12, 2012
Malthouse Estate, Shoreham-by-Sea; Caledonian Park, London; Aldwych, LondonFractured, self-reflecting, cut off from those around him. The site-specific company Dreamthinkspeak has gone to th…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, May 5, 2012
The Hub, Pacific Quay, Glasgow; Royal Court; Globe, LondonIn a terrific imaginative stroke, director John Tiffany co-opts not only the city of Glasgow but the entire sky for his production o…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, April 14, 2012
Apollo, London; New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme; Bush, LondonEugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night is a mighty work. It has a straight-from-the-heart punch, a long, allusive reach and…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, April 7, 2012
Print Room, London; Tobacco Factory, Bristol; Finborough, LondonThe tiny Print Room delivers classic plays with a magnified immediacy. Lucy Bailey's lovely Uncle Vanya is played in the round…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:07PMSaturday, March 31, 2012
Old Vic, London; Theatre Royal, Newcastle; Royal Court, LondonJohn Webster was for Bernard Shaw the "Tussaud laureate": a playwright of waxy gore. Today he can look like the Damien Hirst dra…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, March 10, 2012
Hampstead, London; Sherman Cymru, Cardiff; Young Vic, LondonForget the Notting Hill sillies. Think instead of the most original Jane Austen film adaptation – the mud-soaked, seemingly make…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, March 3, 2012
Southwark Playhouse; Royal Court; Trafalgar Studios, LondonUnder the railway arches of Southwark Playhouse, bare brickwork gives off a damp pong and the dusky tunnels burrow far back. The pl…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:04PMSaturday, February 25, 2012
Royal Court, London; His Majesty's, Aberdeen; Tricycle, LondonAnywhere but Essex, it seems. "He's a writer," an aspirant character in David Eldridge's new play explains of her boyfriend. "Wh…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, February 18, 2012
Donmar, London; Yvonne Arnaud, GuildfordJosie Rourke has chosen well. Her first production as artistic director of the Donmar marks a departure for the theatre that, under Sam Mendes and Mic…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PMSaturday, December 10, 2011
It's been a great year for Southwark Playhouse, Hampstead and the National – and an unforgettable one for Michael SheenThe Passion was the year's revelation. Ranging over the whole of Port…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:08PMSaturday, November 12, 2011
Young Vic; Bussey Building, LondonIt would be worth it for this alone. Michael Sheen's "To be or not to be" is a marvel. It is not only that Sheen makes each phrase ring out fresh and true. …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMSaturday, November 5, 2011
Cottesloe; Trafalgar Studios; Only Connect, LondonThe stage is buckled. Rimmed with scarlet, it dips like a fairground ride. Cabaret, dance music and stark sequences of strings fill the air;…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:06PMSaturday, October 29, 2011
Hampstead; Olivier, London; Rudry parish hall, CaerphillyYou can't talk to the duchess because of the lawyer. You can't get much out of the lawyer – because she is a lawyer. You start to w…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:07PMSaturday, October 22, 2011
Royal Court; Donmar Warehouse; Bush, LondonTwo years ago when she was 17, Bel Powley was one of the stars in Polly Stenham's Tusk Tusk. Now here she is again, proving the staying power of th…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PMFriday, October 14, 2011
Lyric Hammersmith, London; Theatre Royal BathPeople go to Saved thinking they know what they will see. They've been told often enough. A baby is stoned to death in a park by a group of youth…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:00PMSaturday, October 8, 2011
Wyndhams, LondonThe car in Driving Miss Daisy is an awkward thing: a wheel and two wooden seats. It's not a vehicle that could have come from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang but it's not a Complicit…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:04PMSaturday, October 1, 2011
West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds; Old Vic, LondonIt begins in precarious ritual: a boxed-in court, a red carpet like a stream of blood, a floor so steeply raked that the action hurtles downwa…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PM 
