Saturday, December 22, 2012
Crucible, Sheffield; Trafalgar Studios; Battersea Arts Centre, LondonI thought my resistance to My Fair Lady had hardened. I don't like plays sentimentalised by melody, or cockneys singing w…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:09PM[SHARE]Saturday, December 15, 2012
Noël Coward; Royal Court; Tricycle, LondonMichael Grandage is setting out to change the West End. He wants to provide a theatre that is both tempting and affordable. His Michael Grandage …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PM[SHARE]The scientific met the psychological to scintillating effect, and hard times called for Shakespeare and Chekhov2012 was a year in which Britain depended on the theatre to show itself off to …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:00PM[SHARE]Saturday, December 8, 2012
Donmar, London; Curve, Leicester; Bristol Old VicAlways fascinating, sometimes infuriating, Phyllida Lloyd's all-female production of Julius Caesar is one of the most important theatrical ev…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:04PM[SHARE]Saturday, December 1, 2012
Menier Chocolate Factory, London; Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon; Trafalgar Studios, LondonWhat a difference a time scheme makes. Had Merrily We Roll Along been written with a conventional chrono…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PM[SHARE]Saturday, November 24, 2012
Almeida, London; Apollo, London; Olivier, London The Dark Earth and the Light Sky is a rarity. It startles by stealth and apparent quietness, by its steady appeal to unashamed affection and …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PM[SHARE]Saturday, November 17, 2012
Cottesloe; Southwark Playhouse; Gate, all LondonFluorescence, mental disturbance, dancing. The Effect has some of the ingredients that made The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PM[SHARE]Saturday, November 10, 2012
Lyttelton; Noël Coward; Vaudeville; LondonAlan Bennett's sparky, intricate, all-over-the-place new play opened in the week the National Trust announced it had bought the white cliffs of D…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PM[SHARE]Lyttelton; Noël Coward; Vaudeville; London Continue reading...
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PM[SHARE]Theatrical treats for all the family for the festive seasonSusannah Clapp
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:01AM[SHARE]Saturday, November 3, 2012
Jerwood Theatre Upstairs/Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Royal Court, London SW1Enron, DC Moore, Clybourne Park, Nina Raine, Posh, Anya Reiss, Love and Information, Polly Stenham, Sucker Punch. …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:01PM[SHARE]Saturday, October 20, 2012
Tricycle; Jermyn Street; Lyric Hammersmith, LondonWhat an incisive, fervent beginning. Indhu Rubasingham takes over with panache at the Tricycle, bowing to the theatre's politically engaged …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:25PM[SHARE]Saturday, October 13, 2012
National Theatre, LondonThis is the National doing its job. Nicholas Hytner's theatre is behaving as if it were a federation of varied talents: the good, the very good and the not so good. T…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PM[SHARE]Saturday, October 6, 2012
Lab; Abbey theatre; Project Arts theatre, DublinDublin is a glorious rarity among theatre festivals. It depends upon itself. It does not assume that the best work, the best subjects, the bes…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:08PM[SHARE]Saturday, September 29, 2012
Harold Pinter theatre; Barbican, LondonTrevor Nunn began the summer by directing a heavy-handed Kiss Me Kate; he ends it by staging a star-encrusted but tepid Chorus of Disapproval. What a w…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PM[SHARE]Saturday, September 22, 2012
Royal Court, London; Young Vic, London; West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsAnother Royal Court command: Love and Information is a play that everyone should see. Once again Caryl Churchill has li…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:05PM[SHARE]Saturday, September 15, 2012
Old Vic; Almeida; Hampstead, LondonHedda Gabler ends with a famous bang behind closed doors. Wouldn't it, a friend once suggested, be ripping if those doors opened on a Hedda who had put an …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PM[SHARE]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 07:05PM[SHARE]Saturday, 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 07:06PM[SHARE]Saturday, 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 07:05PM[SHARE]Saturday, 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 07:06PM[SHARE]Saturday, 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 07:06PM[SHARE]The 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 07:01PM[SHARE]From Danish indigestion to gruesome Shakespearean revengeSusannah Clapp
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:01PM[SHARE]Saturday, 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 07:06PM[SHARE]Saturday, 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 07:05PM[SHARE]Saturday, 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 07:05PM[SHARE]Saturday, 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 …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06PM[SHARE]Saturday, 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 07:08PM[SHARE]Saturday, 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 07:05PM[SHARE]Saturday, 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 07:06PM[SHARE] 
