1,386 stories by "Aleks Sierz"
Since 2004, the Ambassador Group's Trafalgar Studios has done sterling work in staging West End transfers for some of London's most promising fringe talents. Kieran Lynn's An Incident at the…
The Arab Spring has arguably been the most important international event after the credit crunch, yet it seems to be of little interest to British playwrights. Parochial, obsessed with writi…
When does an urgent new trend become a theatre cliché? Over the past couple of years, the idea of generational conflict between the have-it-all baby boomers and the have-nothing-but-debts y…
Mary Shelley and all her works have dogged the footsteps of contemporary theatre " in a way that's a bit reminiscent of her most famous creation. Last year, there was Frankenstein at the Nat…
A powerful trend in contemporary theatre is the family play. But the families usually depicted tend to be of the standard two-point-five variety, while other more complex forms " families as…
They say that men, at whatever age, never leave the playground. We are told that boys will be boys. But what is this kind of infantile masculinity really like, and is there anything new to s…
Although some contemporary plays " notably Posh and 13 " have accurately taken the temperature of the times, what about the timeless classics? Does Sophocles's Antigone (dated about 441BC) h…
Plays about media folk and creatives, such as Joe Penhall's Dumb Show and Stella Feehily's O Go My Man, are not uncommon in British theatre. They usually have recognisable middle-class setti…
Duke of York's Theatre: When Posh originally opened at the Royal Court during the General Election of 2010, it felt like a metaphorical prediction of how a Tory government might run riot and…
As the Olympic Park rises out of the desolation of East London, British theatre is also being regenerated by the sports fest that looms increasingly large on the horizon. Although it has rec…
Lyric Hammersmith, London: Olivier award-winning playwright Simon Stephens's latest play is a co-production between the Lyric Hammersmith, where he is an artistic associate, and two Eur…
Simon Stephens is not only one of our most talented playwrights, he's also the one most open to influences from German theatre. In 2007, he collaborated with director Sebastian Nübling on t…
The best playwrights have an antenna-like ability to pick up, and respond to, the new conflicts and fault lines that appear in society. Over the past five or so years, the antagonism between…
Unlike the National, the RSC has not had a good record of producing exciting new plays in the past 20 years or so. But one exception to this rule is the theatre's support for the work of Dav…
Religious mania is bad for your love life. In Enda Walsh's revamped 1999 play " which has already been seen in Galway and New York, and opened in London last night " a 33-year-old man (playe…
It's the star factor. Tickets for Big and Small, by the controversial German writer Botho Strauss, are selling fast because Cate Blanchett is in it. Her protean presence in this production b…
Bush Theatre, London: Madani Younis's inaugural production at this venue is Lee Mattinson's Chalet Lines, a co-production with Newcastle's Live Theatre. As its title suggests,…
When Madani Younis became the new artistic director of the Bush, some questioned his commitment to new writing, while others asked what he would bring to this small but high-profile venue. W…
Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, London: This year's Royal Court Young Writers Festival continues with the second full production of a new play which, like its successful predeces…
There is nothing quite so exciting as witnessing the debut of a fresh new voice. But young writers can be rather frail creatures, and their exposure in the high-profile Royal Court Young Wri…
Ethnic tensions in France have been in the news this week, with the siege of the gunman Mohammed Merah, so award-winning South-African penman Craig Higginson's new play seems really timely. …
Orange Tree Theatre: Playwright Martin Crimp returns to the Orange Tree Theatre with his new short play, Play House, in a double bill with a revival of his 1987 piece, Definitely the Bahamas…
Like many a regular theatregoer, I have a little list of classic plays that I've never seen, or even read. One of these is, or rather was, Errol John's evocatively titled Moon on a Rainbow S…
Southwark Playhouse: The Southwark Playhouse has been a firm supporter of polymath Philip Ridley's work in recent years, and he returns to this venue with his latest, amazing, new play,…
Polymath Philip Ridley is British theatre's prince of imaginative writing. At the moment, he's clearly on a roll, and this year his diary has been filing up fast. First, there was a majestic…
