520 stories by "Alfred Hickling"
Wonderful Town has opened to rave reviews " so why isn't it staged more often? Alfred Hickling talks to the team who put the dazzle back into BernsteinIn 2004, the music director of the…
Theatre-by-the-Lake, KeswickThere are two established routes into Oxbridge: through the front or round the back. There's a nub of guilt at the core of the History Boys, as if Alan Bennett we…
Theatre Royal, NewcastleSusan Boyle has not sung live on stage since her participation in the 2009 Britain's Got Talent tour, prior to which she had cemented her new celebrity status by spen…
Lawrence Batley, HuddersfieldThis version of Conan Doyle's classic is an enlightened, if somewhat unexpected, collaboration between one of the North West's oldest theatrical institutions, Ol…
Guildhall theatre, DerbyIt has been estimated that if bees disappear, man has no more than four years left to live. Bee pollination accounts for a third of our diet; yet the sudden and inexp…
Octagon, BoltonWas Shakespeare party to the gunpowder plot? It seems a wild assumption, though David Thacker's production is supported by a programme note from Professor Richard Wilson that …
Royal Exchange, ManchesterWe tend to think of lad culture as a relatively new phenomenon. Yet before there was Nuts magazine, before there was Oasis, before there was even rock'n'roll, …
Library, ManchesterIt's remarkable that, until relatively recently, DH Lawrence's paintings were probably more esteemed than his plays. Lawrence never saw his depiction of marital warfare be…
Theatre Royal, YorkAnne Frank expressed a desire for immortality through her writing; though you sometimes wonder what she would have made of the kind of immortality she has achieved. In the…
Playhouse, LiverpoolIt may seem perverse to praise a production of Tennessee Williams's classic on account of its lighting. But if you get the illumination right for A Streetcar Named Desire…
West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsFor anyone who has neither been, nor parented, a teenage girl over the past 10 years, Georgia Nicholson is the creation of teen fiction author Louise Rennison,…
Live, NewcastleWhen is a frog not a frog? When it's a metaphor, I suppose, as there's much talk of small amphibians in Zoe Cooper's play, which contains a scene in which a disintegrating cou…
The Wicker Man is a cult horror classic. Are the team of Scots who have turned the film into a musical " and rejigged its shocking ending " worried about offending fans?The Wicker Man is eas…
Derby theatreIt's rare to see The Taming of the Shrew performed without any shade of irony. Directors either include the framing device of the tinker's dream, which has the effect of placing…
Hull TruckSixty five miles is the distance that divides Sheffield and Hull. Matt Hartley's drama " the under-26 category winner in the first Bruntwood Playwriting competition " shuttles bac…
West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsWaiting for Godot is a play whose co-ordinates rarely alter. There will be tramps engaged in circular conversations; there will be an overwhelming sense of fut…
West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsWe're facing six years of austerity and a wave of public sector strikes. So what better way to dispel the gloom than with a stirring dose of Annie, the musical…
At three minutes, this rediscovered sketch is probably too slight to work as a straight piece. So Giles Croft of the Nottingham Playhouse got the audience to direct itHands up if you've ever…
Alfred Hickling sits in on some very unusual auditions at West Yorkshire PlayhouseIt's open audition day at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, for the Christmas production of Annie. As&nbs…
Crucible, SheffieldForty years ago this month, the Crucible opened in Sheffield. Not everyone welcomed it " too ugly, many claimed; a white elephant, and where were the curtains? The debut p…
Hull TruckLast December, John Godber parted company with Hull Truck, the company he helmed for 26 years, on less than cordial terms. That the first touring product of the newly founded John …
East Midlands airport, DerbyshireYou can ask no more from a theatrical experience than that it takes you on a journey " except that it manages to get you safely back again. Yet this particul…
Hull Truck theatreYerma is not an outwardly complex play. Lorca's drama has a folkloric quality that can be summed up by a familiar children's rhyme: the farmer wants a wife, the wife wants …
Playhouse, LiverpoolLizzie Nunnery's debut play Intemperance was a bold, Ibsenite epic set in 19th-century Liverpool, which suggested that this was a major talent destined for bigger stages.…
Theatre Royal, YorkDavid Harrower's play takes place in the filthy recreation room of an anonymous industrial unit. Middle manager Ray is being held to account by a young woman among the det…
