520 stories by "Alfred Hickling"
Unity, LiverpoolKim and Jackson are having a trying day. In the past 12 hours they have been evicted from their apartment, shot at, lost in a subterranean sewer system and locked in a refrig…
Lowry, SalfordAmerica in the 1850s was fertile ground for hucksters, snake-oil salesmen and colourfully obsolete verbs " "swandangled", for instance. Penny Dreadful's melodramatic medicine s…
Crucible, SheffieldAfter almost 40 years on the road, the new-writing company Paines Plough has decided to build a theatre. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that it has assembled on…
Northern Stage, NewcastleFederico Garcia Lorca described his dramatic fable Amor de Don Perlimplin con Belisa en su Jardin (The Love of Don Perlimplin with Belisa in the Garden) as "an eroti…
Playhouse, LiverpoolWhat were the circumstances behind Hitler's rise to power? The usual answer involves rampant inflation, the weakness of the Weimar administration and the punitive terms o…
West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsA good Lear is someone who can get through three hours of howling and humiliation without genuinely going mad. A great one is someone alive to textual hints an…
Theatre Royal, YorkOriginally produced in 1968, Alan Bennett's first full-length stage play is not, strictly speaking, a play at all, but an old-school revue set in a very old school. The mi…
Octagon, BoltonThere are pleasanter " and shorter " plays than Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? But a good production, which David Thacker's certainly is, becomes an almost spiritual experien…
Rugby league has a surprisingly distinguished theatrical history, so why has our national game been neglected on stage?Mick Martin's new play Broken Time is a bracing account of the origins …
Theatre Royal, Wakefield It's curious that few genuinely enduring plays have been written about football, while rugby has produced at least two: David Storey's The Changing Room and John God…
Harrogate theatreYou wouldn't ordinarily turn to DH Lawrence for tales of the supernatural " or to pick up racing tips, for that matter. But his 1926 short story incorporates both. The effec…
Hull TruckFollowing the fortunes of a group of Yorkshire colliery workers who trade pit helmets for straw boaters in their spare time, Richard Cameron's musical drama is like Brassed Off wit…
Theatre by the Lake, KeswickArthur Schnitzler's sexually explicit play La Ronde attracted a fresh wave of controversy in 1998 when David Hare's two-handed adaptation at the Donmar Warehouse …
Tramway, GlasgowAndrew O'Hagan's 1994 debut The Missing was an arresting, genre-defying work " part speculative memoir, part Orwellian social reportage " that investigated the phenomenon of …
Crucible, SheffieldThe African American playwright Don Evans was a leading figure of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and 70s, though his plays have never made much of an impact in this …
Viaduct, HalifaxIn the preface to his translation of Chekhov's Three Sisters, Michael Frayn observes that the place where the family live remains anonymous: "But we know its spiritual name w…
Royal Exchange, ManchesterThe Royal Exchange has been transformed, in Ben Stones's elegant design, into a 1950s Parisian jazz bar where you mingle before the performance with hip young thing…
Theatre-by-the-Lake, KeswickDuring the second world war, children and adults seeking refuge from bombers were evacuated to rural havens, one of which was Keswick. The evacuees came from all …
Nottingham PlayhouseGuardian cricket correspondent Mike Selvey recalls in a blog his shame at once failing to recognise the great Nottinghamshire and England fast bowler, Harold Larwood in t…
Vietnamese artist Ea Sola creates performance pieces featuring women farmers, aged 50-75. Alfred Hickling talks to her about her ever-evolving work, Drought and RainIn a sweltering hot theat…
Drama about offensive standup " such as Brian Marchbank's production about an ageing comic " only peddles tired and bigoted materialTime was, in order to become a successful standup comedian…
Grosvenor Park, ChesterAccording to the legend of the White Wizard of Alderley Edge, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table are currently slumbering in a secret cave in Cheshire, fro…
Grosvenor Park, ChesterNow in its second year, Chester's Grosvenor Park company has rapidly established itself as an attractive, northern alternative to the Globe and Regent's Park. Of cours…
Williamson Park, LancasterFor the past 25 years, the Dukes theatre's annual promenade has transformed Lancaster's Williamson Park into Middle Earth, Arabia, Emerald City, and the deep south.…
Stephen Joseph, ScarboroughIf Alan Ayckbourn is more widely known for his writing than his directing, his role as an adaptor of other people's work is least known of all. Yet Ayckbourn has p…
