Ivo van Hove reinvents Visconti's fable about a 1930s German House of Atreus Is the terrifying past of Germany in 1933 also our future? Having had nightmares about the brilliant dystopian TV…
1930s setting for Falstaff's escapades wins out only in song and dance Need Shakespeare's Falstaff charm to be funny? Those warm, indulgent feelings won by Mrisho Mpoto in the amazing Glo…
Doubling, humour and an outstanding female Henry V Henry IV Part One (***)
Compelling fantasia about black South Africans drowned in a World War 1 disaster While Bach's and Handel's Passions have been driving thousands to contemplate suffering, mortality and grace,…
Simon Stone's homage to Euripides is faultless, while Marieke Heebink tears at the soul Hallucinatory theatre has struck quite a few times in the Barbican's international seasons. On an epic…
Martin Sherman has the excellent Jonathan Hyde telling true talesRipeness is sometimes all. Martin Sherman's new play, receiving its UK premiere at canny Park Theatre, says more about gay hi…
Musically strong, if persistent, this production has a star protagonist"In our country the capable man needs luck," belts out Shen Te, the Good Person of Szechwan in the most powerful song o…
Poignant take on Captain Marlene in the Second World WarGetting the look right is half the battle: in that, Peter Groom's one-time-Captain Marlene Dietrich is a winner from the start. The lo…
A virtuoso ensemble justifies this youthful baggy monster's West End transferIts roots are in truth: 15-year-old Matthew Lopez saw the film, then read the book, of Howards End and 11 ye…
Just a tad short on Broadway charisma, but this sophisticated production glides alongFirst palpable hit of the evening: a full orchestra in the pit under hyper-alert Opera North stalwart Jam…
Harriet Walter and Jade Anouka are the superlative opposite poles in a perfect ensembleWho would have thought, when Phyllida Lloyd's Donmar Julius Caesar opened to justified fanfare, that tw…
Stunning detail from Lev Dodin's company in desperate tragedy and human comedyTowards the end of the Maly Drama Theatre of St Petersburg's Life and Fate, a long scene in director Lev Do…
Roger Allam and Nancy Carroll serve David Hare's iron fist in velvet glove to perfection"What could be more serious than married life?" asked Richard Strauss, whose operas became a surp…
★★★ FANNY AND ALEXANDER, OLD VIC Agile but shallow Bergman adaptationThree strong performances weakened by miscasting elsewhere and restless soundtrackCould an epic cinemat…
Nobody said that a 70-minute audience with the undead was going to be easy. You can read Samuel Beckett's Texts for Nothing in your own time, pausing for thought, leaving off, coming back. W…
What's in a name? Imogen has a softer music to it than Cymbeline, the only one of Shakespeare's plays in which the title character is marginal - even if Hal and Falstaff just outshine Henry …
She gave us the most moving of King Lears years before the news broke that Glenda Jackson would be playing the role. Only Mark Rylance has recently matched the malicious wit of her Globe Ric…
Southwark's golden triangle " the Menier, the Playhouse and the Union " has given us so many "lost" musicals which only a decade or so ago would have been lucky to get in-concert airings.rea…
Britten fathomed Phaedra's passion for her stepson in a shattering quarter of an hour's dramatic cantata. Euripides' Hippolytus takes about 90 minutes in the playing. Director Kryz…
You rarely see a full production of Shakespeare's dream play so magical it brings tears to the eyes. But then you don't often get 42 players and 14 voices joining the cast to sing and play e…
Banished from the Barbican are the hollow kings of the mediocre RSC Henrys IV and V. In their place comes a whole new procession of living, breathing monarchs in a vision that's light years …
Could the fascination of Glenn Close's Norma Desmond transcend the frequent bathos of Lloyd Webber? Would they have sorted out the miking which wrecked last year's first choice of semi-ENO m…
Demons, trolls and dead souls have a habit of latching on to Ibsen's bourgeois Norwegians. Surely the best way for actors to handle them is to keep it natural, make them part of the furnitur…
The last time I saw Janet McTeer, she was doing her best with the slightly underwritten role of sister to Glenn Close's lethal Patty Hewes in Damages, the ultimate TV series about the discre…
Greek family smashups at the Almeida now yield to northern agony sagas, less bloody but potentially just as harrowing. In Little Eyolf the 66-year-old Ibsen dissected a failed marriage as ru…