178 stories by "Heather Neill"
Mathematicians are a breed apart, bandying numbers about in a way that few outside their magic circle can fully understand. David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning play uses this exclusiveness…
Jermyn Street Theatre, London: The living room is a room in which no one has died. Helen and Teresa Browne, with the concurrence of their priest-brother James (symbolically cut off at the kn…
If only there were more Chekhov! Theatregoers in England, for whom Anton Pavlovich is little short of a god, must have wished this often enough. The handful of great plays come round almost …
Clybourne Park won Bruce Norris a slew of awards on both sides of the Atlantic a couple of years ago. His fearless, shocking, very funny response to Lorraine Hansbury's classic A Raisin in t…
A little man takes on Authority and fails. A little man dons a colourful uniform, complete with boots and spiked helmet, and he becomes Authority. Carl Zuckmayer wrote Der Hauptmann von Köp…
While Kafka specifically declined to indicate exactly what kind of creature Gregor Samsa becomes in his horrific overnight transformation, translators of the novella have gone for a variety …
St James, London: Warning - this is Cinderella without a Fairy Godmother or a magical coach but with some quite impressive amputations instead.
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'Tis the season to be jolly. 'Tis also the season to dust off the stories of the Grimms and Perrault and present them as drama, sometimes transmogrified into panto. There are sometimes attem…
Woking and Mars both provide subject matter for cartographers. John, who reckons he's an achiever, is updating the local A to Z, while Behrooz, once a colleague of John's, is exhibiting his …
Hampstead Theatre, London: It is a delicious premise - a woman, no longer young, finds the courage to be herself after years spent fulfilling the requirements of others. Jenny Joseph's …
Almeida Theatre, London: Lyric poetry - unlike the performance kind - is private, internal. It is the opposite of drama. A poet's life, can, of course, be dramatic, but telling a writer…
This is a short play, but not a sweet one. Nevertheless, the ban on under-16s and the warning that it "contains themes that some audience members may find distressing" seems unnecessary for …
Lyric Hammersmith, London: "Purdy" - the idiomatic word glints repeatedly through O'Neill's 1924 play, which takes its central idea - an adulterous affair between a beaut…
Donmar Warehouse, London: Racine's 17th century rhyming couplets are often pronounced untranslatable. Our ears are more tuned to the five-stress pentameters of blank verse than 12-sylla…
September 24-October 27: There is much ado indeed in this energetic production with its vivid colours, music, dance and teeming communal hubbub. Iqbal Khan has set the action in present-day …
Old Rep, Birmingham: It is tempting but pointless to adopt a trainspotter's approach to Calixto Bieito's Catalan-English Shakespearian collage. Here are gobbets of As You Like It, …
Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon: Placed between the comedies and tragedies in the First Folio, Troilus and Cressida has always defied categorisation beyond the unhelpful 'problem play…
Gate Theatre Notting Hill, London: The text-programme for The Prophet helpfully lists bloggers and tweeters as a means of keeping up with swiftly changing Egyptian politics. Despite being se…
Theatre 503, London: Vincent works in an abattoir. A young man in his community is killed. By the end of Jimmy Osborne's play, the interconnectedness of these two facts has been rammed …
Olivier, National Theatre, London: The head of state and assorted generals and apparatchiks cluster round a screen much as Obama and his staff did to watch the death of Osama bin Laden. But …
Theatre Royal, Brighton: This was an exemplary festival event. First, it provided an enjoyable mix of star glamour (Vanessa Redgrave, its guest director) and local talent (the young Brighton…
Jermyn Street, London: Adam is both son and mother to Mammles whom he tends - as he has for 15 years - in the cluttered attic of their home. She is bed-ridden, crippled with arthritis. He is…
New Victoria Theatre, Woking: Meeting Sharon, Tracey and Dorien again is a bit like encountering distant relatives after a gap of more than a decade. Will they have changed much? Will they b…
Cottesloe, National, London: This beautiful play set in post-war Trinidad won Errol John the newly-inaugurated Observer award for an undiscovered playwright in 1957. It was produced the foll…
Hampstead Theatre, London: Richard Nelson has set himself quite a task in writing a play about Harley Granville-Barker. Not only is his subject revered by modern directors and theatre histor…
