322 stories by "John Morrison"
Do I like verbatim theatre? Up to a point, Lord Copper. As I wrote three years ago after seeing Alecky Blythe's London Road at the National Theatre, it's a genre that has its limitations. Wh…
Our first sight of Helen McCrory is of her brushing her teeth, coming out of a rather downmarket alcove with a sink dressed in khaki warrior trousers and a skinny top. The teeth-brushing is …
Lynn Nottage's play at the Park Theatre, set in 1905 in New York, tells the fictionalised story of her great-grandmother. Esther is a dumpy African-American seamstress, living on her own in …
Peter Shaffer's plays pose a problem for directors and actors; his writing is extremely prescriptive, with detailed directions on movement, music, design and costume that leave anyone who re…
The last time I saw Julius Caesar, it was an all-female version set in a prison. Dominic Dromgoole's version at the Globe contains no such radical turnarounds. The production uses what his p…
I usually run a mile from stage adaptations of films, with the exception of oddball productions such as Kneehigh's Brief Encounter and the ever-successful 39 Steps. But I always knew I would…
Richard Bean's plays are popular, funny and totally unrestrained by good taste or political correctness. If he was a newspaper, he would be a red-top. This is the key to his hilarious demoli…
Kevin Mandry's play was recognised as an exceptional piece of writing when it was read at Player-Playwrights in 2013, winning the Best Play award. Now it has a full three-week production at …
Theatre, like football, can be a game of two halves. Polly Stenham's new play at the National Theatre Shed develops nicely for the first 40 minutes, then falls apart spectacularly. I will le…
I've seen lots of gripping productions at the Old Vic since Kevin Spacey took it over, and before. This revival of Arthur Miller's classic play by the South African director Yael Farber may …
Spoiler Alert: If you are a handsome young man with a £5 standing ticket for Antony and Cleopatra at the Globe, position yourself right at the front by the stage and you might get a scorc…
A standing ovation at the end of a theatre performance doesn't happen that often, and when it does it often seems forced and ritualistic, as if the audience has been asked to stand by some i…
This is the third play by up-and-coming young dramatist Nick Payne that I've seen, but I will think carefully before buying tickets for the fourth. I enjoyed Constellations, which featured t…
If the last artistic boss of the Royal Shakespeare Company Michael Boyd was a bit of a Roundhead, then his successor Greg Doran is more of a cavalier -- by which I mean he adds meaningful de…
I sometimes go to the theatre to see if my long-held preferences and prejudices can be successfully dissolved by seeing a new production. Alan Ayckbourn has always struck me as an overrated …
James Graham is an excellent writer who showed his gift for creating drama from unpromising material with This House, which revisited the 1970s House of Commons. His new play at the Donmar e…
'Mr Goold? Do come in. And you must be Mr Bartlett? Have you been to St James' Palace before?' 'We've never been invited.' 'How remiss of us. Of course, when the Lord Chamberlain's departmen…
Until I saw Anya Reiss's version of The Seagull in 2012 I was firmly of the view that trying to Anglicise or update Chekhov was a VERY BAD IDEA. Could she work the same trick again with Thre…
Peter Gill has achieved the seemingly impossible with this new play at the Donmar. He has written a play about the first world war which fails to connect with the audience's emotions at all.…
O'Neill, Miller, Williams, Albee. More recently Tracy Letts with August, Osage County. There's a glorious line of American playwrights who have torn apart the myth of the all-American happy …
I sat in the pit last night, just behind the Grocer and his lovely lady wife, who gave me a grape. It was ten times funnier than the first time I saw it from the upper gallery, where I misse…
Gretel and Ilse haven't a clue what's going on. With Russian artillery fire booming overhead, and their secretarial duties on hold, they sit in front of their typewriters in an airless concr…
'Tea, Father?' Like 'To be or not to be? That is the question' or 'Don't tell him, Pike!' there are some dramatic lines which are just impossible to forget. Mrs Doyle's repeated offers of te…
Flash bang wallop. Headlong, the theatre company which the Almeida's new artistic director Rupert Goold led for eight years until 2013, has a particular style which some people love and othe…
I was unsure what to expect from Shelagh Delaney's 1958 play, which I had never seen or read. I was blown away. It's a cracker, unbelievably ahead of its time in its characters and themes an…
