880 stories by "Marianka Swain"
Recovery depends on honesty, but Emma " not her real name " lies for a living. Duncan Macmillan's searing play, getting a well-deserved West End transfer from the National, complicates the f…
The fourth production in Branagh's Garrick season is the revival of an odd-couple romp he brought to the Lyric, Belfast in 2011. Sean Foley (best known for his superlative Branagh-directed M…
Infidelity, hypocrisy, disillusionment, betrayal " and yet this is by far the lightest of French playwright Florian Zeller's current London hat trick. Premiering in 2011, and thus sandwiched…
simple8, the critically-acclaimed ensemble based theatre company -winners of the 2015 Peter Brook Empty Space Awards - will make their Park Theatre debut with the world premiere of a new pl…
"Murder is hilarious," quips Zawe Ashton's scheming maid, and in Jamie Lloyd's high-octane, queasily comic revival of Jean Genet's radical 1947 play, it really is. It's also lurid, strange, …
Theatregoers suffering from First World War fatigue may want to pass on Jonathan Lynn's merely competent historical drama about two mythic figures: Charles de Gaulle and Philippe Pétain. It…
War bad, theatre good. That's about the level of insight available from this amiable show, transferring after a successful run in Bath. It's one of the weaker entries in the ever-popular bac…
There will be blood. And expletives. And puppet sex that makes Avenue Q look positively monastic. But perhaps most shocking of all is that beneath the eye-wateringly explicit surface of Robe…
Jack is an alcoholic. Stephanie is a whore. Joseph is stupid. Stevie is a broody neurotic. These identifiers are proudly proclaimed in the first minute of Matthew Perry's debut play, but if …
The death of a child is an unnatural loss. There's no reassurance that the departed lived a full life, rather the jagged edge of one cut short. In the case of Becca and Howie, it's also nons…
Lolita Chakrabarti's impassioned debut has only gained topicality since its 2012 Tricycle incarnation. Trevor Nunn's all-white Wars of the Roses and #OscarsSoWhite, among others, have fanned…
Anne longs for 23-year-old son Nicholas to return home. One night, he appears. Or does he? Welcome back to the queasily elliptical world of Florian Zeller, where certainty fractures as famil…
Just what constitutes reasonable behaviour in an enlightened society? Not long ago, the death penalty fell under that umbrella in Britain, and state-sanctioned killing as punishment for the …
Events have overtaken this Macbeth, dramatically heightening its queasy topicality. Not just brutal beheadings and torture, but the cost and collateral damage of conflict without end, and th…
Hollywood took 365 speaking parts, 50,000 extras and 78 horses to tell this epic tale in 1959; here at the Tricycle, it's a cast of four and some enterprising puppet work. Playwright Patrick…
Welcome to the hellmouth. In Jamie Lloyd's startling 50th anniversary revival, the seething, primal hinterland of Pinter's domestic conflict is made flesh: the metal cage surrounding an inno…
Teenagers lie " that's nothing new. But are the activities they're concealing from anxious parents in this oversharing digital age more extreme, more likely to define their lives and those o…
What exactly is the level of Kenneth Branagh's self-awareness? He's certainly conscious of inviting comparison with Olivier once again by presenting a year-long season of plays at the refurb…
This new family musical, based on the popular 2003 Will Ferrell film, has rightly been censured for its extortionate seating prices, hosting the West End's most expensive top-end tickets at …
It trashed Olivia Newton-John's film career, halted the movie-musical revival, and was so critically reviled it led to the creation of the Razzies. How, then, could the stage version of hubr…
After 12 seemingly idyllic years, Tom and Beth's marriage is over. That's a concern for Gabe and Karen, partly because they care for their friends, and there's the ugly business of choosing …
If the thought of three hours of DH Lawrence fills you with dread, fear not. Ben Powers' three-for-the-price-of-one melding of Lawrence's trio of mining plays is a spellbindingly intimate ep…
This year's Olivier Awards saw the Young Vic trounce its South Bank neighbours, with Ivo van Hove's revolutionary A View from the Bridge leading 11 nominations and four wins; the production …
Molière's 1664 comedy Tartuffe transplanted to present-day Atlanta, Georgia: it sounds like an inspired idea. The hypocritical religious devotee becomes a charlatan preacher fleecing his fl…
Rents are going up, local businesses priced out, and the rich folk and hipsters are invading. That's in Washington Heights, New York's largely Dominican-American quarter, but it could as eas…
