880 stories by "Marianka Swain"
There's nothing like a death to bring a family together. In Simon's case, that death is his own " impending execution by firing squad in an unnamed Asian country, unless he can win a repriev…
Stop press: our rampant celebrity culture might not be wholly positive! If you've already been apprised of that fact some time in the past century, go ahead and skip actor Daniel Dingsdale's…
Theatre is in the very bones of this bold adaptation, with the Lyric gifted a cameo role: past productions are fleetingly pastiched in a flashback to the era of the venue's foundation. …
"Comedy, love and a bit with a dog," counselled Henslowe in Stoppard's Shakespeare in Love, and his populist advice is taken to heart in this broad, bawdy, big-hearted farce untroubled by nu…
Following a dangerously selective reading of a religious text, 15-year-old Benjamin has adopted a fundamentalist doctrine that espouses misogynist, homophobic and puritanical views and, at i…
The "femmepersonators" of Harvey Fierstein's 1962-set drama would be flabbergasted by today's level of trans visibility, from Grayson Perry and Caitlyn Jenner to Transparent and Eddie Redmay…
Metta Theatre's didactic short plays evening takes a rigorously Poppins approach: a spoonful of drama to help the medicine go down. The sobering facts " "We need to produce more food gl…
Can we " should we " control the future? That's the dilemma faced by anxious parents attempting to steer their offspring through a labyrinthine school system, educational think-tanks, and th…
Can you peg a whole play on a decent twist? When We Were Women's narrative tease pays off interestingly, but takes a hell of a long time getting there. It leaves little space to explore the …
"My brother died." That's the reality New York-based banker Willem struggles to inhabit when he returns to his estranged family in Amsterdam. There is no sense in Pauli's loss " a sudden hea…
Well, here's an oddity. You Won't Succeed... is too fragmented for musical theatre, too bombastic for cabaret, and about as profound as a first-draft Wikipedia page. Channelling the self-ref…
A sterling case is made for the lost art of letter writing in Michael Simkins' dramatisation of Roger Mortimer's missives to his wayward son. Mortimer's inimitable turn of phrase, preserved …
Life, the universe and everything… in 70 minutes. You certainly can't fault Nick Payne's ambition, nor help but admire the dazzling inventiveness of his theoretical physics romcom with a s…
The latest transatlantic transfer is curiously esoteric, concerning as it does an obscure period in the lives of two great men: Laurence Olivier and Orson Welles. The centenary of the latter…
Hamlet instructs his players to hold "the mirror up to nature", advice taken literally in this arresting 120-year anniversary staging of Chekhov's homage to the Bard. Jon Bausor's set is dom…
The play I have just seen is not the play you will see. Of course, one of the draws of live performance is that no two nights are the same, but that idea is taken to a mesmerising extreme in…
Can we really distinguish between experience-based judgement and personal bias? Caroline, the social worker at the centre of American writer Rebecca Gilman's latest 'issue' play, trusts a gu…
"We're completely pro sex." Rashdash, who collaborated with Alice Birch on this anarchic challenge to pornography, are not objecting on prudish grounds " their concern is the corrosive …
Seldom has there been such impassioned debate about whether a play has a right to exist. Writer Jonathan Maitland faced a tirade of criticism, with many accusing him of exploitation; others …
In a peculiarly Beckettian development, the creative team of this Sydney Theatre Company production spent several weeks of rehearsal waiting not for Godot, but for their director. Tamás A…
The play's the thing, once again, in the latest backstage comedy, an affable if limited dig at luvvie pretensions. Noises Off still reigns supreme in this genre, with successors unable to ma…
"All children, except one, grow up." So begins J. M. Barrie's iconic tale of arrested development, given new power and poignancy in this high-flying production. A century after one of Barrie…
The Forest of Arden takes many forms, but in Blanche McIntyre's meticulously purist production, it's strictly a state of mind " no leafy bowers in sight. Here, the unspoken can be voiced, th…
At just 26, Pippa Bennett-Warner has already achieved many actors' goals, from treading the boards at the National and having a part written specially for her to sharing scenes with luminari…
Genre mixing is a perilous business. Successful hybrids use duelling forms to re-contextualise or revolutionise; others wind up fatally diluting their disparate elements. Ayckbourn's 1994 sc…
