880 stories by "Marianka Swain"
Disillusioned with our modern world? Why not journey back into an idyllic past, when trains were benign, anthropomorphic creatures rather than sources of commuter angst, red petticoats held …
Saxon Court joins the growing list of new plays tackling the economic collapse, and while lacking the creative innovation of work like Clare Duffy's Money: The Game Show at the Bush or …
Reclaiming lost plays can be unnecessary indulgence, but Blanche McIntyre's note-perfect production of Emlyn Williams' 64-year-old work ushers in the renaissance of a thoroughly modern maste…
This time of remembrance has inspired a fascinating theatrical skirmish. In one corner, Nicholas Wright's 2014 Regeneration, an adaptation of Pat Barker's trilogy; in the other, Stephen MacD…
It is no exaggeration to say that Lloyd Newson has created a new theatrical language. Verbatim drama and intricate choreography would seem, on paper, to be fatally competing elements, yet Ne…
Rediscovered work offers aficionados a tantalising piece of the puzzle. Terence Rattigan's callow debut, reborn after 80 years in obscurity, bears the hallmarks of his later plays, notably c…
When gifting the unheard a voice, the temptation is often to make it a solemn one. Thankfully, Paddy Campbell has, for the most part, sidestepped puritanical preaching in his debut play base…
Hell is other people. It's not the wilderness that poses the greatest threat to the stranded corporate bonding quartet in this docile Lord of the Flies-meets-The Office pastiche, but th…
Bigger is better in the Tricycle's latest piece of reclaimed black history. African-American writer Marcus Gardley's stimulating play, which transports Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba to …
Ghosts are walking at the Young Vic. Katie Mitchell's stark, startling production of Chekhov's final lament is not just an evocation of a lost era, but a summoning of the spirits haunting Vi…
Fresh from global domination with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, currently garnering rapturous reviews on Broadway, inexhaustible playwright and adaptor Simon Stephe…
Purists may take issue with Anya Reiss's incursion into the classics " having already tackled The Seagull and Three Sisters, she's now turned her dogged 21st-century gaze on Uncle Vanya…
The advantage of basing drama on real events, particularly emotive ones like the 2005 London bombings, is that they have inbuilt resonance; the disadvantage, all too apparent in 2013 play Wa…
To do Mamet's work justice, you must be able to deliver dialogue with the speed, skill and breathtaking bravura confidence of Usain Bolt. In Lindsay Posner's much-hyped but frustratingly slu…
Britain has entered a "post-Christian" era, declared former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams earlier this year: we acknowledge its cultural presence, but Christianity is no longer an …
In his otherwise unremarkable 1932 debut play Dangerous Corner, J B Priestley employs a promising framing device that hints at the kind of metafictional experimentation found in works like S…
The news cycle waits for no man. When Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky's thinly veiled Boris Johnson satire premiered in Edinburgh at the beginning of August, it seemed remarkably timely, coinci…
Like their divisive protagonist, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice could reasonably be accused of valuing style over substance: indelible extravaganza Evita subscribes to the cult of celebrit…
If Chiltern Firehouse is any indication, power in our society lies not in bank balance, postcode or job title, but in being seen nibbling crab doughnuts at the hottest restaurant in town. Be…
There is a moment in Breeders when Ben Ockrent seems, momentarily, to channel Dennis Kelly's chilling Utopia. Never mind the topical issue of homosexual parenting " should we even have child…
It begins sombrely, with the grave recounting of a shipwreck, but such emotive moments are fleeting: as the drama ratchets up, it only serves to fuel the splendid zaniness of Shakespeare's 1…
Shared yearning for a place to belong is not a revelatory concept, nor is it given new dimension in this gently saccharine piece, yet although the whistle-stop tour only covers familiar land…
It is no mean feat to turn an audience against idealistic, painfully young marines heading for the nightmarish hell of Vietnam, but Dogfight comes perilously close to achieving that undesira…
If comedy is tragedy plus time, either too much has elapsed since the fictional events of Jezebel, or not quite enough. Newcomer Mark Cantan's uneven screwball pitting a methodical couple ag…
For those who have spent the past few months nodding along to World War I conversations while desperately trying to remember who killed that archduke and why, Rolf Hochhuth has kindly suppli…
