The theatre director and playwright talks to Mark Lawson about his new play, Versailles, which explores the impact of the first world war on one familyTwo of the landmarks in the career of P…
In the latest in our series on writers' favourite shows, Mark Lawson explains his potentially controversial choice of this verbatim musical about the Ipswich serial murdersFavourite musicals…
Parents criticising the use of Vivienne Franzmann's play as a set text forget one thing: Waiting for Godot never caused us to take to the road as trampsThe latest of the periodic spats over …
When Paapa Essiedu stepped up at the National Theatre, it was like seeing a football team go on to win after having a star player sent offOne of the pleasures and perils of live theatre is i…
As well as creating pools of sweat and candlewax, the 'authentic' theatre shows us how daylight, or lack of it, influenced the writingSome of the best classical music of recent decades has c…
Adaptations of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies are running to sell-out audiences at the RSC. Do they disprove the rule that theatre and literature make fractious companions…
Keeley Hawes has left the play Barking in Essex early after reported rows with co-star Sheila Hancock. Such creative tensions have always lurked in the wingsAlthough heavily sandbagged with …
'The Book Of Mormon proved too much for frontline British critics, but a younger audience has made it a huge hit'The Book Of Mormon, a musical that lampoons a faith founded in 19th-century S…
Richard Eyre's production modernised the pacing of Ibsen and in the process made it yet more pertinent to our times' Read Michael Billington's review of Ghosts' Read more from the Best theat…
The appearance of Hitler in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Stephen Ward marks the Führer's third on the London stage this year " but his presence is as shocking as everWhen the Vatican suffe…
The first-season choices of James Dacre, artistic director of Northampton's Royal & Derngate theatres, embody the possibilities and challenges of drawing local theatregoersRunning one of Bri…
With a new tribute on the West End and a BBC1 documentary, Eric and Ernie rival comedy duos Laurel and Hardy or the Marx Brothers for their afterlife. Why do they continue to inspire?Morecam…
Best known for her role in Danish drama Borgen, Birgitte Sørenson is about to take to the British stage in Coriolanus. She tells Mark Lawson about doing Shakespeare by Skype and bowing ou…
A US documentary asserts that the Broadway musical is almost an exclusively Jewish creation. But is it useful to look at art in this way?A US documentary shown in Britain last week advanced …
A US documentary asserts that the Broadway musical is almost an exclusively Jewish creation. But is it useful to look at art in this way?A US documentary shown in Britain last week advanced …
It might be the artifice, or it might be the egos. But everyone from Bernstein to Simon Gray agrees: musical theatre is a nightmare to produceAlthough Fred Ebb " who wrote the lyrics to John…
It was a peaceful transition, but new artistic director Rufus Norris will be bound to impose his preferences on the institutionThe most dramatic event in British theatre last week took place…
Actors playing multiple parts is not only an economic necessity " it's huge fun for the audienceAlthough the main business of Handbagged, Moira Buffini's rightly acclaimed new play, is the m…
Medical tests, memory loss, exhaustion . . . acting in your 70s (and 80s) is no picnic. But that's not stopping Vanessa Redgrave, James Earl Jones, Sheila Hancock and Derek Jacobi. Mark Laws…
Whether it's an Irish Chekhov or an American classic, Mark Lawson finds that boiling down a nation's theatrical tradition to a single work is a difficult businessOne of the panels on the Gre…
Actors on drugs, a booze ban for Derek Jacobi, stars not speaking … as his Midsummer Night's Dream hits the stage, director Michael Grandage tells Mark Lawson his highs and lowsReading a n…
From a vanishing Hayley Atwell to a script-reading Oedipus, welcome to the season of the understudyA surprise piece of computer dialogue greets anyone buying tickets online for the current r…
Premium tickets over £100. A £1,500 access-all-Ayckbourn luxury package. £10,000 for lunch with the director of the National. Welcome to the curious world of the 'premium' theatre t…
A prescient memoir by the theatre's former chief suggests that when it comes to this prestigious yet demanding post, candidates have always been thin on the groundWhen Ronald Reagan was shot…
Four recent shows show how design razzmatazz can charm the senses " and also draw attention to holes in the writingIn cinema, the term "high production values" has long been code for the sor…