318 stories from John Morrison
It's a good thing Harold Pinter wrote when he did; his plays and screenplays would never get commissioned for television today. Have a quick read of last week's Guardian extract from a book …
I'm going to stick my neck out with an assertion I can't possibly prove: this show at the Riverside Studios is the most theatrically exciting production playing anywhere in London. Mies Juli…
It takes fourteen minutes of exposition before the samovar arrives on stage in William Boyd's respectful tribute to Anton Chekhov at the Hampstead Theatre. Birds are tweeting, the teaglasses…
'I'm in a coffee grinder', exclaims the hapless ex-jailbird Wilhelm Voigt. After watching the endless revolving Olivier theatre stage, I know exactly how he feels. In Adrian Noble's frenetic…
Multiple authorship in the theatre can work brilliantly, illustrating different facets of a single theme, as it did for Rupert Goold's exploration of the 9/11 attack, Decade. But the risk of…
I must be one of the last people in the country never to have seen this classic play on stage. My excuse for missing the original production of Timberlake Wertenbaker's hit play at the Royal…
Henry James' The Turn of the Screw is known as a ghost story; it isn't. It uses the classic framing device of a Victorian ghost tale -- the rapt after-dinner audience, the manuscript confess…
Most people, including me, now feel they know Alan Bennett's late parents better than their own. Like a pair of cracked Babylonian artefacts, Alan's dear old Mam and Dad have been subjected …
There's a hauntingly beautiful moment in this short play by Iain Finlay Macleod when the music changes from run-of-the-mill rock to the soundtrack of a Gaelic song, performed (I think) by th…
Really good new plays are still as elusive as the Higgs boson, though more common than they were 15 or 20 years ago. The Royal Court Theatre has probably done more to bring this about than a…
Oh, the joy of it! 'You'll need a piece of four by two/To get a really good pull through'. Anyone who remembers how to clean the barrel of a .303 rifle, as I did in the school cadet force in…
How do you describe a production which throws everythng but the kitchen sink at a play in the hope that a few things will hit the target? A few years ago I would have used the term Rupert (a…
There's a thrilling level of tension throughout this imaginative and adventurous production by Phyllida Lloyd at the Donmar. Watching the second preview on Friday night, I remained on the ed…
That grinding sound coming from the direction of my blog is me revising my critical view about updating Chekhov's plays to the modern era. Anya Reiss's sparkling rewrite of The Seagull is an…
The best moment for me in this production at the National Theatre came after 45 minutes when the house lights went up for the end of act one, and I was able to escape. As most of the reviewe…
Often in the theatre I'm happy to shut my eyes because there's nothing interesting to watch on stage, but here is a radio play during which I was afraid to blink because I might miss somethi…
First, let's hear it for the actors. Nick Dear's new play about the life and death of the poet Edward Thomas has two luminous performances by Pip Carter and Hattie Morahan, supported by a st…
Feeling depressed about the state of British theatre? Lying awake worried about the lack of good new writing? Don't take a pill -- just cadge a ticket for this terrific new play by Lucy Preb…
A grim guard in black battledress barks out orders: single file, walk faster, keep up! We rarely see the inside of prisons these days, and I imagine the warders have to say 'please' and 'tha…
I've been enjoying Chekhov on stage in English and Russian since the mid-1960s, but I can't think of a production I have disliked more intensely than Rimas Tuminas' expressionist version of …
Which relationships are more important? The ones we have with buildings, places and the historical past, or the ones we have with people in the present? That's the question Alan Bennett asks…
Dramatic irony has nothing to do with irony. I don't know who coined this awkward phrase for a bit of scriptwriting technique that is extremely simple -- yet many playwrights don't know how …
When an audience titters at a tragedy, it's usually a sign that something isn't quite right, either in the text, the acting or the production. I hesitate to give a definitive verdict on what…
I've been lucky enough to catch a performance of a new play at RADA by Jessica Swale, better known as the talented artistic director of Red Handed Theatre. This short run is effectively a pr…
Go to Trafalgar Square and there, looking down Whitehall, is Charles I, a few hundred yards from the place where he lost his head. Walk as far as Parliament and you'll find another statue to…
