1,378 stories by "Aleks Sierz"
Some plays are game-changers. When Jonathan Harvey's Beautiful Thing opened at the tiny Bush Theatre in 1993 the joy that radiated off the stage was ample affirmation that this tale of puppy…
The Shed, National Theatre, London: The National Theatre's new space, The Shed, a square construction painted bright red, is located just outside its main entrance in Theatre Square. A …
The family can be a knot of hatred as well as a cradle of love. Rather late in this new play by Tanya Ronder comes a scene in which a separated husband and wife try to untangle this knot, an…
Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, London: As it was in the beginning, so shall it be at the end: Anthony Neilson's masterpiece, The Wonderful World of Dissocia, was part of artisti…
Anthony Neilson is the wild man of new writing. However, this reputation, which has been provoked by shock-fests such as Penetrator (1993) and Stitching (2002), belies the fact that some of …
Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, is a cultural icon, the image of the peroxide blonde who spells big trouble. An influence on Diana Dors in the 1956 film Yield to the Nigh…
Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Royal Court, London: This is the last production that Dominic Cooke is directing at this venue before he steps down as artistic director next month. It is an apt …
"My honest instinct," says Jim, the hero of Bruce Norris's The Low Road, "is one of resentment." And while this contemporary fable of industrious bees, aka capitalist speculators, is set in …
The best horror stories take place in mundane surroundings. The envelope of the ordinary gives a context of credibility to the practically incredible. In Janice Okoh's new play, which won th…
Legendary English playwright Edward Bond doesn't often come to Malta, but when he does, he doesn't suffer fools gladly. After the first performance of his Olly's Prison " a stage version of …
Royal Court, Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, London: The most common complaint about plays that criticise the austerity measures that have followed the global financial meltdown is that they don…
Is this the most poetic title in London theatre today? Anders Lustgarten's new play joins a ragged march of work, from David Hare's The Power of Yes (2009) to Clare Duffy's Money: The Gamesh…
Plays about plays are often touched by theatrical magic. This is certainly the case with Timberlake Wertenbaker's masterpiece, first staged in 1988, and now revived by the same director, Max…
Eclipse Theatre Company's artistic director Dawn Walton talks to Aleks Sierz about her latest project, a revival of Don Evans' 1970s comedy analysis of racial and gender stereotypes, One Mon…
Lyttelton, National Theatre: Today, when long-term playwright-director partnerships are rare, it is a cause for celebration when a writer and a director work together over several years. Pla…
Over the past decade or so, Simon Stephens has emerged as one of Britain's premier playwrights. As well as being a prolific penman, with three volumes of collected plays already in print, he…
Gate Theatre, London: This is the first time the work of US playwright Rajiv Joseph, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, has been seen in the UK. Directed by Justin Audibert, who is this year's r…
When feminism was really cool, female playwrights would write flatshare dramas about a group of women, each of whom was representative of a certain way of life. The play title would just be …
Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, London: Polly Stenham's third play for the Royal Court - after her award-winning debut That Face (2007) and follow-up Tusk Tusk (2009) - is billed…
Most of us would love to live in a happy family, but it's the unhappy ones that make the most compelling drama. And few playwrights do familial tensions as instinctively as Polly Stenham, wh…
Jerwood Downstairs, Royal Court Theatre, London: Martin Crimp's latest work is his most innovative since his 1997 masterpiece Attempts on Her Life, and the first at this venue since The…
Christmas plays are a seasonal curse of British theatre. But there are alternatives to pantos and Dickens monologues. At the Royal Court Theatre, there is a tradition of more edgy Christmas …
Playwright Martin Crimp defies labels. He has been called obscure and oblique, too difficult and, worst of all, too Continental. But although he is feted on the European mainland " George Be…
Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, London: One of the great achievements of outgoing artistic director Dominic Cooke's regime at the Royal Court has been his loyalty to some of the …
Is discretion really the better part of valour? This question arises in a particularly acute form in this new play, which looks at Danny, a gay primary school teacher who decides to come out…
