1,378 stories by "Aleks Sierz"
Soho Theatre, London: Following its success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe last year, and again this year, as well as at the Latitude Festival, this all-male version of Anthony Burgess…
Cottesloe, National Theatre, London: Billie Piper plays a star-crossed lover as she makes her debut at the <a href="http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/the-effect">Nation…
Science thrives on stage. In play after play, various scientific ideas seem to flourish in the warm, well-lit environment of the theatre, fed by a crew of artists and despite the threats of …
London theatre loves plays about the media. Is this because we spend so much time flicking through magazines, visiting websites or watching television? Or is it because this venue's trendy m…
Finding the mythic echoes of the ancient Greeks in stories about the modern world is not just confined to past greats such as TS Eliot, but is also used by contemporary adapters of old trage…
Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, London: How do you follow a massive success? Playwright Jez Butterworth has had to face that question twice in his career so far. In 1995, his Mojo was…
In the past few years, without any fanfare, the veteran playwright Howard Brenton has not only made a comeback, but also become the chief chronicler of the nation's past. One year he is tell…
Wow, what a lot of debuts. Adrian Lester (Hustle, Bonekickers, Merlin) makes his Tricycle Theatre debut in this new play about a black actor in Regency London, and it's written by his wife, …
Over the past few years, the 1970s have made a cultural comeback. On television, there's been Life on Mars and White Heat, in the bookshops tomes by Dominic Sandbrook, in the theatre revival…
Walkouts are always intriguing. When audience members leave before the final curtain, it's usually a sign that the play is too powerful, or too scandalous or maybe just not very good. After …
The West End seems to be recession-proof, with rising profits, rising ticket prices and few empty theatres. But is this because commercial theatre is becoming increasingly formulaic? How abo…
Bush Theatre, London: Every year, the HighTide Festival in Suffolk helps to develop young playwrights and their latest discovery is Essex-born Vickie Donoghue, whose powerful debut play was …
The popular image of the state-of-the-nation play is that of a large-scale, big-cast drama that has an epic time span and lots of highly articulate speeches that analyse the way we are. But …
In the non-Olympic sport called "Name Britain's greatest living playwright", most of the entries have always been men. Nowadays, that is all changed and the odds-on favourite must be Caryl C…
Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, London: Some American playwrights are embraced by British theatres, which often produce their work more readily than venues across the Atlantic. Among …
With the American presidential election campaign now in full swing, the search is surely on for cultural expressions of the two nations that the candidates represent: white rich people versu…
After years spent in the dark alleyways of abuse, where the only optimistic light is the sickly glow of neon, some new playwrights are emerging into the sunnier meadows of romantic comedy. T…
Since 2004, the Ambassador Group's Trafalgar Studios has done sterling work in staging West End transfers for some of London's most promising fringe talents. Kieran Lynn's An Incident at the…
The Arab Spring has arguably been the most important international event after the credit crunch, yet it seems to be of little interest to British playwrights. Parochial, obsessed with writi…
When does an urgent new trend become a theatre cliché? Over the past couple of years, the idea of generational conflict between the have-it-all baby boomers and the have-nothing-but-debts y…
Mary Shelley and all her works have dogged the footsteps of contemporary theatre " in a way that's a bit reminiscent of her most famous creation. Last year, there was Frankenstein at the Nat…
A powerful trend in contemporary theatre is the family play. But the families usually depicted tend to be of the standard two-point-five variety, while other more complex forms " families as…
They say that men, at whatever age, never leave the playground. We are told that boys will be boys. But what is this kind of infantile masculinity really like, and is there anything new to s…
Although some contemporary plays " notably Posh and 13 " have accurately taken the temperature of the times, what about the timeless classics? Does Sophocles's Antigone (dated about 441BC) h…
Plays about media folk and creatives, such as Joe Penhall's Dumb Show and Stella Feehily's O Go My Man, are not uncommon in British theatre. They usually have recognisable middle-class setti…
