After four decades of festive fun in York, the actor and writer is hanging up his frock and hobnailed boots. He looks back at the Theatre Royal's panto family'I must say I never expected the…
West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsFor anyone who has neither been, nor parented, a teenage girl over the past 10 years, Georgia Nicholson is the creation of teen fiction author Louise Rennison,…
Nottingham Playhouse Rating: *****Little Hugh of Lincoln was a 13th-century cause célèbre. The young boy's disappearance inflamed the anti-Semitism of the Christian com…
Crucible, SheffieldAn exemplary revival of what may be Brian Friel's greatest play makes a fine centrepiece to this season of his workBrian Friel's 1980 drama was born from twin impulses: th…
Octagon, BoltonDickens singled out David Copperfield as his "favourite child". It's no coincidence that the book was also Freud's favourite work of fiction " Dickens's autobiographical creat…
Theatre Royal, YorkThe Touring Consortium was established in 1996 to produce curriculum-based drama, during which period it has presented To Kill a Mockingbird no less than three times. Thou…
Hull Truck theatre Swerving between charm and disgust in a dark, disturbing production, Fraser creates a sense of a man bitterly aware that he will never fit inTwenty-five years ago, a stran…
He's staged Thalidomide! A Musical, stormed American TV and starred in an explicit fairytale with his wife. Now, Mat Fraser is raising hell as Shakespeare's royal villain " without the humpI…
Theatre Royal, WakefieldThe writer launches his touring company with a new play blending the gentle hilarity and northern baroque he has made his ownA standup comedian and a debt collector w…
West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsTerry Johnson's adaptation, directed by Lucy Bailey and starring Catherine McCormack, captures the dubious sexual politics and superficiality of the eraThe mos…
Royal Exchange, ManchesterAnxieties over loneliness and zero-hours contracts take an eerily real form for the characters in Alan Harris's lyrical two-handerJimmy, who is 34 and lives with hi…
Theatre Royal, YorkA flashing-eyed performance from Phoebe Pryce is undermined by a too-literal production featuring a roaring fire " and a real canine co-starBranwell Brontë's gift to po…
Theatre Royal, YorkOriginally produced in 1968, Alan Bennett's first full-length stage play is not, strictly speaking, a play at all, but an old-school revue set in a very old school. The mi…
Royal Exchange, ManchesterOpera director Jo Davies' musical mastery shines through in a production made all the more absorbing by its gender-fluid castingGender fluidity is in vogue for Twel…
Victoria Dock, HullAs a feat of logistics, this thrilling odyssey played out on water looks likely to be a highlight of Hull's year as UK City of CultureWhen the waters rise, Hull may be the…
No one thought his metaphysical thriller could work as a play. But technology has made it possible. We meet Paul Auster as he takes a VR trip inside his own head " and recalls what he learne…
Derby theatreThe spartan flat used for an affair becomes a squash court in Lekan Lawal's overthought, revolving staging of this misogynistic 1978 playAdultery was a lot simpler back in 1978,…
After musical dramas featuring a serial killer and a notorious libertine, the actor returns to the stage as a tyrant. He talks about playing sociopaths and why he gave up votingAccording to …
Hope Mill, Manchester The crusading off-Broadway musical, billed as 'the show Rodgers and Hammerstein never wrote', gets its UK premiereAs a venue specialising in new and rarely performed mu…
West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsKids film brawls on their mobile phones and flower memorials litter the set in an astonishing production that captures the play's sense of futilityWest Yorkshi…
Birmingham Rep A dysfunctional couple do battle with a body in their bedroom in Sean Foley's off-kilter adaptation of Ionesco's comedyAmong Eugène Ionesco's full-length absurdist dramas, Th…
Northern Stage, Newcastle upon TyneThis moving verbatim piece about young people in care shows playwright Paddy Campbell's fine ear for absurdity Paddy Campbell's first plays, Wet House and …
Octagon, BoltonDavid Thacker revives David Rudkin's rarely performed 1970s play about an infertile Ulsterman and his English wifeDavid Rudkin is a major figure in postwar British theatre who…
Belgrade theatre, CoventryThis musical adaptation of Idle's take on Edward Lear's much-loved poem is a hummable defence of the spirit nonsenseMy nine-year-old goddaughter, Maya, has a questi…
Northern Stage, Newcastle As the heroine of Ibsen's psychodrama, a pistol-packing Victoria Elliott rages against corseted constriction in Selma Dimitrijevic's adaptationThe fashion for Hedda…