599 stories by "Clare Brennan"
Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, ParisThe prose, poems, songs and reworkings of existing texts that make up Michael Ondaatje's 1970 meditation on the life of one of the United States's best-…
Crucible Studio, SheffieldSixty people on a studio stage, hemmed on three sides by audience " they surge, they pulse; they shimmer like a shoal of fish changing direction, shiver into contra…
Playhouse, LiverpoolAll creatures are mysterious. A child with the kind of brain that doesn't allow for co-ordinated movement or communicative speech or gesture is more mysterious than most.…
Studio, Old Vic, Bristol; and touringA magic dismemberment act in which a head appears to be removed from a body was once billed in a theatre programme as being "exceedingly amusing and in n…
RSC, Stratford-upon-AvonA set should not be so distracting. An arrangement of earth and skulls " clustered in threes " borders the wooden floorboards of an old-fashioned gymnasium, where fen…
RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon Continue reading...
Brae Hall, ShetlandIt is night. We're sitting in cars facing darkly glittering water and a distant horizon. To our left, in the middle distance, flares flame: refinery burn-off, I guess…
Ustinov Studio, BathIt's a fragile thing, this drama by multi-award-winning US playwright Richard Greenberg, written in 1990 and here receiving its British premiere. The 1960s action takes p…
Hampstead, LondonWilliam Boyd is an award-winning novelist and screenwriter. Until now, though, he had never written a play. To get himself started, he decided, as he put it, to "stitch toge…
Octagon, BoltonWalter Tull (1888-1918) was "the first black outfield footballer to play in the old First Division in England" and, later, a second lieutenant in the Special Reserve of office…
Octagon, BoltonWalter Tull (1888-1918) was "the first black outfield footballer to play in the old First Division in England" and, later, a second lieutenant in the Special Reserve of office…
Lyceum, SheffieldIt's not surprising that when it appeared in 1997 The Full Monty was instantly dubbed a "feelgood" film. Set in the late 1980s, it tells the story of a group of skilled men …
Swan, Stratford-upon-AvonAt first, Ian McDiarmid's performance seems way too actorly " like a TV historian overly eager to communicate enthusiasm. Stripped to the waist to perform his mornin…
Olivier, London; Dukes, LancasterIn spite of Antony Sher's valiant efforts in the title role, it's hard to believe, watching this ponderous production, that Carl Zuckmayer's 1931 satire is c…
Octagon, BoltonJohn Steinbeck's 1937 novel makes a great story but a long-winded drama (as well as, twice, a film). It turns around one unresolvable conflict " between (wo)man and the wide o…
Citizens, GlasgowDirector/designer Stewart Laing's production of The Maids is vividly theatrical (the stage curtain gets a round of applause). But its visual surprises and non-textual interv…
The Studio at the Lowry, SalfordThe disadvantage of underground theatre (unsubsidised, popping up in pubs and other non-standard venues) is that productions usually run for only a few days. …
Barbican, London EC2The stage is almost entirely black. In the centre, a white oblong rises, a scroll about as tall and wide as an unfurled roll of wallpaper. Black and white smudges flow ov…
Northern Stage, Newcastle; Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon; York Theatre Royal; Sir John Mills theatre, IpswichThis is a fantastic time of year for a theatre reviewer " it's j…
Stephen Joseph theatre, ScarboroughElla has a mark on her brow made by a falling cinder from a passing star. So says Woody Drift, her fanciful seafaring father, whose vivid imagination outst…
Royal Exchange, Manchester; Lowry, SalfordAncient storytelling traditions kaleidoscope to life in two texts by contemporary writers. Rats' Tales sashays out of shadow-fraught European forest…
Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal, BathLaurence Boswell's response to the challenge of transforming The Double for the stage is astutely theatrical. In Dostoevsky's second novel, a clerk is driv…
Salisbury Playhouse, SalisburyIdeally, an adaptation should do two things: it should reflect its original and it should work on the terms of its new medium. Bizarrely, Roger Spottiswoode's t…
Royal Exchange, ManchesterThis wild confection of southern belle pettiness, redneck malevolence and racist viciousness takes pretty much every trope of the deep south, laces them with poetic…
Tron, GlasgowJames Joyce's notoriously dense 1922 novel follows a group of characters on a voyage through the events and imaginings of a superficially mundane Dublin day (16 June 1904). Derm…
