178 stories by "Heather Neill"
Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon: Philip Breen, whose Merry Wives of Windsor was a success here two years ago, tackles the first Royal Shakespeare Company production of Thomas Dekker's…
For a Christmas-weary Brit who's already had it up to here with commercial bonhomie and festive schmaltz, there were going to be barriers to overcome. Here is an avowedly sweet American play…
Trafalgar Studios 2, London: Dickens himself particularly enjoyed reading the section of Oliver Twist which deals with the murder of Nancy in histrionic public performances. This is a practi…
Trafalgar Studios 2, London : Christmas time and we expect Scrooge and redemptive jollity, but Miss Havisham's Expectations is the first half of Dickens with a Difference, an altogether…
The Colepit, Victoria and Albert Museum, London: The attractive Colepit, its walls covered in blue, red and grey ceramic tiles, accommodates about 35 people in a single row on either side of…
Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon: The fourth and last offering in the Royal Shakespeare Company's Roaring Girls season of early modern plays with strong female roles is a work not seen…
Tricycle Theatre, London: There are echoes of Lorca's House of Bernarda Alba in this appealing comedy set in New Orleans in 1836. The master of the house has recently died and his imper…
Sixteen-year-old Bernadette is determined to write short stories. She's a promising writer, describing her own feelings, the strangers and friends who cross her path in telling detail. Occas…
In his masterly essay in the programme for Enda Walsh's latest play, Colm TóibÃn warns against attempting to pin his work to a particular philosophical position, simply to read into it…
There are 15 characters in Robert McLellan's quirky 1948 comedy, but the star is the language most of them speak. To mark the referendum later this month, the Finborough is mounting a season…
Young Vic Theatre, London: There is a thrilling restlessness to Benedict Andrews' production of this American classic. Tennessee Williams describes a particular place in a real street i…
We know how the story ends, but then so did Euripides' first audience in Athens in 431 BC. Medea was already a familiar character of myth, a sorceress whose ungovernable passion for Jason le…
When Daytona was premiered at the Park Theatre last year some of the critics went into contortions to avoid giving away the two "reveals" in Oliver Cotton's plot. The challenge remains, but …
Old Vic Theatre: Arthur Miller's 1950s forensic, passionate examination of personal and public morality still resonates. After All My Sons in Regent's Park and Ivo van Hove's …
Gate Theatre, London: According to Homer's Iliad, Idomeneus, King of Crete, was a general in the Greek army which sacked Troy. What happened to him afterwards varies according to differ…
Director Nadia Fall has taken that patriarchal purveyor of footwear Henry Horatio Hobson and his family out of their natural habitat - a traditional proscenium arch theatre - and into a diff…
"Johnny get your gun" was a popular American recruiting call in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries and, according to the Irish-American song "When Johnny comes marching home, …
Yellow Face comes into the Shed a year after it was greeted enthusiastically when it was first seen in London at the newly-opened Park Theatre. Its category was generally agreed to be "mocku…
Swan Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon: Arden of Faversham is described both as an early domestic tragedy and a black comedy. Polly Findlay, making her RSC directorial debut, has plunged enthusia…
There is something forensic about Marius von Mayenburg's examination of human nature in this 2004 play, written when he was in his early 30s and the Iraq war still on the television news. El…
The Cockpit, London: David Ryall is in his 80th year and, having recently undergone chemotherapy, is suffering memory lapses - the role is a mountainous challenge for any actor; to attempt i…
The full title of Jackie Sibblies Drury's play, first produced in Chicago in 2012, is deliberately gauche and in need of editing. No review is complete without it, however, so here it …
New Wimbledon Theatre, London: This is the sixth tour of Hot Flush! so there must be an audience for it. Much as many in the audience laughed uproariously, much of the humour in the piece is…
Lyttelton Theatre, National, London: A Taste of Honey has taken second place in theatre history to another story, that of its writing. In 1958 Shelagh Delaney, an inexperienced 19-year-old f…
In 2011 Tim Pigott-Smith gave us an impressive, humane King Lear at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Here he is again, a patriarch learning how "sharper than a serpent's tooth" it is to have th…
