178 stories by "Heather Neill"
Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon: Hilary Mantel describes the second book in her trilogy about the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell as "shorter, more concentrated, fiercer". Anoth…
Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon: Hilary Mantel says her Man Booker-winning novel is "a gigantic play". True, the book is written in dramatic episodes, often in dialogue, but the …
Rhys Ifans enters as a rough sleeper who has wandered in off the street, his sleeping bag over his shoulders, beany hat pulled low over unwashed hair, muttering to himself. For a moment he's…
Tricycle Theatre, London: Mary J O'Malley's comedy about 1950s convent schoolgirls has come home. An award-winner at the Royal Court in 1977 and then running in the West End for a …
Award-winning Toronto-born playwright Claudia Dey is also an advice columnist and here she presents us with three wildly off-the-wall case studies. The twin Ducharme sisters, who share an is…
Take a Victorian library and a play which had its premiere 100 years ago and - surprisingly - you have a new arts centre featuring a challenging, dystopian drama. Omnibus in Clapham has exch…
This near-legendary short play, devised by Athol Fugard with the actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona (who gave their names to its characters), was first shown - daringly - in Cape Town in 1…
Charing Cross Theatre, London: Philip Larkin was exaggerating: sexual intercourse did not begin in 1963. Nevertheless, the culmination of the Profumo scandal that year put sexual intercourse…
David Pinner's 1973 play showcases a string quartet working out their own problematic relationships while world leaders decide the shape of post-war politics. Between bouts of playing Haydn,…
Tricycle, London: Four identical handbags feature in every scene of Moira Buffini's very funny satirical comedy. This full-length version of her contribution to the nine short plays whi…
Royal Opera House, Linbury Studio Theatre, London: Wagner delved so deeply into human consciousness that he was "bound to come up with as much shit as gold". So says Simon Callow t…
Duke of York's, London: There are no real surprises: in its second revival (after two outings at the Young Vic) this is still a superlative production. True, the Duke of York's lacks th…
Bush, London: Josephine Baker was some woman - born in poverty in St Louis in 1906, she became a star of the Folies Bergere in the 1920s, painted by Picasso, eulogised by Hemingway. In World…
The celebrated 1955 Ealing comedy starring Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom, was apparently intended as a cartoonish satire of post-war British decline. In 2013, with the Empire …
Hampstead Theatre, London: Peter has been widowed for 18 months, he is mortgaged up to the hilt and his teenage daughter Daisy is sick - but he is coping, just. She needs weekly treatment in…
It is a truth universally acknowledged that it is essential to quote the famous opening line in any reference to Jane Austen's best-loved work. Pride and Prejudice is 200 years old and being…
Finborough Theatre, London: Stephanie Williams' beautifully detailed, messy traverse set takes us right into the kitchen-cum-living room of the graduate house share from hell. Friends t…
In Bracken Moor Alexi Kaye Campbell inhabits similar territory to J B Priestley, whose work he admires. Like his predecessor, Campbell combines social comment with the mystical and spiritual…
There was a sense of nervous anticipation in the Maria, the Young Vic's studio space. Ninety minutes of torture was on the menu, and I'll admit to feeling some trepidation. But this show - a…
The Tower of London and Gippeswyk Hall, Ipswich: Anne Boleyn is endlessly fascinating - was she a sexy minx, political manipulator, religious reformer or all of these? The facts of her life …
Park, London : The new Park Theatre's first season in its main space, Park 200, opens with an American docudrama, an antidote to Gatsby mania, set in 1920s Chicago.
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During rehearsals of his new play, Howard Brenton and the company had a sudden realisation: they were willing partners in "the vast Ai Weiwei project". The Chinese dissident artist, a consta…
Trafalgar Studios, London : Dermot Canavan describes himself as "a blunt Northern man with a good ear and a decent pencil". A sometime actor, he wrote this two-hander when his frie…
Molly Sweeney has been blind since early childhood. Supported by her understanding father, she has grown into a confident, independent woman. Then her new husband Frank and an ambitious opht…
Menier Chocolate Factory, London: David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, written in 2000, was first seen in London in 2002 at the Donmar, starring Gwyneth Paltrow as Catherine. It …
