24 stories by "Laura Silverman"
The Downton Abbey actor keeps a surprising array of puppets and musical instruments in his shed in Enfield, north London
Terence Rattigan's beautifully spoken characters are a passionate lot in this gripping story of a father's fight to prove his son's innocence. Lindsay Posner's production of the 1946 play su…
Staged in 1931, The Man Who Pays the Piper appealed to women who had gone to work (and become the master of the house) while men were fighting in the First World War, but were subjugated onc…
Five male Filipinos in Tel Aviv live double lives. By day, they care for dying Orthodox Jews; by night, they are a drag act, the Paper Dolls. Based on real life, this play tells an incredibl…
This stylish, witty musical celebrates the 50-year love affair between the first openly gay film star, William Haines, and Jimmy Shields, a set decorator. It embraces the fashion of the Twen…
In a draining first work, AilÃs NÃ RÃain infuses a coming-of-age saga with Irish folklore. The outline sounds gripping enough: burdened with caring for their ill parents, two t…
There is never a dull moment in this three-hour historical epic, even if it is not always clear what is going on. Directed by Gregory Doran, of the RSC, Anjin follows the 17th-cent…
Rajiv Joseph's Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo put him in the running for a Pulitzer in 2010. Deservedly so. Set during the Iraq war and featuring a talking tiger (played with verve on Broad…
For all its ruminative merits, Richard Vergette's drama is not the "searing political thriller" it purports to be. It raises lots of interesting questions, but they get in the way of any dee…
"What should it matter to us if a few words, then a few more and then a language just go," asks Ian Finlay Macleod's richly textured play. Somersaults may end in a shrug of inevita…
"Doors and sardines. Getting on, getting off. Getting the sardines on, getting the sardines off. That's farce. That's the theatre. That's life." So says one of Michael Frayn's characters in&…
It sounds unlikely but The Dance of Death makes the perfect Christmas play. Half a minute with Strindberg's squabbling couple makes the ordinary family row over underdone/overdone turkey see…
Love and loneliness, broken homes and broken hearts, child abuse and communities clinging on through war... This adaptation of Michelle Magorian's children's book treats the darkest and most…
Even a cameo by Tamsin Greig cannot redeem this painful adaptation of Euripides' The Trojan Women. For an hour and a half, it screams with anguish, verging at times on the parodic. The …
Howard Barker is hardly known for light entertainment. In The Europeans, a raped woman gives birth on stage. In Scenes from an Execution, currently at the National, a Ren…
Set at the start of the US and UK invasion of Iraq in 2003, Clare Bayley's Blue Sky follows an old-school journalist pursuing justice at the cost of neighbours and friends. Jane, p…
Our Boys shines a light on young war veterans in a military hospital in the early Eighties. A hit at the Donmar Warehouse in 1995, this new revival balances brash humour alongside some …
When Hindle Wakes opened in 1912 in London, the script was burned in the street. Stanley Houghton, a member of the Manchester School of playwrights, had exposed one of society's double stand…
The Kander and Ebb musical Cabaret, inspired by the Berlin stories of Christopher Isherwood, is soon to return to the West End with Will Young. It's less well-known source is John Van Druten…
Affairs, arguments, accidents. Feminism, marital failure and a fear of ageing. Jumpy has plenty of conflicts and issues, dunked in a wonderful bittersweet humour. But while Angel de Angelis …
The curators encourage you to come to Bush Bazaar with an open mind to explore the value of theatre. But I found this cluttered evening a lesson in the value of saying no.
Britain may be in grip of Olympic fever, but two playwrights are questioning our unqualified cheer: should we really break out into an excited sweat, they ask, at the mention of beach volley…
Alan Ayckbourn refuses to write down to children, and it shows. The Boy Who Fell into a Book is as sophisticated in structure as it is family-friendly in content. The narrative follows nine-…
"I'm here because I'm concerned," says scientist Stephen Emmott in direct, measured tones. "I'm concerned about the state of our planet. I think the situation that we're in right now can rig…
