2,878 stories by "Lyn Gardner"
Jermyn Street, LondonAn unknown 17-year-old schoolgirl called Sheridan Smith was the hit of Howard Goodall and Charles Hart's musical The Kissing Dance, based on Goldsmith's She Stoops …
Unicorn, LondonThere's much to admire in Trestle's staging of Oscar Wilde's story about the Spanish princess who is only allowed to mix with other children on her birthday, and who, on the d…
Crucible, SheffieldClearly not director Erica Whyman. She growls with real conviction at Edward Albee's great bloody beast of a play set on a New England college campus in the early 60s…
Venues across BirminghamAt Birmingham's Moor Street station, the wonders of karaoke currently allow you to sing a duet with a soldier serving in the British army. I enter a small wooden boot…
There are bigger, showier festivals but Fierce understands it's not just the party that matters, but the traces it leaves"A poet's hope: to be like some valley cheese, local but prized elsew…
Langham Community Centre, EssexThirty years ago, a lifeboat went out from a small Suffolk town one night to help the people on board a Danish coaster struggling in a storm. Only one man came…
Programming Barrie, Coward or Du Maurier is understandable when times are tough. But if regional theatre wants to safeguard its future, it must look beyond plays of the pastA couple of years…
Shaw, LondonHas there ever been a time in the 2,500 years since their composition that Euripides's great anti-war plays, The Trojan Women and Hecuba, have not been topical? When audienc…
Watford PalaceSpanning 40 years from first glance in 1967 to reunion in 2011 to the strains of the Beatles' famous song, Mike Bartlett's play focuses on Kenneth and Sandra, two baby boomers …
Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon"This island's mine," declares Caliban, and you can't help agreeing in this delightful adaptation, a collaboration between the RSC and the Little Angel theatre aimed…
The start of the Fierce festival means the spotlight is trained squarely on the West Midlands this weekThe big news this week is the Fierce festival in Birmingham, which kicks off on Tuesday…
Southwark Playhouse, LondonThe human cost of the banking crisis and the spending cuts are explored in Theatre Uncut, an evening of eight short plays by leading writers including Mark Ravenhi…
Richmond, LondonRC Sherriff's account of life in the trenches shortly before a German offensive could be a creaky old war horse of a drama, with its talk of decent public school types, and t…
Royal & Derngate, NorthamptonIn the age of the blogger, we are all potential Mr Pooters, the dull Victorian bank clerk whose everyday doings in Holloway are chronicled in George and Weedon G…
With the outcome of funding applications imminent, let's hope the Arts Council has tackled inequalities across the countryOn 30 March the Arts Council will announce the outcome of national p…
With the outcome of funding applications imminent, let's hope the Arts Council has tackled inequalities across the countryOn 30 March the Arts Council will announce the outcome of national p…
AE Harris Factory, BirminghamShe is the woman you never really notice, like the maiden aunt whose name everyone has forgotten, lurking at the edge of an old photograph of a family wedding. B…
Watford PalaceTanika Gupta's stage adaptation transposes Dickens's story of Pip, whose childhood encounter on the marshes with an escaped convict leads to future riches, to India in the mid-…
Mac, BirminghamPhilosophy Rainbow, otherwise known as Sophie, is 13, and she's dying from bone cancer. But she's coping with her own mortality rather better than her sister, Peace …
Aberystwyth Arts CentreHow often have you visited a town and thought how nice it would be to be shown around by a local who could do more than catalogue the historical sites of interest…
Playwrights join forces in Southwark against the cuts " and exciting shows around the UK prove they are right to fightIt's not often you get the chance to see new plays by Mark Ravenhill, De…
Cock Tavern, LondonThe world premiere of this play is a centenary gift for its writer, Tennessee Williams, and has received plenty of publicity. But whether it serves Williams's best interes…
Finborough, LondonCaryl Churchill's 1982 play, Top Girls, ends with a child crying a single word: "Frightening." She has woken from a terrifying vision of a future of limited prospects for a…
Royal Exchange, ManchesterNoël Coward's 1930 play is not quite the sleek comedy that it appears. Of course it is very funny, in its brittle, spiky way, as the characters hurl witty dialog…
Barbican, LondonTony Briggs is an indigenous Australian playwright, and it is his mum Laurel's sense of adventure that is celebrated in this genuine, heartfelt but unconvincing compilation m…
