2,878 stories by "Lyn Gardner"
Many of those flocking to a theatre's annual festive show intuit that the rest of the year's programme isn't for them. It's about time panto had serious artistic statusOver the next few week…
Leeds goes Strictly Ballroom, Sweet Charity is revived in Manchester and the Donmar's astonishing Shakespeare Trilogy continuesWhat do we value and have we got our priorities right? Those ar…
Roundhouse, LondonThe performance artist Scottee uses real-life interviews with LGBT people to ask just how tolerant Brexit-era Britain really isThere is a remarkable moment " one of several…
King's Cross theatre, LondonA new staging of The Tempest crowns Phyllida Lloyd's captivating trio set in a women's prisonHelp fund our journalism by becoming a Guardian supporterWhat a diffe…
The theatre world must connect with those who feel disaffected but it should also face some unpalatable truths about how the artform is perceived by the vast majority of peopleIt's good to t…
Hope Mill, Manchester For all the failings of the hippy dippy 60s musical, this is an irresistibly sunny revival " and not without contemporary resonanceI was too young for Hair the first ti…
Harry Enfield goes to Hollywood at the Young Vic, Elvis makes a comeback in Manchester, Sacred: Homelands brings a world of theatre to Toynbee Studios " and the festive show season is kickin…
Secret location, London Teatro Vivo's new show, which takes place in private homes, throws characters from Kafka and Ibsen into a jumbled storyTeatro Vivo have a gift for disrupting the flow…
Even established companies currently fear for the future thanks to increasingly risk-averse venues and the difficulty of securing fundingRecently, I've heard from two theatre companies who h…
Ustinov, BathTanya Moodie is quite magnificent in a revival of Alice Childress's play, whose skewering of racism behind liberal attitudes makes the audience squirm Wiletta Mayer is a black a…
Teatro Vivo bring ghost stories into your own home, Mark Rylance stars in new comedy Nice Fish and Peter Pan flies into the National TheatreTeatro Vivo's The Residents is a ghost story being…
Playhouse, LondonA timely revival of Daldry's expressionistic staging of JB Priestley's moral thriller repeats its plea for a fairer and more compassionate worldThat inspector keeps on calli…
Paul O'Grady, Julian Clary and Berwick Kaler lead a troup of redoubtable dames this panto seasonThe good news is that panto is back at the Palladium after almost 30 years without t…
Christmas theatre needn't mean panto " check out human cannonballs and escapologists, biting comedy and Luhrmann adaptationsLast year, they gave us the spooky The Haunting of Hill House…
Battersea Arts Centre is reprising its London Stories project and inviting audiences to meet a stranger and hear about why they journeyed to the capitalWalk into the council chamber at Batte…
Rosemary Branch, LondonIn her complex and intelligent one-woman show, Silva deconstructs EL James's erotic bestseller to celebrate the slipperiness of wordsThe stage is piled with copies of …
Arcola, London This intelligent and gripping double bill probes the ethics, power and policy behind 'kill lists' and the technology that has changed modern warfareAt a 2011 Washington dinner…
Soho theatre, LondonWilliam Leith's book has been turned into an uninspiring monologue delivered by a softly spoken Adrian EdmondsonPhoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag, which captured the anxieti…
Bryony Kimmings's hugely moving show at the National Theatre reduces us to tears and skilfully stage-manages us into participating in its finaleOne of the many pleasures of A Pacifist's Guid…
Simon Russell Beale braves a technological Tempest, while Milton's masque Comus is performed by candlelight, Compass festival takes us by the hand in Leeds, and Frankenstein goes to the seas…
St James theatre, LondonJason Robert Brown's story of a relationship from first kiss to break-up is told by each protagonist in opposite directions to poignant effectComposer Jason Robert Br…
Rose, KingstonA pair of fine performances reveal the subtleties in Arthur Miller's postwar play, a rollicking good story about family secretsThere are three excellent reasons to see Michael …
Few playwrights take the thriller genre seriously: David Hare is an exception. The National's staging of his Simenon adaptation explores how theatre itself manipulates what we seeThe ancient…
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London Lucy Bailey and the National Theatre of Brent's Patrick Barlow bring the poet's masque to magical life in this delightful stagingDirector Lucy Bailey has a de…
Stadsschouwburg, AmsterdamIvo van Hove's epic reimagining of Henry V, Henry VI and Richard III makes for an explosive examination of political leadership and present-day powerThere is a mome…
