Between them, two current stagings of Ibsen and Chekhov classics offer audiences five intermissions. While some see an art form reasserting itself, the move comes with a number of hitchesA r…
HG Wells' prose is the hero of Jeff Wayne's full-blown musical revival, which has enough bombast to drown out any ringtones in the audienceThere was always an overlap between the concept dou…
Debut plays can be instant classics and false starts. From Ibsen's Catilina to Shaffer's Five Finger Exercise, they often contain thrilling hints of where a dramatist is headingImagine that …
First Direct Arena, LeedsA greatest hits show made more poignant after Mortimer's recent heart bypass meandered even more than usualEvery performance of Reeves and Mortimer's new stage tour …
A previously unperformed 1900 play about a proto-feminist painter has received a rehearsed reading at the National Theatre. Is a full revival now in order?It is both the dream and the nightm…
Sharon D Clarke studied to be a social worker before becoming a doctor … on Holby City. Now she's an Olivier award-winning stage star, singing the blues in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. She ta…
From new writing at the Royal Court to revivals at the NT, theatre schedules suggest that plays by women are finally getting better representation " but there's still cause for concern On 13…
Complex writing, leftfield family shows and thoroughly bleak dramas make theatre stages far from jolly this Christmas. Praise be, then, for the new wave of pseudo-pantoThe theatrical form mo…
The year brought radical rethinkings of Chekhov and Beckett, superior Shakespeares and new plays that were daring, engaging and powerfulChekhov wrote so few plays, which are revived so often…
A lost work is often buried for a reason, but the recent rediscovery of a seminal Miller play, No Villain, confirms his brilliance and anticipates later masterpiecesThe biggest dream of all …
Recent openings present theatregoers with a choice between interval-free one-acters such as Here We Go and epics including Henry VIt struck me recently how useful it would be if theatre tick…
Mixing spy thriller with quantum physics, Stoppard's play Hapgood received rude and confused reviews in 1988. Will a rare revival reverse its fortunes?In March 1988, Tom Stoppard gave an int…
The appointment of Sheffield Theatres' artistic director to lead at Chichester Festival theatre reflects his talent for musicals " and his innovative recordDaniel Evans has been appointed ar…
The temptation to update the text of an old play for a modern audience is resisted in two productions that refresh the originals in more intelligent waysTwo striking revivals last week " of …
As a female playwright who didn't give interviews, Churchill has in the past been underestimated. So how has she come to be celebrated as one of Britain's greatest dramatists?In the last yea…
Wolverhampton GrandDavid Hasselhoff plays a nightclub owner who once, strangely, starred in Baywatch in this creaky addition to his personality cultMany actors, rattling around Britain in a …
Theatres can't keep asking us to hang about in the dark while actors move house. We may as well go to the cinemaAll performers hope for applause " but the new London West End production of U…
From Gypsy to Harlequinade and The Moderate Soprano, London's theatres are awash with shows about showbiz. Are they a valid celebration of the power of art, or just for self-indulgent luvvie…
Chancellor Caryl Churchill, foreign secretary Gore Vidal, defence minister David Greig … Ahead of the National Theatre's revival of Harley Granville Barker's explosive play, Waste, Mark La…
New projects at the National Theatre and Chichester Festival theatre substantially rework the material of two great authors, raising questions of fidelity and freedomIf there is an afterlife…
Measure for Measure has been staged three times in London this year. It goes to show just how resonant its themes of sexual licentiousness and twisted democracy are today " especially in Rus…
Lifetime achievement in music theatre acknowledges Lansbury's prolific career in theatre and film spanning seven decadesPeople like to pass landmark birthdays in meaningful places, so it see…
Macbeth, starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, joins Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet and Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight in my top 10 films based on the Stratford playwright's worksPr…
The jokes were dated and non-PC, the delivery perfectly timed: for one night only, the showbiz survivors teamed up to create a piece of theatre historyWith the two performers having a combin…
The secretive immersive-theatre sensation is back for another sellout run. It's an uplifting and unsettling experience " think Disneyland meets DismalandAt the curtain call for Agatha Christ…