5,590 stories by "Mark Shenton"
There’s an idea that critics should be a blank page (but hopefully not an empty mind) " ready and receptive to what
It is just over two years since Cilla Black " the beloved 1960s pop star turned iconic television presenter and personality "
I recently offered my top six Stephen Sondheim shows, but in the wake of the opening this week of Follies at the
It’s a perennial problem, especially at older theatres: trying to get to the loo during an interval is so often an ordeal.
The only man to win the best actor in a musical Olivier three times, Philip Quast still felt it was necessary to fly from
Last Friday, the Guardian asked me what I thought of the fact that critics had not been invited to review Tom Hiddleston's
At 78, Alan Ayckbourn is having another prolific year. This is his second world premiere to be presented in as many months.
The post-Edinburgh lull (before the storm of September openings) gave me an opportunity to catch my breath, theatre-wise, and finally see a
Tom Hiddleston has just begun performances as Hamlet at RADA’s tiny (160-seat) Vanbrugh Theatre " a show that, as Matt Trueman has
The 'classics' are just that: immortal works of art that repay endless re-examination by different artists for different generations. Or, sometimes, by
“Journey through our anecdotic revue,” implores a narrator-character called Leading Player in this 1972 Broadway musical hit, scored by Stephen Schwartz. That
It’s not my place to stray into politics here " I’m only a theatre critic, not a parliamentary correspondent and reviewer like
We all have our personal favourite musicals, and my list is typically saturated with shows written by Stephen Sondheim. No one has
Broadway producer turned legendary director Hal Prince was born, he reminds us in this lovingly assembled revue tribute, the year after the
The country house musical theatre wonder that is Kilworth House Theatre comes up trumps again with a tip-top (and tap-heavy) revival of
There’s nothing quite as debilitating as watching a bad play with no easy means of escape. Of course you could just get
There are, as anyone looking at a poster for an Edinburgh show this year will know, more critics than ever. In the
There’s a giddy, quirky eccentricity to Julian Slade and Dorothy Reynolds’s 1954 throwback British musical, in which a magic piano drives people
I was supposed to be in Edinburgh last week, but instead, as I’ve already described here, I had to get myself checked
There are times when I really wish I could have access to a Tardis, and have it take me back to an
There’s nothing new to artists being defensive about critics. But polymath writer Anthony Horowitz, who has written novels, TV series and plays,
I have long, and sometimes proudly, self-identified as a theatre addict. I will not be stopped from going to the theatre at
As Barbara Cook lay unconscious in her Manhattan apartment last week, a succession of Broadway stalwarts came to pay tribute at her
Despite a career spanning more than 40 years, this grande dame of dance shows no sign of slowing down. As she brings
This summer has proved to be stranger than usual Broadway. On the one hand, from a roster of 31 shows that were
