2,436 stories by "Michael Billington"
Regent's Park Open Air theatre, LondonThe classic snapshot of a community is given fresh life by a youthful production that stresses the story's harsher moments
Thornton Wilder's 1938 hymn t…
Dorfman theatre, LondonElla Hickson's inventive thriller turns the audience into spies behind a glass wall, with fascinating but flawed results
Created by Ella Hickson and sound designers Be…
Eden Court, InvernessJohn McGrath's 1973 play uses ceilidhs and hoedowns to tell the shocking tale of the exploitation of Scotland's natural resources
John McGrath's 1973 play is a legend in…
Royal Court, LondonAnchuli Felicia King's Singapore-set drama brilliantly unpicks hypocrisy and the base values of the beauty business
White Pearl is a little gem. It is the work of Anchuli …
Menier Chocolate Factory, LondonHattie Morahan and Seth Numrich help breathe new life into Williams' strange and clumsy southern gothic
How best to describe Tennessee Williams' strange play?…
Park theatre, LondonChurchill, Blair and Thatcher drop in on Jonathan Maitland's vacillating hero, but the jokes fall flat in this topical comedy
The problem with creating a play about Boris…
The Swan, Stratford-upon-AvonSome of the humour in John Vanbrugh's 1697 sharp comedy about a tortured marriage doesn't endure, but there's much to admire in this important play
Phillip Breen…
Young Vic, LondonRacial tensions simmer alongside those of class and family as Wendell Pierce and Sharon D Clarke's American dream unravels
There are two distinct impulses behind this remark…
Everyman, CheltenhamShakespeare, wizards and panto dames all play their part in an evening of autobiography that is a love letter to theatre
Scratch a great actor and you often find a born c…
Nottingham PlayhouseShelagh Stephenson's Olivier-winning play about siblings reuniting in Yorkshire for a funeral mixes comedy and tragedy
With Alex Kingston scheduled to play Dr Stockmann i…
Hampstead theatre, LondonBrenton's ambitious but muddled new drama follows a gifted young Syrian woman who attracts the attentions of an Oxford classicist, Euripides and MI5
Edward Hall ends…
Duke of York's, LondonDuncan Macmillan's deft but daring tweaks underline the majesty of this sexually charged study of faith and heartbreak
This has been dubbed Ibsen's darkest and most com…
Olivier, LondonAndrea Levy's story of first-generation Jamaican immigrants in postwar Britain has been skilfully adapted and staged with hurtling energy
This feels like a landmark in the Nat…
Coliseum, LondonEven Danielle de Niese's fine voice can't save ENO's out-of-sync commercial collaboration " no matter how many times they play The Impossible Dream
Previous collaborations be…
Park theatre, LondonBen Alderton's bilious satire about the 2015 British general election is spasmodically entertaining but unsubtle
We desperately need political satire, yet now seems an od…
Shakespeare's Globe filled Westminster Abbey with a free-range assortment of famous " and dangerous " characters for this moving celebration
A brawl broke out in the nave of Westminster Abbe…
Finborough, LondonWritten during the votes for women campaign, St John Ervine's play receives its first London revival in 75 years
'The half-witted heroine has held the stage too long," said…
Royal and Derngate, Northampton Mike Poulton's new version lends fresh wit to the tragedy without diminishing its emotional intensity
A great Manchester Guardian critic, CE Montague, once wr…
Old Vic, LondonIn an era of fake news and moral uncertainty, this fine production of Arthur Miller's play rings as true as ever
Why the spate of Arthur Miller revivals? And why now? Watching…
Donmar Warehouse, LondonJosie Rourke turns this spirited Broadway musical into a hymn to female resilience in her exhilarating farewell production at the Donmar
Anne-Marie Duff's last appear…
Almeida, LondonPatsy Ferran's Olga is one of the many admirable performances in a production by Rebecca Frecknall that fails to deliver a full Chekhovian experience
When actor Patsy Ferran a…
Everyman, Liverpool Nick Bagnall's ingenious revival reminds us that Sondheim's musical thriller is also a savagely political piece about injustice
Forty years after its premiere, Stephen So…
Bridge Theatre, London
Smith returns to the stage in triumph as she relives one woman's extraordinary experience in Nazi Germany
Absent from the stage for 12 years, Maggie Smith returns in t…
Barbican, LondonPart installation, part prose-poem, this strangely beautiful piece takes its audience into other people's heads
Enda Walsh's plays are often about people trapped inside four …
Royal Court, LondonAbhishek Majumdar's play launches a philosophical inquiry into non-violence and defying oppression
A special virtue attaches to playwrights who take us into unfamiliar ter…