2,436 stories by "Michael Billington"
31 London Street, London W2The problem with an immersive company like Punchdrunk is that people tend to take fixed attitudes: either they are a signpost to the theatrical future or they take…
Young Vic, LondonThe turbulence following Congolese independence partly inspired John Arden to write the unjustly forgotten Armstrong's Last Goodnight in 1964. Two years later, the Martiniqu…
Menier Chocolate Factory, LondonI am sometimes accused of failing to report audience reactions. So let me say unequivocally that this musical version of Alice Walker's 1982 novel was greeted…
Campfield Market Hall/Albert Hall, Manchester International festival★★★/★★★★★Like all the best festivals, the one in Manchester opens up the c…
Rose Lipman Building, LondonAnnie Baker's much-lauded play takes place in a windowless studio in a community-centre in Vermont; and the Royal Court, as part of its "theatre local" project, h…
Theatre Royal, BathGeorge Bernard Shaw's Candida used to be a stock rep piece, but today is rarely seen. That's a pity because, as Simon Godwin's nifty revival shows, this 1895 play still ha…
Vaudeville, LondonI warmed greatly to Graham Linehan's version of this classic Ealing comedy when I first saw it in 2011. But, while the script is still funny, this revival has a f…
Regent's Park theatre, LondonThe only Shakespeare at the Open Air theatre this summer is this late play, "reimagined for everyone aged six and over". What this amounts to is an utterly begui…
St Peter's Church, ManchesterThis is more like it. After a lightweight Macbeth at Shakespeare's Globe, we now get a production that gets closer to the heart of the play's mystery. Staged in …
Palace, ManchesterThe Manchester International festival is nothing if not daring. As proof, it kicks off its theatrical programme with Robert Wilson's visualisation of a surreal novella writ…
Shakespeare's Globe, LondonThe last Macbeth we saw at this venue was a pop-culture Polish production in which the transvestite witches assiduously fellated the hero. No such excesses ta…
White Bear, LondonWhen the maverick playwright and director Charles Marowitz ran the Open Space theatre in London he did a fascinating adaptation of Wilde's The Critic as Artist. In this new…
By 'adapting' and updating historical texts " as the Royal Shakespeare Company is currently doing " aren't we just writing off the past?Do we need to rewrite the classics? Increasingly, peop…
Palace theatre, LondonDerren Brown begs us all, journalists included, not to reveal anything he has done in the course of two-and-a-half hours. Seeing him for the first time, however, I feel…
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Duchess, LondonLenny Henry has won his spurs as a Shakespearean actor in Othello and The Comedy of Errors. Now he takes on the titanic role of Troy Maxson in August Wilson's Fences which won…
Regent's Park, LondonFollowing stage versions of works by William Golding, EL Doctorow and Harper Lee, this novel-hungry venue now brings us a new adaptation of Pride and Prejudice in time f…
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London Reviews roundup: what the other papers thought In pictures: behind the scenes at Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Interview: Director Sam Mendes talks to E…
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, LondonChocs away! At last, we get to see the much touted stage musical based on Roald Dahl's children's classic. Although there's been much talk of the technical c…
Crucible, SheffieldTim Firth's first play, 1992's Neville's Island, showed four men stranded in the Lake District during a disastrous team-building exercise. This new musical comedy, for whi…
Minerva, ChichesterDavid Edgar has always been hooked on the process of politics. And in this fascinating, if occasionally flawed, play he pre-empts the forthcoming TV adaptation of Andrew A…
Donmar Warehouse, LondonNo one is better than playwright Conor McPherson at dramatising the loneliness of the Irish male. Following a brilliant revival of The Weir at the Donmar earlier …
Wilton's Music Hall, LondonFarce is a serious business. It needs to be played with po-faced gravity to bring out its characters' desperation. But this evening of four short Victorian farces,…
Noel Coward, LondonImagine a dramatic hero who stands no chance of being kissed "unless it was by a blind girl" and of whom it is said, by an adoptive aunt, "you'd see nicer eyes on a goat".…
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