2,444 stories by "Michael Billington"
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".…
Noel Coward, London Continue reading...
Finborough, LondonIt's hard to believe that it is 30 years since Doug Lucie's scathing portrait of a self-absorbed, style-conscious generation first appeared. I've never forgotten Mike Bradw…
Tricycle, LondonIn his last play, The Faith Machine, which opened at the Royal Court in 2011, Alexi Kaye Campbell dealt with the conflict between religious idealism and the free market. Now …
Swan, Stratford-upon-AvonThomas Middleton's brilliant 1605 comedy has been cut, "edited" and updated to 1950s Soho by Sean Foley and Phil Porter for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Whether pa…
Old Vic, LondonEverything that art can do to boost this revival of Tennessee Williams's 1959 play has been done. Marianne Elliott's production is first-rate. The cast, led by Kim Cattrall, i…
Olivier, LondonI don't think The Amen Corner is a great play, but I get the feeling it is one that its author, James Baldwin, was compelled to write back in 1955. It also gets from Rufu…
Royal Exchange, ManchesterBlanche McIntyre is one of the flotilla of female directors coming to the forefront of British theatre. But, although she's assembled a cracking cast for this reviv…
Theatro Technis/Jermyn Street theatre, LondonAside from Lysistrata, the plays of Aristophanes rarely get an outing these days. But these two wildly different updates prove one simple point: …
Cockpit, LondonBack in 1973, Kennedy's Children by Robert Patrick fondly surveyed the 1960s through the monologues of five characters seated in a bar. Using a similar format, Blair's Childre…
Young Vic, LondonIf there is a problem with Belarus Free Theatre, it lies in deciding whether you're responding to them aesthetically or politically. But, while it's easy to admire their res…
National Theatre, LondonEugene O'Neill's 1928 play is famous for many things: its inordinate length, its prolonged asides and its extensive portrait of one woman, Nina Leeds, over the course…
Drayton Arms, LondonAfter a surfeit of Miss Julies in London, it's refreshing to find this rare August Strindberg one-act play popping up in an attractive space above a South Kensington…
Bristol Old VicI normally associate the 30-year-old Complicite with extravagantly theatrical explorations of world literature. Here, however, they have come up with their first family show b…
Hampstead theatre, LondonDavid Mamet reminds me of some veteran pugilist with a pile of trophies yet still anxious for a fight: the old technique is still there, even if the punches no longe…
Almeida, LondonI complained of Lucy Kirkwood's last play, NSFW at London's Royal Court, that it was too short: no such problems with this gloriously rich, mind-expanding three-hour play, whi…
Orange Tree, RichmondThe therapist-patient relationship is rarely dramatised, but it lies at the heart of this sharp, perceptive comedy by David Lewis, which uses the circular structure of S…
Corn Exchange, BrightonThe Brighton festival's theatre programme ended with this extraordinary import from Argentina in which five actors recalled, with the aid of photos, letters, home movi…
Swan, Stratford-upon-AvonNo one any longer has to make a case for this once-despised play. But, whether it is viewed as a neo-Senecan study in stoic acceptance of grief or a Tarantino-like e…
