2,436 stories by "Michael Billington"
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…
Bush, London Continue reading...
Bush, LondonWe're used to seeing plays that take a swipe at American liberal guilt. But Ayad Akhtar's Pulitzer prizewinner adds an extra dimension to the subject by exposing the dangers of d…
Southwark Playhouse, LondonThis peripatetic theatre finds its third home in a converted warehouse near Elephant and Castle. But, although the space is attractive and the production lively, I…
Wyndham's, LondonThis is the play that in 1967 gave Alan Ayckbourn his first West End hit. Seeing it again after all these years, in Lindsay Posner's witty production, I was reminded of the …
Riverside Studios, LondonIt is not often that a curtain speech is the highlight of a show, but at the end of this bio-play about the once-famous cabaret artist Hutch, his son, Chris, paid&nb…
Royal Court, LondonThe 2004 Perrier award winner Will Adamsdale clearly has a comic following and, as we saw in the National's Detroit, is a creditable actor. But this show, which he wrote w…
Park, LondonMany years ago Keith Dewhurst wrote a Guardian column arguing that theatre had to move away from city centres to areas where people actually lived. In London the shift away from …
Young Vic, LondonThere are no rules in theatre. Updating a classic can sometimes work brilliantly, as with Benedict Andrews' Three Sisters at the Young Vic last year. But David Harrower's ne…
