2,444 stories by "Michael Billington"
Belgrade, CoventryChekhov's Platonov, written when he was 20, is an untidy beast that several writers, including Michael Frayn and David Hare, have successfully tamed. But this new version, …
Swan, Stratford-upon-AvonPlays, like musicals, often depend on a moment of ecstasy. One occurs at the end of Tanika Gupta's drama, when Abdul Karim, the aged Queen Victoria's Hindi teacher, …
Hampstead Theatre, LondonHoward Brenton's most recent play, 55 Days, dealt with the imprisonment, trial and execution of Charles I. His new one could easily be called 81 Days since it cover…
Lyttelton, LondonMaxim Gorky takes up where Anton Chekhov leaves off. Written in 1905, shortly after what would become known as Bloody Sunday, when peaceful protesters were shot down by…
Jermyn Street, LondonI suspect this 1927 comedy by Frederick Lonsdale had its influence on Noël Coward's Private Lives: the clipped dialogue, the dance for two couples and the tiptoeing e…
The Shed, LondonDurable tables emerge from workshops. So too does Tanya Ronder's ambitious new play, which spans six generations of a single family and opens the National's inviting new temp…
Barbican, LondonHow do you recapture the shock impact of Alfred Jarry's 1896 play, with its savage portrait of a grotesque monster? Given that Jarry's play started as a schoolboy prank aimed…
In 10 years, Hytner has given the National a sense of purpose, large new audiences and great drama. Who can succeed him?It's no great surprise to learn that Nicholas Hytner will be leaving t…
Phoenix, LondonMusicals these days tend to batter you into submission. This one, winner of eight Tony awards and based on a 2006 low-budget movie by John Carney that I have deliberately avoi…
Old Red Lion, LondonIt's a good bet that not many British theatre-goers are intimate with the work of Maurice Maeterlinck (1862"1949). Yet in his day this Belgian playwright and sy…
She had little time for culture " and once hailed Andrew Lloyd Webber as a great British export. But Thatcher dominated playwrights' imaginations, along with so much elseMargaret Thatcher ma…
Trafalgar Studios, LondonThis first play by Dermot Canavan is about two Preston sisters who, having grown up together, inexorably grow apart. What might once have been a modest memory-play t…
Rose theatre, KingstonTen years ago Richard Bean wrote this black comedy about a drug-dealing family living in leafy suburbia for Live Theatre Newcastle. Now it has been relocated to Kingsto…
The Print Room, LondonI was wrong about Brian Friel's play. Seeing it for the first time at the Almeida in 1994, I took it to be an arid replay of Friel's Faith Healer: again two men and a w…
Finborough, LondonIt's always fascinating to see famous writers' early work. But the real value of this 100-minute, 1972 radio play by Caryl Churchill, which draws heavily on Frant…
Almeida, LondonIt's an old rule that dramatists need to show a measure of sympathy, even to dislikable characters. But, although this 1949 Rodney Ackland adaptation of a Somerset Maugham sho…
Royal Court theatre, LondonDominic Cooke bows out at the Court as he came in, with a new play by the American writer Bruce Norris. And what a play! It's a three-hour extravaganza with 20 act…
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-on-AvonHamlet always reflects the spirit of the age. Where the 1960s gave us a rush of politicised productions, today the emphasis " as in 2011's Young V…
There's Kristin Scott Thomas, yet not her co-star Lia Williams. And a best new play list that omits one of the year's best new plays. What's going on?We're nearly there. The announcement of …
Noel Coward, LondonJudi Dench and Ben Whishaw were last professionally united as M and Q in Skyfall. They now come together again to play the real-life inspirations for Lewis Carroll's Alice…
King's Head, LondonThere's a big back-catalogue of movies, musicals and operas based on Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris. This, however, is the first public staging of the unfinished Lionel…
Prince of Wales, LondonStrip away all the hype surrounding this hit Broadway import and what do you find? A mildly amusing musical, with some knowingly parodic songs, that takes a few pot sh…
Old Vic, LondonThe case for Terence Rattigan has been steadily made over the past decade, and this revival of his 1946 play is only likely to advance the cause. But two things make Lindsay P…
The Old Rep, BirminghamRobin French, Birmingham Rep's writer-in-residence, isn't the first to update Ibsen's Hedda Gabler: in Thomas Ostermeier's Berlin Schaubühne version, seen at the Barb…
Orange Tree, RichmondThis 1931 play by GB Stern is part of the Orange Tree's ongoing focus on drama about women's issues in the interwar years. It may not be quite as radical or rivetin…
