2,436 stories by "Michael Billington"
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…
Ustinov, BathUntil now I've never understood the enthusiasm of American critic, Frank Rich, for the plays of Richard Greenberg. But this one is an absolute cracker and far superior to Three …
Jermyn Street, LondonCan you imagine a serious play about religion enjoying a two-year West End run today? That, however, is what happened to Graham Greene's debut play in 1953. Watching its…
Finborough, LondonI am delighted to see that JB Priestley is back in fashion. But even if this "immoral comedy" from 1933 doesn't seem as restlessly experimental as Cornelius, revived at the…
Hampstead theatre, LondonWilliam Boyd has fused two Chekhov stories from the 1890s, A Visit to Friends and My Life, to create a new play. The result is inevitably something of a hybrid: neit…
Tricycle, London"In Israel nothing is exactly what you think," remarks a character in Paper Dolls. That neatly sums up the message of a show about five Filipino immigrants who work as live-i…
Gate, LondonBruce Norris has won golden praise with Clybourne Park and The Pain and the Itch at the Royal Court. Now the Gate has had the wit to revive an earlier piece, written in 2002 in t…
Gielgud, LondonPeter Morgan struck box-office gold with his movie The Queen. He's likely to do so again with this play based on the private weekly audience given by the monarch to the prime …
Finborough, LondonHow do you tackle the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Most British dramatists, with the striking exception of David Hare in Via Dolorosa, shy away from it…
