2,436 stories by "Michael Billington"
Donmar Warehouse, LondonBest known for movies such as Atonement and Anna Karenina, Joe Wright has finally got round to directing his first play, and, appropriately, he has chosen Pinero's wa…
Arts theatre, LondonBoy-meets-boy is now a familiar musical theme. What gives this show a certain piquancy is that it deals with a star of the Hollywood silents, William Haine…
Royal Court, LondonAs someone who bemoans the dearth of political drama, I welcome the arrival of Anders Lustgarten's polemical bombshell. But while the play has bags of vigour and offers a …
London Palladium"Nothing runs for ever," says a character in A Chorus Line. Maybe not; but this show, which started its life at the Public theatre in New York in 1975, enjoyed a record-break…
Old Rep, BirminghamHow do you celebrate your 100th birthday? It must have been tempting to revive Twelfth Night which opened the much-loved Station Street theatre on February 15, 1913. Inste…
Charing Cross theatre, London"There was a time when garbage was a pleasure," they sing in this musical version of Giraudoux's The Madwoman of Chaillot, which flopped on Broadway in 1969. Wic…
Swan, Stratford-on-AvonA reactionary pope dies, only to be succeeded by a seeming liberal who soon reverts to institutional conservatism. You could hardly have a more topical play than this.…
Albert Finney, Peggy Ashcroft and Laurence Olivier all cut their teeth at the Birmingham Rep. As the curtains go up on its new home, Michael Billington, a punter since the mid-50s, looks at …
Roundhouse, LondonNo one has ever doubted the visual wizardry of Robert Lepage. When style and content mesh, as in The Far Side of the Moon (2000), the result is theatrical magic. But his am…
Orange Tree, RichmondIt almost defies belief that Githa Sowerby's 1924 drama is only now receiving its British professional premiere. While it may not quite possess the Ibsenite power o…
Jermyn Street Theatre, LondonWritten shortly before his death in 1951, Ivor Novello's last musical earns a footnote in the history books. It shows Novello abandoning Ruritanian operetta to r…
Despite acting rivalries, it's striking how few genuine feuds there have been in the tribe of British actors over the last 100 yearsThe news that Alec Guinness felt a personal distaste for L…
Trafalgar Studios, LondonIt takes a certain chutzpah to try and cram Ernest Hemingway's novel, with its portrait of Paris and Pamplona in the 1920s and its vivid evocation of bullfighting, o…
Somerset House, London"Are we meant to be looking for clues?" a young woman suddenly asked me as we poked about in the underground passages linking Somerset House and King's College. In a wa…
National theatre, LondonWhen Carl Zuckmayer's play was staged by the National at the Old Vic in 1971, it yielded a great comic performance from Paul Scofield. Good as Antony Sher is in the c…
Finborough, LondonAfter Priestley's Cornelius, the Finborough brings us another play about office life in the interwar years; and even if John Van Druten's 1931 piece doesn't have the s…
St James, LondonTwenty-five years after its premiere, Timberlake Wertenbaker's play remains terrifyingly relevant. Based on Thomas Keneally's novel The Playmaker, it deals with a production …
Young Vic, LondonAfter Benedict Andrews's radical update of Chekhov's Three Sisters , we now have another sibling trio on stage at the Young Vic. This time, the sisters symbolise Yoruba godd…
Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-AvonThis is the RSC's fifth revival of this play in the last 15 years. Such over-familiarity may account for the fact that Lucy Bailey's new product…
Nicholas Hytner wants to know what should be included in the NT's anniversary celebrations. From No Man's Land to Stuff Happens, here are my top picksAt his spring press conference on Wednes…
Wyndham's, LondonFor a convivial chap, Simon Gray was oddly preoccupied with loneliness. And in this play, first seen in 1981, he takes his fascination with the English sense of detachment t…
Lyttelton, LondonSimon Stephens has a way with women. His Harper Regan (2008) was a memorable play about a mother who abandons her family. And in Port, first seen at Manchester's Royal Excha…
'Where have all the kitchen sinks gone?'Is our theatre now inescapably middle-class? I ask because I recently took part in a debate on Radio 3's Night Waves about the upsurge in working…
Almeida, LondonYou can see Henry James's masterly, much-adapted short novel either as a classic ghost story or as a study in sexual hysteria. But Rebecca Lenkiewicz's overheated new version,…
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