2,444 stories by "Michael Billington"
Hampstead theatre, LondonDoes anyone remember Noël Coward's Mrs Wentworth Brewster? She was the widow, celebrated in the song A Bar on the Piccola Marina, whose heart, at her husband's fu…
Adelphi theatre, LondonLawrence Kasdan has recorded his surprise at the idea of his screenplay for the 1992 movie, starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner, being used as the basis for a m…
A lecture about overpopulation and climate change turned out to be the unlikely highlight of a year that also featured an intriguing Russian invasionThe most momentous theatrical performance…
Donmar Warehouse, LondonI don't think we should get carried away and start arguing that single-sex Shakespeare is the only way forward. But, like Mark Antony, Phyllida Lloyd is a "shrewd con…
Finborough, LondonThe Papatango New Writing festival last year came up with Dawn King's mesmerising Foxfinder. Even if this year's winner is more conventional, Louise Monaghan's play st…
Royal Court, LondonTwo years ago, EV Crowe made a disturbing debut with a play called Kin, about 10-year-old bullies at a posh girls' school. Now she comes up with a longer but less startlin…
Swan, Stratford-on-AvonAny production of Pushkin's 1825 play is haunted by gigantic shadows. First there are the Shakespearean tragedies and histories, especially Macbeth and Richard III, wh…
Menier Chocolate Factory, LondonAlthough it famously flopped on Broadway in 1981, this Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical has been re-evaluated in fine British revivals at Leicester Hayma…
Phoenix, LondonI've never read Michelle Magorian's 1981 novel for young readers on which David Wood's adaptation is based, but I was struck by the story's debt to Oliver Twist: in both, a se…
Young Vic, LondonTransfers can be as tricky in theatre as they are in football; and while Joe Hill-Gibbins's largely recast production of Middleton and Rowley's 1622 tragedy, which originall…
Britain's brightest talents were rewarded at a glitzy ceremony on Sunday. Great " but savage cuts are about to damage our theatre beyond recognition"Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" was …
While the glitterati assembled at the Savoy for the Evening Standard theatre awards, I was at London's Royal Court watching a fine cast give a brilliantly clear account of Arden's neglected …
Soho theatre, London"Can a story save a life?" That is the question posed at the start of this multi-authored show in which six writers adapt narratives from The 1001 Nights, in response to …
Orange Tree, RichmondWatching David Antrobus's rare and exhilarating revival of this early Ibsen play, written in 1862 when he was 34, I was reminded of another youthful work: Shakespeare's …
Olivier, LondonIt was originally to have been The Count of Monte Cristo in the Olivier this Yule but instead we get a revival of Pinero's 1885 farce. I have no complaints about that since I …
Trafalgar Studios, LondonAleksei Arbuzov's play, with its suggestion that the wartime siege of Leningrad emotionally devastated a whole generation, must have seemed daring in the Soviet Unio…
Apollo, London★★★★/★★★For those of us who favour good sightlines and acoustics, the transfer of these two productions from Shakespeare's Globe to th…
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Almeida, LondonPlays about poets are notoriously problematic. But Nick Dear overcomes the difficulties in this probing, intelligent piece about Edward Thomas, who produced a formidable body …
Cottesloe Theatre, LondonHow do you follow a big hit? Just as Jez Butterworth succeeded Jerusalem with the more modest The River, so Lucy Prebble follows her spectacular Enron with an intima…
Gate, LondonEuripides's great anti-war play has been constantly updated. But much as I relished the linguistic vigour and pugnacious wit of Caroline Bird's new version, descri…
Salisbury PlayhouseThis version of William Golding's 1964 novel confronts a subject from which the British theatre normally shies away in terror: the nature of religious faith. Although…
'Forget the single play " give me an entire oeuvre'Over the years, I've been to seasons of plays by Harold Pinter at the Gate theatre in Dublin, by Sarah Kane at Berlin's Schaubühne and, mo…
The Swan, Stratford-upon-AvonThis production of a Chinese classic has already caused controversy because only three actors out of a cast of 17 are of east Asian origin. But, although there a…
Lyttelton Theatre, LondonIn 1980 Alan Bennett wrote Enjoy, which showed a Leeds working-class house and its occupants being preserved as a museum exhibit.Now, in his mordantly funny new play…
