2,436 stories by "Michael Billington"
Duke of York's, LondonWith even a Tory attacking the "arrogant, posh boys" who run her party, now seems a good time to revive Laura Wade's 2010 play.It has undergone a good deal of revision …
Hampstead theatre, London"Will it run?" people asked when they first heard that the celebrated 1981 movie was to be adapted for the stage. That question seems to have been answered by the ne…
For decades, Britain ignored European, African and Asian theatre. But do we now have an uncritical acceptance of anything foreign?Do we in Britain suffer from theatrical xenophobia? I used t…
As playwright Arnold Wesker turns 80, he talks about his early successes, his later battles " and the day he tried to flog his entire oeuvre for £10,000'I don't feel I'm known as a playwr…
Chichester festival theatreHugh Whitemore has written a play about something that sounds eerily familiar: a legally dubious British invasion of a Middle Eastern country run by a militaristic…
Savoy, LondonAmerica's Danny DeVito and Britain's Richard Griffiths join forces in this joyous revival of Neil Simon's 1972 comedy about a pair of superannuated vaudevillians. But what makes…
Vaudeville, LondonJoe Orton's final play, unrevised at the time of his death in 1967, is a hard one to get right, since it combines manic farce with non-stop social commentary. That doesn't …
Cottesloe, LondonThere's room for more than one play about American suburbia. But, after the brilliance of Bruce Norris's Clybourne Park at the Royal Court, which dealt with the intersection…
Lyric Hammersmith, LondonI am normally wary of futuristic fables, since they brook no disagreement: we can't challenge the writer's experience with our own. But Edward Bond's piece, set…
Aldwych, LondonThe nostalgia market gets a further boost with the arrival of this amiable stage version of the celebrated Astaire-Rogers 1935 RKO musical. The evening can be quickly summed u…
Lyric Hammersmith, LondonPlaywright Simon Stephens has long registered his horror at the heartless world of commodified sex we now inhabit. Given the current headlines, you could s…
Shakespeare's Globe, LondonThis is the third Polish Macbeth London has seen in recent years, and there is yet another to come at the Edinburgh international festival. But, while this version…
Finborough, LondonOriginally seen as a BBC Play for Today in 1974, watching Trevor Griffiths's All Good Men makes one painfully nostalgic for a time when TV was unafraid to show serious poli…
Theatre that incorporates the words of real people has never been more popular " and has proved itself infinitely flexible Continue reading...
Theatre that incorporates the words of real people has never been more popular " and has proved itself infinitely flexibleVerbatim theatre, as Will Hammond and Dan Steward point out in their…
Shoreham, SussexThe hottest ticket at the Brighton festival is this 90-minute "meditation on Hamlet" staged by the experimental company dreamthinkspeak. Two years ago they caused a stir with…
Royal Court, LondonMike Bartlett, as we know from plays such as 13 and Cock, can write big or small. In this piece, originally produced by Paines Plough and the Drum Plymouth in 2010, he com…
Royal Court, LondonBola Agbaje has made a name for herself with plays such as Gone Too Far! and Off the Endz, which showed her to be a sharp, witty observer of London life. Now she extends h…
British drama's secret weapon is university-trained talent " from the venerable theatre societies of Oxbridge to world-beating modern drama departmentsI don't know how it is in other Europea…
Shakespeare's Globe, LondonWarning: contains spoilers about the productionI know it's a cliche but it's true: foreign-language Shakespeare, necessarily an adaptation, often has a liberating …
Donmar Warehouse, LondonOn the way to the theatre I happened to pick up, at a second-hand bookstall, a copy of a volume that contains a story by the artist-writer Denton Welch about an eccen…
As someone who hasn't read Jung Chang's memoir, I came to this stage version with an open mind. I was bowled over by Sacha Wares's production, jointly presented by the Young Vic, American Re…
The Swan, Stratford-upon-AvonWith its blend of party hats, pop music, pomp and circumstance and latex balloons, Maria Aberg's production of this unloved play is certainly never dull. But whi…
Cardiff High School, WalesBradley Manning, as most people know, is a 24-year-old US soldier accused of releasing 250,000 secret cables and logs about the Iraq and Afghan wars to WikiLeaks. W…
Swan, Stratford-upon-AvonYou can present Richard III either as the climax of a Shakespeare history cycle or as a star vehicle. But Roxana Silbert's new RSC production, while perfectly credit…
