2,436 stories by "Michael Billington"
If you're a theatre-lover, there's every chance you've seen this man in the aisles. As Guardian critic Michael Billington celebrates 40 years of reviewing, stars of the stage " from Lucy Pre…
Menier Chocolate Factory, LondonTowards the end of this revival of a long-forgotten 1972 musical, it suddenly hit me what I was watching: Broadway's answer to Peer Gynt. Both feature a hero …
Donmar Warehouse, London Continue reading...
Donmar Warehouse, LondonMichael Grandage ends his dazzling tenure at the Donmar with a Richard II that has many virtues: clarity, speed, superb set and sound design.But the big question is w…
The Royal Shakespeare Company has struggled to restore new writing to its repertoire in recent years. But Mark Ravenhill's residency could be a magnet for emerging talentI'm delighted that M…
While I understand the great composer's aversion to reviewers, what creative spirit wants their work to be met with silence?I can sympathise with Stephen Sondheim in his attacks on critics. …
Adelphi, LondonTransfers can be tricky. But Richard Bean's updated version of Goldoni's comic classic seems, if anything, even funnier than it did at the National. The text has been shortene…
Almeida, LondonNeil LaBute is haunted by the American obsession with physical beauty. The Shape of Things showed a shambolic geek getting a ruinous makeover. Fat Pig attacked the idea that w…
Theatre Royal Haymarket, LondonTrevor Nunn's tenure at the Haymarket has given us fine revivals of Rattigan, Stoppard and Shakespeare. What puzzles me is why Nunn, with all the riches of wor…
Trafalgar Studios, LondonTim Price is a young Welsh writer who got glowing reviews for his first play, For Once. This new piece, which opens the Donmar's three-play Whitehall season, is a qu…
Orange Tree, RichmondI'm not quite sure why, but British theatre is currently preoccupied by the early 1960s. While Edward Bond, John Osborne and Arnold Wesker have all been recently honoure…
Theatre Local, LondonA couple of years ago, I sat in on a workshop for young Muslim writers offered as part of the Royal Court's Unheard Voices programme. Out of that came this first play by…
Young Vic, LondonWe approach this Hamlet obliquely. We enter the Young Vic through the back door and are led through a maze of grey corridors. We are clearly in a psychiatric institution com…
White Bear, LondonThe Swiss playwright Max Frisch is most famous for The Fire Raisers, in which a respectable bourgeois naively welcomes three agents of destruction into his home. But what i…
The Swan, Stratford-upon-AvonNo one could accuse the British theatre of ignoring the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. And David Edgar has come up with a learned, information-p…
Arts Educational, LondonThis musical version of a famously dark 1957 movie died a slow death on Broadway in 2002. Now it gets its British premiere in a production featuring third-y…
Trafalgar Studios, LondonBen Brown is British theatre's history man. Last year, he wrote a riveting play, The Promise, about the Balfour Declaration of 1917, supporting "a home for the Jewis…
Cottesloe, LondonJohn Hodge is an honest man. He admits his new play about the relationship between Josef Stalin and the writer Mikhail Bulgakov derives from a film which was never made. But…
Riverside Studios, LondonDouble bills require a tricky balancing act: you want plays that echo, rather than simply repeat each other. This pairing of little-known pieces by Horton Foote and …
Not everyone liked 13 and The Faith Machine " but if drama isn't for airing big ideas, then what is it for?What does a critic do when he finds himself out of step with majority opinion? I&nb…
Hampstead Theatre, LondonWallis Simpson is, mysteriously, back in fashion. But Nicholas Wright's new play is not, as Madonna's new film reportedly is, a glowing personal portrait. Instead it…
Olivier theatre, LondonMike Bartlett has moved from writing minimalist dramas to maximalist epics without any intervening stage of development. Having tackled climate change in Earthquakes i…
Harold Pinter theatre, LondonIt is highly appropriate that Ariel Dorfman's 1990 moral thriller is the first play to be presented in this newly-named theatre. Not only is Harold Pinter one of…
Wilton's Music Hall, LondonOnce shunned by the British theatre, Racine is edging back into fashion. It is well worth the detour to London's East End to catch Irina Brown's modern-dress reviv…
Royal Shakespeare, Stratford-upon-AvonThe Sixties are back with a vengeance. After Bond's Saved and Osborne's Inadmissible Evidence we now have an RSC revival of Peter Weiss's 1964 dialectic…
