2,444 stories by "Michael Billington"
Stratford-upon-AvonIt is always good to see The Swan, conceived as a venue for non-Shakespearean classics, reverting to its original purpose. But, much as I enjoyed this rare revival of Phil…
Young Vic, LondonYou can't beat a pre-emptive strike. Both Jon Fosse and Patrice Chereau, the Norwegian author and French director of this strange piece, have said in advance they expect to …
Orange Tree, London"It's been a strange evening," says a character at the end of Lars Noren's play. That seems an understatement for a work in which a family dinner party turns into a psycho…
The Cut, Halesworth, SuffolkGiven that Andrew Motion is a poet, novelist and biographer, it's surprising it has taken him so long to get round to writing a play. But, prompted by an invitati…
Globe, LondonThis is a good, clear, well-spoken production by John Dove of one of Shakespeare's most beguiling but least-loved plays. All it misses, for reasons that may not be entirely its …
Academia should be a bastion of intellectual freedom, but this retraction shows writers are expected to keep the status quoPlaywrights who speak out often suffer a backlash. It happened to H…
The Print Room, LondonNo one would claim that this rarely seen work is vintage Tennessee Williams. But, though savaged by the New York critics in 1968 and palpably self-plagiarising, it has …
Trafalgar Studios, LondonDarren Murphy is clearly a generous man. We go to the theatre expecting one play and he gives us at least three: a psychological study of sibling rivalry, a social p…
Barbican Pit, LondonTold By An Idiot is a company that, since 1993, has achieved a reputation for wild, innovative comedy. Now, in a show conceived by Hayley Carmichael and Paul Hunter, they…
The Swan, Stratford-upon-AvonThey're billing this at Stratford as Shakespeare's "Lost Play" Re-Imagined. The inverted commas are well placed, since it's a matter of surmise how much of it is…
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-AvonMacbeth claims that Duncan's sons flee Scotland "filling their hearers with strange invention". But Michael Boyd's production, the first new sho…
Barbican, LondonYou have to suppress a smile: a show obsessively concerned with bowel movements being presented as part of the experimental Spill festival. But, for all the shock-horror adva…
Hampstead, LondonFifty years ago, Yuri Gagarin became the first man to orbit the earth. But Rona Munro, in this epic play for the RSC, has shrewdly chosen to focus on the little-known figure…
Salisbury PlayhouseToo many plays have a brief metropolitan life and then disappear off the map. So it is good to find Martin Crimp's cryptic thriller, originally seen at the Royal Court in …
In St Petersburg, the German great received a long-overdue award but ran into technical difficulties, while the Icelandic acrobats made a huge leap in public estimationSt Petersburg proved t…
Novello, LondonMusicals these days are constantly being based on movies. But this witty and delightful adaptation of the 1984 film A Private Function strikes me as better than the original. …
Donmar Warehouse, LondonI find it strange that one of Harold Pinter's most accessible plays has had to wait 18 years for a major London revival. It deals, after all, with mortality, love, lo…
King's Head, LondonRapidly transferred from the Cock Tavern, which has been forced to close, this 75-minute play by Rob Hayes proves weirdly compelling. Although the image of three men …
Salisbury PlayhouseI'm delighted to find Marivaux's 1730 comedy being staged by this stylish regional playhouse. I wish, however, that Philip Wilson had chosen another version than that by N…
New Diorama, LondonIrish drama was until recently dominated by male voices. But Teresa Deevy, along with Lady Gregory, was a shining exception. Deevy wrote a string of hits for the Dublin Ab…
Royal and Derngate, NorthamptonI brusquely dismissed Terence Rattigan's play when it opened in 1973 accompanied by a clunky curtain-raiser: I even have a copy of the play inscribed to me by …
Royal Court, LondonAlthough the title of Simon Stephens's new play refers to the deepest lake in Britain, it is set on the fringes of Heathrow; and part of its point is that the airport envi…
Ibsen considered Emperor and Galilean, his massive two-part drama about Julian the Apostate, the last pagan emperor of Rome, to be his masterpiece but it has never been staged in Britain bef…
Stop complaining about me giving away plots. I'm doing you a favourAm I guilty of indecent exposure? I only ask because I am frequently accused by bloggers of revealing too much of a play's …
Cock Tavern, LondonYou have to admire the enterprise of this tiny north-London pub theatre. In celebration of the centenary of Tennessee Williams's birth, it has staged no less than two worl…
