Few sights and sounds are scarier than an auditorium full of teenage girls screaming their socks off at some spotty boy band. For many young female fans it is almost a rite of passage, share…
Theatre Royal, Windsor: Given that it is not one of his best, Noel Coward's frothy 1925 comedy requires acting of the highest calibre. Read the full review
The news of Penelope Keith's elevation to the ranks of damery broke the day after BBC Radio 4 Extra dedicated its Christmas Day schedule to the memory of her friend and former Good Life co-s…
The stars are coming out to play songs and reminisce this holiday season, as the wireless celebrates with some special guests
Does being at the heart of Haven Holidays' entertainment scene sound like something you could excel at? Perhaps you could become one of the FunStars, the holiday park's group of talented per…
Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond-upon-Thames: The second in the Orange Tree's interlocking Middlemarch trilogy concerns the fortunes of the recklessly progressive Dr Lydgate, a rather dash…
What was so refreshing about Grayson Perry's series of Reith Lectures, Playing to the Gallery, was that the flamboyant potter and cross-dresser seemed happily unfazed by the gravitas that su…
Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond: The first in an ambitious three-part adaptation of George Eliot's sprawling saga of upper middle class English life in the 1830s is as ingenious as it is …
Nick Smurthwaite talks to Simon Callow and finds him as eager as ever to go on tour, this time with Felicity Kendal, reviving a theatrical relationship going back to the 1970s
Author Jonathan Croall talks to Nick Smurthwaite about his new biography, the story of his father, unassuming silent film and stage heart-throb John Stuart
Rose Theatre, Kingston upon Thames: For his <a href="http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/2013/03/stephen-unwin-to-step-down-from-kingston-rose/">swansong production at the Rose, a…
No doubt in deference to its older listeners, BBC Radio 4 moved Fry's English Delight from its usual 9am slot to 11pm last week. The reason? He devoted the entire programme to the F-word, or…
Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond upon Thames: Why has a play written by a significant American dramatist in 1943 never been produced before? By the end of this turgid, over-written drama of fam…
Clive Francis tells Nick Smurthwaite why there's always room for Dickens, his latest role in Thark at the Park Theatre in London, and why, as a cartoonist releasing a collection of his fines…
Colman Domingo tells Nick Smurthwaite how it feels to be in the award-winning The Scottsboro Boys, while he prepares to make his London debut in his solo show
One of talk radio's most familiar and intelligent voices, Paul Gambaccini marks 40 years of broadcasting with a four-part retrospective, The Gambaccini Years, in the company of some of the c…
Much as I loathed Russell Brand in the wake of Sachsgate, I have to admit he gave a good account of himself on Desert Island Discs, thanks in no small part to Kirsty Young's intelligent...
Was Churchill a frustrated thesp? The war leader and statesman, that is, not the monosyllabic dog from the TV commercials. We all know the story about the former prime minister muttering his…
As it celebrates its half-century this year, Nottingham Playhouse artistic director Giles Croft tells Nick Smurthwaite why he's confident the venue can cope with the latest funding cuts
As Punchdrunk makes waves in New York, Nick Smurthwaite talks to artistic director Felix Barrett about the company's new show
Not always given his due credit, Little Richard was rightly celebrated in A Whop Bop a Lua, a Whop Bam Boom as the most flamboyant of all the founding fathers of rock'n'roll. Each had his...
Theatre Royal, Windsor: From the title and the publicity, you might expect a jolly musical version of Some Like It Hot, but Richard Hurford's play with music is altogether more ambitiou…
Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond upon Thames: Not, as you might imagine, a reworking of the 1955 Marilyn Monroe vehicle, David Lewis's new play is in fact an absorbing and often funny take…
A career spanning 70 years is cause for celebration, especially when it has been notched up by one of our most cherished character actors, Bernard Cribbins. In the two-part Bernard Who?, vet…
Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond upon Thames: In language, fashion and class delineation, it is very much a play of its time, yet this sparkling 1931 comedy by Somerset Maugham deals with peren…