832 stories by "Susannah Clapp"
Directed by Michael Rosen, this year's Brighton festival captures the spirit of the city, from militant circus to missing relativesThis is the year the Brighton festival took off. The shows …
Globe, London; Minerva, Chichester; Donmar, LondonColin Morgan from Merlin is Ariel, bringing his smooth magic to the South Bank. Limber, honey-voiced, swinging from a lintel, he is eerily s…
Olivier, LondonThese days it's becoming hard to write about the theatre without praising Nicholas Hytner. Can't he do something wrong so that we critics can start looking less like courtiers…
Battersea Arts Centre, LondonLittle Bulb is the cause of big joy. The larky, lyrical company, most of whom graduated from the University of Kent only five years ago, have taken over BAC with…
The Shed; Lyttelton, LondonNicholas Hytner's departure is not the only change under way at the National. By the time a new artistic director arrives in 2015, large swaths of the once controv…
Nuffield, SouthamptonWe're living in an era of strong and radical Chekhov productions. We've had them from Benedict Andrews at the Young Vic, Russell Bolam at Southwark, Andrew Hilton a…
Royal Court, London; Royal Exchange, Manchester; Phoenix, LondonIt's a tribute to Nicholas Hytner's mighty reign at the National that the news of his standing down outshone, or outdarkened, …
Noël Coward; Royal Court, LondonJudi Dench begins tight as an oyster, encrusted with age and depression and disappointment. She opens and lightens and unstiffens as she remembers the danc…
Women are finally getting the chance to make a massive impact in the arts, argues the Observer's theatre criticThis is the difference that a woman at the top of an arts organisation can make…
Gielgud, LondonWell, I didn't believe in it but I was seduced by it. At least for a while. The Audience " the first surefire, unstoppable hit of the year " has been created to disarm all com…
Butetown, Cardiff"People think we're pirates but we're actually poets." Welsh Somalians living in Cardiff's Butetown " the docks area once known as Tiger Bay " wanted to show the truth of th…
Theatre Royal, Bath; Donmar Warehouse, London; Tobacco Factory, BristolLet's forget AA. Let's not put African American in front of August Wilson's name. Instead let's acknowledge that he was…
Viaduct, Halifax; Stratford East; Roundhouse, LondonShe wrote under initials so that no one would know she was a woman. She died thinking her playwriting career was a failure. In New York sh…
Young Vic; Somerset House; Almeida, LondonFeast: yes. But fast, too. I've rarely seen anything so bursting with visual ideas, so thrumming with interesting sounds and rhythms and so skinnily…
Harold Pinter theatre, LondonIt looks like a wheeze at first, a publicist's gamble to get people to pay twice for the same evening. Yet the double casting of Kristin Scott Thomas and Lia Wil…
Lyttelton, LondonA new version of A Doll's House, an updating of Ubu Roi, a triumphant, West End-bound adaptation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Before that: wild swer…
Wyndham's, LondonAt first the casting of Rowan Atkinson looks perverse. In fact it's inspired. The truly startling stroke in Simon Gray's 1981 play is that it makes its main character a void…
Royal Exchange, Manchester; Hampstead; Tricycle, LondonWith what varied meanings the word "pals" winds through Peter Whelan's 1982 play. This is a drama full of warmth between both women and…
From the Foxes to the Redgraves, the Observer's theatre critic Susannah Clapp chooses the most celebrated acting familiesSusannah Clapp
Royal Court; Trafalgar Studios; Platform; LondonPolly Stenham's feral families are at the heart of Dominic Cooke's Royal Court. First, in 2007, the bullying child and alcoholic mother of Tha…
Discover Children's Story Centre; Cottesloe; Little Angel; LondonLong before the Olympics there was drama in London's Stratford. It was here in the 50s and 60s that Joan Littlewood and her e…
Crucible, Sheffield; Trafalgar Studios; Battersea Arts Centre, LondonI thought my resistance to My Fair Lady had hardened. I don't like plays sentimentalised by melody, or cockneys singing w…
Noël Coward; Royal Court; Tricycle, LondonMichael Grandage is setting out to change the West End. He wants to provide a theatre that is both tempting and affordable. His Michael Grandage …
The scientific met the psychological to scintillating effect, and hard times called for Shakespeare and Chekhov2012 was a year in which Britain depended on the theatre to show itself off to …
Donmar, London; Curve, Leicester; Bristol Old VicAlways fascinating, sometimes infuriating, Phyllida Lloyd's all-female production of Julius Caesar is one of the most important theatrical ev…
