Menier Chocolate Factory, London; Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon; Trafalgar Studios, LondonWhat a difference a time scheme makes. Had Merrily We Roll Along been written with a conventional chrono…
Almeida, London; Apollo, London; Olivier, London The Dark Earth and the Light Sky is a rarity. It startles by stealth and apparent quietness, by its steady appeal to unashamed affection and …
Cottesloe; Southwark Playhouse; Gate, all LondonFluorescence, mental disturbance, dancing. The Effect has some of the ingredients that made The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time …
Lyttelton; Noël Coward; Vaudeville; London Continue reading...
Lyttelton; Noël Coward; Vaudeville; LondonAlan Bennett's sparky, intricate, all-over-the-place new play opened in the week the National Trust announced it had bought the white cliffs of D…
Theatrical treats for all the family for the festive seasonSusannah Clapp
Jerwood Theatre Upstairs/Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Royal Court, London SW1Enron, DC Moore, Clybourne Park, Nina Raine, Posh, Anya Reiss, Love and Information, Polly Stenham, Sucker Punch. …
Tricycle; Jermyn Street; Lyric Hammersmith, LondonWhat an incisive, fervent beginning. Indhu Rubasingham takes over with panache at the Tricycle, bowing to the theatre's politically engaged …
National Theatre, LondonThis is the National doing its job. Nicholas Hytner's theatre is behaving as if it were a federation of varied talents: the good, the very good and the not so good. T…
Lab; Abbey theatre; Project Arts theatre, DublinDublin is a glorious rarity among theatre festivals. It depends upon itself. It does not assume that the best work, the best subjects, the bes…
Harold Pinter theatre; Barbican, LondonTrevor Nunn began the summer by directing a heavy-handed Kiss Me Kate; he ends it by staging a star-encrusted but tepid Chorus of Disapproval. What a w…
Royal Court, London; Young Vic, London; West Yorkshire Playhouse, LeedsAnother Royal Court command: Love and Information is a play that everyone should see. Once again Caryl Churchill has li…
Old Vic; Almeida; Hampstead, LondonHedda Gabler ends with a famous bang behind closed doors. Wouldn't it, a friend once suggested, be ripping if those doors opened on a Hedda who had put an …
Lowland Hall, Royal Highland Centre; Royal Lyceum; Assembly Hall, Edinburgh"We have waited 48 years to come to the Edinburgh international festival," said Ariane Mnouchkine. Audiences have w…
Holkham, Norfolk; Theatre Square/Pop-up Workshop, National Theatre, LondonWhat is most annoying about Robert Wilson's Walking? The adamantine amiability? The aura of sacredness? The meagre n…
Lowland Hall, Royal Highland Centre; Royal Lyceum theatre, EdinburghThree shows: one exciting and splashy, one meretricious and one a work of quiet distinction. Not a bad tally for Edinburgh…
Hangar 858 Picketston, RAF St Athan, Vale of Glamorgan; Swan, Stratford-upon-AvonIt's two years, almost to the day, since Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes brought Aeschylus to the Brecon Beacon…
Cottesloe; Donmar; Criterion, LondonIt's almost perverse. To take a story whose hero cannot lie, for whom metaphor is a foreign land, and put it on that most metaphorical of places, the stag…
The Observer's theatre critic chooses her favourite scenes of onstage dining, from Danish indigestion to a feast of ShawFestenA bourgeois Danish family gather around the table for a patriarc…
From Danish indigestion to gruesome Shakespearean revengeSusannah Clapp
Globe; Lyttelton; National; LondonThis is an extraordinary period in the theatre. Within 10 days Britain's two most captivating Shakespearean interpreters have taken to the stage to recreate…
Olivier, London; Cuckmere Haven, Sussex, and other venues; Southwark Playhouse, LondonSuddenly Timon of Athens looks essential. Nicholas Hytner's aggressively witty production, which transfo…
Royal Court, London; Chichester Festival theatre; National, LondonA man gets pregnant. The Royal Court's publicists have been discreet about the subject of Joe Penhall's new play, but to lit…
Noël Coward; Royal Court; Roundhouse, LondonIt is an act of extreme daring. New York's Elevator Repair Service has put on stage The Great Gatsby's maddening, self-destructive, languorous …
Royal Shakespeare, Stratford-upon-Avon; Donmar; Peacock, LondonNot only despots and murderous conspiracy but prophecy and magical portents. In setting Julius Caesar in a riven African state,…