ThreeSixty theatre, Kensington Gardens; Open Air, Regent's Park; Olivier, LondonWhat is Rupert Goold up to? He has given the theatre some of the most exciting excursions of the past five yea…
Savoy, London; Holt hotel, Norfolk; Cottesloe, LondonOn the screen in 1975 it was Walter Matthau and George Burns. In a 1996 television adaptation it was Woody Allen and Peter ("Columbo") Fa…
Malthouse Estate, Shoreham-by-Sea; Caledonian Park, London; Aldwych, LondonFractured, self-reflecting, cut off from those around him. The site-specific company Dreamthinkspeak has gone to th…
The Hub, Pacific Quay, Glasgow; Royal Court; Globe, LondonIn a terrific imaginative stroke, director John Tiffany co-opts not only the city of Glasgow but the entire sky for his production o…
Apollo, London; New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme; Bush, LondonEugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night is a mighty work. It has a straight-from-the-heart punch, a long, allusive reach and…
Print Room, London; Tobacco Factory, Bristol; Finborough, LondonThe tiny Print Room delivers classic plays with a magnified immediacy. Lucy Bailey's lovely Uncle Vanya is played in the round…
Old Vic, London; Theatre Royal, Newcastle; Royal Court, LondonJohn Webster was for Bernard Shaw the "Tussaud laureate": a playwright of waxy gore. Today he can look like the Damien Hirst dra…
Hampstead, London; Sherman Cymru, Cardiff; Young Vic, LondonForget the Notting Hill sillies. Think instead of the most original Jane Austen film adaptation " the mud-soaked, seemingly make-u…
Southwark Playhouse; Royal Court; Trafalgar Studios, LondonUnder the railway arches of Southwark Playhouse, bare brickwork gives off a damp pong and the dusky tunnels burrow far back. The pl…
Royal Court, London; His Majesty's, Aberdeen; Tricycle, LondonAnywhere but Essex, it seems. "He's a writer," an aspirant character in David Eldridge's new play explains of her boyfriend. "Wh…
Donmar, London; Yvonne Arnaud, GuildfordJosie Rourke has chosen well. Her first production as artistic director of the Donmar marks a departure for the theatre that, under Sam Mendes and Mic…
It's been a great year for Southwark Playhouse, Hampstead and the National " and an unforgettable one for Michael SheenThe Passion was the year's revelation. Ranging over the whole of Port T…
Young Vic; Bussey Building, LondonIt would be worth it for this alone. Michael Sheen's "To be or not to be" is a marvel. It is not only that Sheen makes each phrase ring out fresh and true. …
Cottesloe; Trafalgar Studios; Only Connect, LondonThe stage is buckled. Rimmed with scarlet, it dips like a fairground ride. Cabaret, dance music and stark sequences of strings fill the air;…
Hampstead; Olivier, London; Rudry parish hall, CaerphillyYou can't talk to the duchess because of the lawyer. You can't get much out of the lawyer " because she is a lawyer. You start to wri…
Royal Court; Donmar Warehouse; Bush, LondonTwo years ago when she was 17, Bel Powley was one of the stars in Polly Stenham's Tusk Tusk. Now here she is again, proving the staying power of th…
Lyric Hammersmith, London; Theatre Royal BathPeople go to Saved thinking they know what they will see. They've been told often enough. A baby is stoned to death in a park by a group of youth…
Wyndhams, LondonThe car in Driving Miss Daisy is an awkward thing: a wheel and two wooden seats. It's not a vehicle that could have come from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang but it's not a Complicit…
West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds; Old Vic, LondonIt begins in precarious ritual: a boxed-in court, a red carpet like a stream of blood, a floor so steeply raked that the action hurtles downwa…
St Katharine Docks; Theatre Royal, Haymarket; Olivier, National Theatre; Southwark Playhouse, all LondonFigures are pressed against a long pane of glass. They are spread-eagled, as if blown …
Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh; King's, Edinburgh; Barbican, London; Hill Street, EdinburghThe djinn is too meek. The surtitles are too wayward " mostly hard to see and often out of synch. The…
Trafalgar Studios; Scoop, both LondonLook for Caryl Churchill in the 1996 edition of Oxford's Concise Companion to the Theatre and you'll find her. But only just. She's documented not separa…
Donmar Warehouse; Globe; Regent's Park Open Air, all LondonJude Law lands on deck, flung from the ocean like a helpless fish. He's been on board only a few minutes before Ruth Wilson gives h…
Theatre Royal BathWhen Noël Coward wrote about the upper classes he made them heartless but witty. When he put the lower-middle classes on stage, he gave them heart, hurt, principles and …
Lyttelton; Hampstead; Piccadilly, all LondonOne is ramrod-stiff, pale and unrelenting; the other is round and rosy and yielding. One, rigid as a mannequin, is lifted up by removal men, to be…