5,330 stories from The Independent
The return of Miss Saigon to the London stage prompted the largest single day of sales in West End history on Monday.
The squalor unfolds before us like a wound, the stage stripped back and opened up to the red brick and rusted heating duct bones of the backstage area, the ten-strong ensemble cavorting arou…
What is it? A stylistically inventive production from Joe Hill-Gibbins, of Christopher Marlowe's tragedy about a foolish king destroyed by love. Stars John Heffernan as Edward, Kyle Soller a…
Sunday My guilty pleasure is progressive rock and Yes are my favourite prog band. Late at night, I listen to "Heart of the Sunrise" convinced that Chris Squire's bass is one of greatest soun…
Theatre & Opera
Voltaire's 1759 novella satirises the theological optimism of Leibniz as it is encapsulated and travestied in the deterministically upbeat mantra of the hero's tutor Dr Pangloss who cannot b…
Director Joe Hill-Gibbins can't seem to decide quite what he wants his production (part of the Travelex season) of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II to be - or indeed when.
It is often the case that the bigger the hype around a musical, the bigger the flop it will make come press night. Still, the early signs for I Can't Sing: The X Factor Musical look good
Notting Hill star Rhys Ifans will play a down-and-out who accidentally ends up at the centre of a political protest in a one-man show at the National Theatre.
"Something's always going down in Peckham." So grumbles one of the residents who both spiritedly diss and defend their neighbourhood in this show, exhibiting weariness with its constant soun…
X Factor boss Simon Cowell said he knows he will "get it in the neck" in the new musical based on the hit singing show.
There are two kinds of classic: those whose themes are so universal they speak to every age, and those which are a canvas on which any age can write its own story. Accidental Death of an Ana…
You wait years for a musical about the Profumo Affair and then along come two in quick succession. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the scandal, in which the liaison between the Minis…
Most playwrights spend months, or even years, labouring over their work. But not Tess Berry-Hart, who was given just two and a half weeks to write a pioneering new play chronicling the lives…
It's a name that you would get called if you dared to be erudite and female and " God forbid " express your opinions. I'm talking about back in the 19th century, of course, because these day…
As protests mount over Russia's anti-gay laws, it seems a good time to be reviving Alexi Kaye Campbell's shrewd, deeply affecting 2008 play about the changes in attitude towards homosexualit…
Jessica Swale directed the first play by a woman ever to be staged at Shakespeare's Globe (Nell Leyshon's Bedlam in 2010). Now she returns to the venue with her own debut drama, Blue Stockin…
Jessica Swale directed the first play by a woman ever to be staged at Shakespeare's Globe (Nell Leyshon's Bedlam in 2010). Now she returns to the venue with her own debut drama, Blue Stockin…
As the world awaits a follow-up to Matilda, Tim Minchin is busy in front of the footlights, starring in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead with the Sydney Theatre Company.
They were the first celebrity outlaws " folk-heroes in Depression-era America " and, as portrayed by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in Arthur Penn's seminal 1967 movie, they were fame-hungry…
Same-sex couples competed in the World Championship of Tango for the first time this year, with three male pairs and one female couple taking to the floor.
You can pay to see a woman raped and abused at the Edinburgh Fringe. The festival programme didn't present it in quite that way, of course. The publicity mostly portrayed various shows with …
Steven Berkoff, a luminary of the British film and theatre scene, best known for playing Bond villain General Orlov in Octopussy, has been fined £400 after knocking a woman over in his ca…
The Place's Touch Wood programme invites audiences to give feedback on works in progress. Audience members still weren't expecting to find themselves on stage for Aoi Nakamura and Esteban Fo…
Can Sting's first Broadway musical do for shipbuilding what Billy Elliot did for the coal industry? A new stage show written by the star will tell the story of the decline of the Swan Hunter…
