5,330 stories from The Independent
A decade ago, almost to the month, Nicholas Hytner launched his new regime at the National with Adrian Lester in the title role of a searingly sceptical modern-dress version of Henry V, time…
A decade ago, almost to the month, Nicholas Hytner launched his new regime at the National with Adrian Lester in the title role of a searingly sceptical modern-dress version of Henry V, time…
The dominance of young actors coming from private schools is a "real worry," according to the head of Shakespeare's Globe, as it is becoming harder for less well off children to break throug…
The new director of the Edinburgh International Festival has been appointed.
In Mayerling, Kenneth MacMillan creates a world on stage, a stifling, glittering court that boils over with repression and need. Telling the story of the doomed Crown Prince Rudolf, who comm…
At the Moscow premiere of Maxim Gorky's Children of the Sun in 1905, the audience started to panic as they watched the last act. When a marauding mob was heard offstage, approaching fast, su…
She may be a vision in daffodil in the central number, but Tamara Rojo's taste for purple is the immediate impression one gets from her first mixed programme at English National Ballet. Call…
What if your friend fell for your girl and no enchanted flower could lift the spell? That is the premise of Shakespeare's rarely performed comedy, staged by director Andrew Hilton and Shakes…
The Royal Court Theatre in London has helped develop some of the finest young British playwrights to emerge in recent years. This summer it is looking to discover new voices from a surprisin…
Installation art work is often passed off as theatre these days, so it's refreshing to have a theatrical exposition of installation art in Howard Brenton's new play about Ai Weiwei, whom the…
The umbrella title for English National Ballet's latest triple bill suggests decadent abandon.
Which walking wreck of a Wallander did you prefer on television? The surprisingly convincing Kenneth Branagh version of the wiped-out alcoholic detective, or the more obviously authentic Swe…
In what may be the shortest retirement of all time, Steven Soderbergh is heading back to the cinema.
London Road, about the Ipswich prostitute murders, paved the way for unlikely musicals. Now, get ready for Parkway Dreams, an all-singing, all-dancing drama about the transformation of Peter…
It's difficult to see that attitudes to extreme disability have improved much since Peter Nichols first wrote his ground-breaking black comedy inspired by the experience of bringing up his o…
Tanika Gupta's new play kicks off from an idea that is almost profligately rich in potential. An epic piece spanning the fourteen years from 1887 to 1901, it sets out to show us Victorian Lo…
Returning to London after more than quarter of a century, the National Ballet of Canada brings Alexei Ratmansky's Romeo and Juliet as a calling card. Now based at American Ballet theatre, th…
Maxim Gorky wrote this play while in prison in 1905 in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, the shameful episode in which the Imperial Guard turned fire on a peaceful, unarmed demonstration in Pe…
The Advertising Standards Agency has launched an investigation into publicity for a critically acclaimed play currently staged in London, after one tube traveller complained the sexually sug…
Ai Weiwei appears to be standing in front of a London theatre, which would be some trick, even for the provocative and unpredictable Chinese artist.
We are gluttons for " or perhaps that should be gourmands of " classic Russian drama in this country. So the National Theatre's revival of a comparative rarity " Gorky's 1905 play Children o…
Four young boys want to become music superstars. It's a rags-to-riches tale; a story of triumph over adversity. The premise behind hit musical Jersey Boys might be painfully clichéd, but wi…
It was my privilege to present Tom Wells his gong for Most Promising Playwright at the Critics' Circle Awards in 2012. This was in honour of The Kitchen Sink, an adorably funny play which, i…
Table, the beautiful new play by Tanya Ronder, is the inaugural production in the Shed, the National's temporary replacement for the Cottesloe while the latter undergoes renovation.
Staged by Irish choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan for Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre, The Rite of Spring suggests a late and shivery spring, rather like this year's. Created in 2009 and revis…
