Theatre Features
First Person: playwright Tom Fowler on allowing room for 'Hope'Friday, 16 June 2023
Recently, having just shared the rehearsal draft of my current Royal Court play Hope has a Happy Meal with two close friends, I found myself slightly offended when one of them said, "you can tell you were playing the Nintendo Switch obsessively when writing this." They then proceeded to talk about the play and its structure in video game terms. Read more... |
Leslie Phillips: 'I can be recognised by my voice alone'Thursday, 10 November 2022
Leslie Phillips would have known for half a century that at his death, which was announced yesterday, the obituaries would lead with one thing only. However much serious work he did in the theatre and on screen, he is forever handcuffed to the skirt-chaser he gave us in sundry Carry Ons and Doctor films and London bus movies. Read more... |
‘Stripping naked the process of making theatre’: Martin Crimp talks about his latest playMonday, 31 October 2022
The fictional world is our world, but at the same time it’s another place. We want our writers to invent interesting characters, gripping plots and to take us to unexpected places. We want them to delight us, and sometimes to fright us. We want to immerse ourselves in their inventions, lose ourselves in their fictions, and explore their newly created worlds. But are writers allowed to say anything they want? Read more... |
First Person: playwright Naomi Wallace on finally hearing her work performed in EnglishSaturday, 23 April 2022
The Breach is a coming of age story and an age-in-the-making story. The play takes place in the U.S. in the 1970s and 1990s, switching back and forth between teenagers in Louisville and their older selves 15 years later. Read more... |
First Person: playwright Chinonyerem Odimba on birthing her potent and timely new showWednesday, 30 March 2022
People often ask how long a play takes to make its way out of you. And it’s always a valid question because no matter how beautiful, soft, joyful, or short a play is, there is a wrestling match that takes place between the idea lodging itself somewhere in you, and it turning into words that actors can have fun getting to know. Read more... |
First Person: Tim Walker on crossing over from critic to playwrightThursday, 24 February 2022
The divide between theatre critics and the theatrical profession has always been a chasm, but occasionally a wire has been thrown between the two and plucky or foolhardy individuals have attempted to traverse it. A three-times-unsuccessful applicant to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in my teens, I managed to turn actor in middle age in Top Hat and Spamalot in the West End. Read more... |
Best of 2021: TheatreThursday, 30 December 2021
There was no live theatre at the start of 2021, just a return to the world of virtual performance and streaming to which we had become well accustomed, and very quickly, too. So imagine the collective surprise come the start of this month as show after show, venue after venue, ceased performance or curtailed operations, however temporarily. Read more... |
Antony Sher: 'I discovered I could be other people'Monday, 06 December 2021
The energy of Antony Sher, who has died at the age of 72, was prodigious. He not only acted like a fizzing firecracker. He wrote books about his most celebrated roles, and several novels set in his native South Africa. Read more... |
Stephen Sondheim in memoriam - he gave us more to seeTuesday, 30 November 2021
It seemed impossible and yet, the other evening, while idly flicking through emails, I learned the unimaginable: Stephen Sondheim, age 91, had passed away. And very quickly by all accounts, given that he was reported to have enjoyed a Thanksgiving meal with friends just the previous day. Read more... |
Remembering Henry Woolf, Harold Pinter's oldest friendTuesday, 16 November 2021
Henry Woolf's place in theatre history is small but significant, a bit like Woolf was himself. Until his death on November 11, at the age of 91, he was the last survivor of a gang who made friends at Hackney Down grammar school in the 1930s. The most famous member of the group was Harold Pinter. The Room, Pinter’s first play, was more or less commissioned by him. Read more... |
Pages
Advertising feature
★★★★★
‘A compulsive, involving, emotionally stirring evening – theatre’s answer to a page-turner.’
The Observer, Kate Kellaway
Direct from a sold-out season at Kiln Theatre the five star, hit play, The Son, is now playing at the Duke of York’s Theatre for a strictly limited season.
★★★★★
‘This final part of Florian Zeller’s trilogy is the most powerful of all.’
The Times, Ann Treneman
Written by the internationally acclaimed Florian Zeller (The Father, The Mother), lauded by The Guardian as ‘the most exciting playwright of our time’, The Son is directed by the award-winning Michael Longhurst.
Book by 30 September and get tickets from £15*
with no booking fee.
latest in today
Album: Gregory Porter - Christmas Wish
The cat in the hat with the mellifluous voice delivers his Christmas Wish for the festive season, his first Christmas album, and it...
Paul Lewis, Wigmore Hall review - Schubert sonatas revisited...
A decade has passed since Paul Lewis concluded an endeavour of a kind never previously undertaken: to perform, over two and a half years and...
The Homecoming, Young Vic Theatre review - Pinter's dis...
As the audience enters, thick mist envelopes the thrust stage and jazz music fills the...
Blu-ray: Blackhat
The Boxing Day release of Michael Mann’s first feature in eight years, Ferrari, finally follows up Blackhat, a Chris Hemsworth-...
Kin, BBC One review - in Dublin's not-so-fair city
Folklore tends to depict Dublin as a convivial and picturesque city, with a bar on every corner full of revellers on wild stag weekends, but that’...
Voces8 Foundation Choir and Orchestra, Smith, Voces8 Centre...
There’s a game called Whamageddon, where people see how deep into December they can go without hearing “Last Christmas”. I’m like that, but with...
Dreaming and Drowning, Bush Theatre - dense and intense mono...
Kwame Owusu’s 55-minute one-hander does...
Infinite Life, National Theatre review - beguiling new comed...
A sun deck with seven pale-green padded loungers is the latest setting for the latest...
Rodelinda, The English Concert, Bicket, Saffron Hall review...
If ever a marriage was made in heaven, it would have to be the one between Lucy Crowe’s beleaguered Queen Rodelinda and Iestyn Davies’ King...
£1 Thursdays, Finborough Theatre review - dazzling new play...
It’s 2012 and the London Olympics might as well be happening on the Moon for Jen and Stacey. In fact, you could say the same for...