Theatre

The dangers of taking a blind friend to see Fifty Shades of Grey

24 February 2018 9:00 am

Audio description, or AD, as it is fondly called, is coming of age. Once consigned to the utility room of…

The 1958 world première of Pinter’s The Birthday Party at the Lyric Hammersmith: John Stratton as McCann, John Slater as Goldberg and Richard Pearson as Stanley

The last survivor of The Birthday Party’s 1958 première remembers the traumatic first night

17 February 2018 9:00 am

‘Mad, wearying and inconsequential gabble,’ sighed the Financial Times in 1958. ‘One quails in slack-jawed dismay.’ Here’s the FT at…

Why do critics claim to adore the waffle-fest that is Long Day’s Journey into Night?

17 February 2018 9:00 am

It’s considered the great masterpiece of 20th-century American drama. Oh, come off it. Long Day’s Journey into Night is a…

David Calder as Caesar in Nicholas Hytner’s Julius Caesar

Bold, in its way, but Ben Whishaw is ill-suited to Shakespeare: Julius Caesar reviewed

10 February 2018 9:00 am

Nicholas Hytner’s new show is a modern-dress Julius Caesar, heavily cut and played in the round. It runs for two…

June Watson as Genevieve and Marylouise Burke as Mertis in John

There are many scenes in this overlong play that consist, literally, of drivel: John reviewed

3 February 2018 9:00 am

The NT’s new production, John, is by a youngish American playwright, Annie Baker. We Brits tend to assume that ‘john’…

A monument of blithering stupidity: Zoë Wanamaker works wonders with Meg in The Birthday Party

Unlike most Pinter plays, this one doesn’t bore or baffle: The Birthday Party reviewed

27 January 2018 9:00 am

The Birthday Party is among Pinter’s earliest and strangest works. It deconstructs the conventions of a repertory thriller but doesn’t…

Americans in Paris: Imogen Poots as Abby and James Norton as Zack in Belleville

Another American playwright felled by her own trophy collection: Belleville reviewed

20 January 2018 9:00 am

A pattern emerges. A hot American playwright, dripping with prestigious awards, is honoured in London with a transfer of their…

Missing in action: Cosmo Jarvis and Oliver Alvin-Wilson in The Twilight Zone at the Almeida

The latest astonishing achievement from the creators of War Horse

13 January 2018 9:00 am

The Twilight Zone, an American TV show from the early 1960s, reinvented the ghost story for the age of space…

Sarah Vine: Why Jeremy Corbyn is the new Oliver Cromwell

6 January 2018 9:00 am

Owing to the spectacular uselessness of Ticketmaster, my son missed out on his birthday treat, seats for Hamilton at the…

As a musical, it’s overwhelming – politically, it’s an outrage: Hamilton reviewed

6 January 2018 9:00 am

It’s all about the rhythm. Hamilton is a musical that tells the story of America’s foundation through the medium of…

Tiny Tim by Harold Copping

Time to update our notions of disability and quit with the pity – and Tiny Tim

16 December 2017 9:00 am

Here we go again. Partridges in pear trees. Lovely big Christmas turkey. The Queen’s speech. And then, at some point…

Lifelong friends: P.T. Barnum and General Tom Thumb

Showman, con man, family man: P.T. Barnum’s many faces

16 December 2017 9:00 am

‘There’s a sucker born every minute.’ That was the P.T. Barnum battle cry. It has come to have a ring…

Parliament Square at the Bush is theatre that believes it knows politics better than professional politicians

16 December 2017 9:00 am

A new play at the Bush with a catchy political title. Parliament Square introduces us to Kat, a young Scots…

Togas, sandals, breastplates, ketchup and daggers, not guns: Julius Caesar at the Barbican

It’s impossible to muff the role of Scrooge – yet Rhys Ifans manages: A Christmas Carol reviewed

9 December 2017 9:00 am

Maximum Victoriana at the Old Vic for Matthew Warchus’s A Christmas Carol. Even before we reach our seats we’re accosted…

Huge audiences, gongs galore and Broadway awaits Everybody’s Talking About Jamie

2 December 2017 9:00 am

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie opened at the Sheffield Crucible in February for a standard three-week run. The show is based…

On the edge: Bryan Cranston as Howard Beale in Network

An overrated news satire directed by an inexplicably popular director: Network reviewed

25 November 2017 9:00 am

The inexplicable popularity of Ivo Van Hove continues. The director’s latest visit to the fairies involves an updated version of…

Christian Slater is mesmerising: Glengarry Glen Ross reviewed

18 November 2017 9:00 am

David Mamet’s plays are tough to pull off because his dialogue lacks the predictable shapeliness of traditional dramatic speech. He…

François Cluzet as paraplegic billionaire Philippe and Omar Sy as his carer Driss in Untouchable (2011)

Does disability make a difference to art – or does art transcend disability?

11 November 2017 9:00 am

The moment you invite friends to some new ‘cutting-edge’ disability theatre or film, most swallow paroxysms of social anxiety. What…

Making musical history: Lin-Manuel Miranda and the cast of Hamilton

Why has there never been a hit musical about the history of Britain?

11 November 2017 9:00 am

Americans may be able to draw on only 250 years of history, but they’re not shy of making a song…

One to savour: Nikki Amuka-Bird as Ellida in The Lady from the Sea

Why has the Bridge Theatre opened with this lightweight new play? Young Marx reviewed

4 November 2017 9:00 am

Bang! A brand new theatre has opened on the South Bank managed by the two Nicks, Hytner and Starr, who…

Family planning

28 October 2017 9:00 am

Beginning starts at the end. A Crouch End party has just finished and the sitting room is a waste tip…

Perishable goods

14 October 2017 9:00 am

  Labour of Love is the new play by James Graham, the poet laureate of politics. We’re in a derelict…

Verbal diarrhoea

5 October 2017 2:00 pm

In Beckett’s Happy Days a prattling Irish granny is buried waist-deep, and later neck-deep, in a refuse tip whose detritus…

Killer queen: Gina McKee as Boudica. (Photo: Steve Tanner)

Bloody minded

30 September 2017 9:00 am

Tristan Bernays loves Hollywood blockbusters. His new play, Boudica, is an attempt to put the blood-and-guts vibe of the action…

Robert Lindsay as Jack Cardiff in Prism

Speech therapy

23 September 2017 9:00 am

Oslo opened in the spring of 2016 at a modest venue in New York. It moved to Broadway and this…