Theatre
The characters are barely stereotypes: The Father at the Wyndham’s reviewed
The Father, set in a swish Paris apartment, has a beautifully spare and elegant set. The stage is framed by…
It may have a meagre script and no plot but Farinelli and the King is still a major work of art
Philippe V was a Bourbon prince who secured the throne of Spain using his family connections. Claire van Kampen is…
Foote fault
Samuel Foote (1720–77) was a star of the 18th-century stage who avoided the censors by extemporising his performances. Today we’d…
The big chill
Michael Grandage’s latest show is about an old snap. Geneticists regard the X-ray of the hydrated ‘B’ form of DNA…
Nice work
You can’t play the part of Hamlet, only parts of Hamlet. And the bits Benedict Cumberbatch offers us are of…
Dublin
What a delight it is to toy with a wooden newspaper-holder rather than a smartphone, tucked away in the cosy…
All white on the night
Trevor Nunn is staging Shakespeare’s Wars of the Roses without a single black actor. So what, says Robert Gore-Langton
Shtumming the spiel
London may cry foul over Hamlet’s misplaced to-be-ing and not-to-be-ing but Edinburgh is in raptures over a Magic Flute which…
Art by committee
Australia, 1788. A transport ship arrives in Port Jackson (later Sydney harbour) carrying hundreds of convicts and a detachment of…
Press night
Sam Mendes once said there is no such thing as the history of British theatre, only the history of British…
Barometer
How many cheats? More data on members of extramarital dating site Ashley Madison were put online. How widespread is adultery?…
Edinburgh on Thames
Showstopper! The Improvised Musical offers a brand new song-and-dance spectacular at every performance. It opens with a brilliantly chaotic piece…
The master returns
The visionary theatremaker Robert Lepage is back in Edinburgh after a 20-year absence. Matt Trueman talks to him about trends and legacies
Chekhov by numbers
Chekhov so dominates 19th-century Russian drama that Turgenev doesn’t get much of a look-in. His best known play, A Month…
Look at my Fringe
Our theatre critic, Lloyd Evans, makes his Edinburgh debut
Family matters
God, what a title. The Gathered Leaves. It sounds like a tremulous weepie about grief and endurance with a closing…
Has-Bean
Richard Bean, the country’s most bankable playwright, knocks out a new script every four months. Thanks to the success of…
Home and away
Refugee crisis in the Mediterranean! Fear not. Anders Lustgarten and his trusty rescue ship are here to save mankind. Lampedusa…
Bid low, break even
A new Seagull lands in Regent’s Park. Director Matthew Dunster has lured Chekhov’s classic into a leafy corner of north…
Savile exposed
Ho hum. Bit icky. Not bad. Hardly dazzling. The lukewarm response to An Audience With Jimmy Savile has astonished me.…
Own goal
For nine years Patrick Marber has grappled with writer’s block (which by some miracle doesn’t affect his screenplay work), but…
Your problems solved
Q. I was at the theatre recently and bumped into a well-known Liverpudlian crooner coming out of the disabled lavatory.…
Hard reign
King John arrives at the Globe bent double under the weight of garlands from the London critics. Their jaunt up…
His dark materials
Will Gore talks to the playwright who has brought Jimmy Savile’s crimes to the stage
Close encounters
In October 2011 anti-capitalist vagrants built an open-air squat outside St Paul’s within shrieking distance of London’s financial heart. The…
