Theatre
Doctor doctor
In a new hour-long monologue, Burn, Alan Cumming examines the life and work of Robert Burns. The biographical material is…
Missing in action
Someone in the Guardian wrote that Boris Johnson had his ‘out of office’ on, and the Chancellor was ‘missing in…
Send in the clowns
Ian McKellen’s Hamlet is the highlight of Edinburgh’s opening week. In this experimental ballet, Sir Ian speaks roughly 5 per…
All the world’s a stage
A neglected little town in Merseyside is the natural home for Shakespeare North, says Robert Gore-Langton
Catcalls
‘A law against catcalls?’ asked my husband sceptically. ‘What next, criminalising booing and hissing?’ He often gets the wrong end…
All that jazz
Simon Godwin’s Much Ado About Nothing is set in a steamy Italian holiday resort, the Hotel Messina, in the 1920s.…
Divine comedy
Patriots, by Peter Morgan, is a drama documentary about recent Russian history. And though it’s a topical show it’s not…
Chekhov in a straitjacket
The Southbury Child is a comedy drama set in east Devon featuring a distressed vicar, Fr David, with a complex…
Location, location, location
Roy Williams’s new play is a wonky beast. It has two dense and cumbersome storylines that aren’t properly developed. Dawn…
How to get it all wrong
The Glass Menagerie directed by Jeremy Herrin is a bit of an eyeball-scrambler. The action takes place on a huge…
Actor’s notebook
I’m on the road, a very proper place for an actor to be. Never mind all those jokes about some…
The play’s the thing
Last week Lloyd Evans was wondering whether it was about time audiences started booing dramatic productions of which they disapproved.…
Bloated waffle
The Old Vic’s new show, Jitney, has a mystifying YouTube advert which gives no information about the play or the…
To boo or not to boo
Are modern theatre-goers too polite?
Tony’s looney tunes
Harry Hill’s latest musical traces Tony Blair’s bizarre career from student pacifist to war-mongering plaything of the United States. With…
This is going to hurt
Some things are done well in the Globe’s new Julius Caesar. The assassination is a thrilling spectacle. Ketchup pouches concealed…
Absolute beginner
The House of Shades is a state-of-the nation play that covers the past six decades of grinding poverty in Nottingham.…
Quiet thunder
Hampstead’s latest play is a knotty rape drama by Naomi Wallace set in Kentucky. Four teenagers with weird names meet…
Diary
It is a glorious spring evening in Lviv and what could be better than a ballet gala at one of…
Body language
‘I fink I doan luv yew any maw.’ A marital bust-up drama at the National Theatre opens with a whining…
Losing the plot
The title of the Donmar’s new effort, Marys Seacole, appears to be a misprint and that makes the reader look…
Bad education
The Corn is Green by Emlyn Williams is a sociology essay written in 1938 about a prickly tyrant, Miss Moffat,…
Boy wonder
During his brief stage career Master Betty, or the Young Roscius, was no stranger to superlatives: genius, unparalleled, superior, Albion’s…
Trumpian lullaby
Trump is said to be a gift for bad satirists and a problem for good ones. He dominates Mike Bartlett’s…
That way madness lies
There is a trend for books in which academics write personally about their engagement with literature. Examples include Lara Feigel’s…
