Is there a difference between being prejudiced and being a connoisseur of prejudice?
Paul Minx ventures boldly into Tennessee Williams country with The Long Road South. It’s 1965 and the Price family are…
Fun, disturbing and ultimately forgettable: Hangmen at Wyndhams reviewed
It begins with a sketch. We’re in a prison in 1963 where Harry Wade, the UK’s second most famous hangman,…
Damon Albarn’s wonder.land will not succeed at the National. It might work in Vegas
Damon Albarn and Rufus Norris present a musical version of Alice in Wonderland. A challenging enterprise even if they’d stuck…
A rare moment of transcendence at the Royal Court
Illness forced Kim Cattrall to withdraw from Linda, the Royal Court’s new show, and Noma Dumezweni scooped up the debris…
Tricycle’s Ben Hur is magnificent in its superficiality - a masterpiece of nothing
It’s the target that makes the satire as well as the satirist. Is the subject powerful, active, relevant and menacing?…
Awards await this mostly terrific new Homecoming
Jamie Lloyd’s production of Pinter’s The Homecoming is a pile of terrific and silly ideas. Mostly terrific. The action takes…
Why is there no one at the National Theatre preventing these duds getting staged?
Wallace Shawn is a lovely old sausage. A stalwart of American theatre, he’s taken cameo roles in classic movies like…
Kenneth Branagh’s The Winter’s Tale is better than any I can recall
Kenneth Branagh opens his West End tenancy with Shakespeare’s inexplicably popular The Winter’s Tale. We start in Sicily where Leontes…
How did this plotless goon-show wind up at the Royal Court?
One of the challenges of art is to know the difference between innovation and error. I wonder sometimes if the…
Glyndebourne caters to the lower-middle classes not past-it toffs
What is Glyndebourne? A middle-aged Bullingdon. That’s a common view: a luxury bun fight for past-it toffs who glug champagne,…
Turning Alzheimer’s into theatre is like building a surfboard out of sawdust
Here are three truths about play-writing. A script without an interval will be structurally flawed. A vague, whimsical title means…
Shakespeare at his freest and most exuberant: The Wars of the Roses reviewed
The RSC’s The Wars of the Roses solves a peculiar literary problem. Shakespeare’s earliest history plays are entitled Henry VI…
The set's better than the characterisation: 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…
Half-brilliant: Mr Foote’s Other Leg at Hampstead Theatre reviewed
Samuel Foote (1720–77) was a star of the 18th-century stage who avoided the censors by extemporising his performances. Today we’d…
Nicole Kidman is upstaged by everyone - even the set: Photograph 51 at the Noel Coward reviewed
Michael Grandage’s latest show is about an old snap. Geneticists regard the X-ray of the hydrated ‘B’ form of DNA…
The Globe's Oresteia lets Aeschylus speak - the Almeida's muzzles him
To examine an ancient text requires an understanding of the ancient imagination. The Oresteia is set in a primitive world…
Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet is far too nice
You can’t play the part of Hamlet, only parts of Hamlet. And the bits Benedict Cumberbatch offers us are of…
Our Country’s Good prizes the concerns of the actors over the audience
Australia, 1788. A transport ship arrives in Port Jackson (later Sydney harbour) carrying hundreds of convicts and a detachment of…
The Heckler: the disingenuous custom of the ‘press night’ should be scrapped
Sam Mendes once said there is no such thing as the history of British theatre, only the history of British…
Edinburgh Fringe highlights: world-class improv, Bible study and an hour with a gentle genius
Showstopper! The Improvised Musical offers a brand new song-and-dance spectacular at every performance. It opens with a brilliantly chaotic piece…
Bob Monkhouse, John Lennon and prostitution: Lloyd Evans’s Edinburgh Fringe picks
In the clammy shadows of Cowgate I was leafleted by a chubby beauty wearing all-leather fetish gear. ‘Hi! Want to…
The stars of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe: Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage
Propaganda is said to work best when based upon a grain of truth. Ukip! The Musical assumes that most electors…
Feels like Chekhov scripted by a Chekhov app: Three Days in the Country at the Lyttleton reviewed
Chekhov so dominates 19th-century Russian drama that Turgenev doesn’t get much of a look-in. His best known play, A Month…
‘I’m about to lose a lot of money’: our theatre critic prepares for his Edinburgh Fringe debut
Our theatre critic, Lloyd Evans, makes his Edinburgh debut
