Theatre
The National’s latest attempt to cheer us up: three hours of poverty porn
Bombay is now called Mumbai by everyone bar its residents, whose historic name (from the Portuguese for ‘beautiful cove’) has…
Norman Mailer’s wife comes out of the shadows
‘It’s not as bad as I thought it would be,’ said Norman Mailer to his wife, Norris Church, after reading…
Yanks buy stacks of tickets in the West End. Why is Made in Dagenham so rude to them?
Go slow at Dagenham. The musical based on the film about a pay dispute in the 1960s starts as a…
An inept dud penetrates the Park Theatre’s dross-filters - and I blame Beckett
Jonah and Otto is a lost-soul melodrama that keeps its audience guessing. Where are we? The Channel coast somewhere. Indoors…
Neville's Island: a play from the era of Men Behaving Badly - when women were seen as exotic excrescences
Start with a joke. Neville’s Island. Get it? Laughing yet? Are your ribs splitting into pieces? It’s a cracker, isn’t…
Is London's West End Jewish enough for David Baddiel’s musical The Infidel?
David Baddiel has turned his movie, The Infidel, into a musical. The set-up is so contrived and clumsy that it…
Donmar’s Henry IV: Phyllida Lloyd has nothing but contempt for her audience
The age of ‘ladies first’ is back. Phyllida Lloyd reserves all the roles for the weaker sex, as I imagine…
Were the cast of the Old Vic’s Electra clothed by Oxfam?
First, a bit of background. Conquering Agamemnon slew his daughter, Iphigenia, in return for a fair wind to Troy. This…
Will Marti Pellow attract enough tipsy hen parties to Evita to flog all 18,000 seats?
Tim and Andy are back. Their monster hit Evita opens the fully refurbed and re-primped Dominion Theatre, which is built…
Charles III is made for numbskulls by numbskulls
Suppose Charles were to reign as a meddlesome, self-pitying, indecisive plonker. It’s a thought. It’s now a play, too, by…
If you have teenage boys who loathe the very idea of theatre, send them to The Play That Goes Wrong
It’s taken a while but here it is. The Play That Goes Wrong is like Noises Off, but simpler. Michael…
Can the Scots really be as small-minded, mistrustful and chippy as Spoiling suggests?
Referendum fever reaches Stratford East. Spoiling, by John McCann, takes us into the corridors of power in Holyrood shortly after…
Bent bureaucrats, ‘fake dykes’ and bad bakers — this week’s theatre
Eye of a Needle, by newcomer Chris MacDonald, looks at homosexuality and asylum. Gays from the Third World, who’ve suppressed…
Dolts, Doormats and FGM: theatre to make you physically sick
Wow. What an experience. A 1991 movie named Dogfight has spawned a romantic musical. We’re in San Francisco in 1963.…
An innocent graduate of Operation Yewtree, Jim Davidson, dazzles in Edinburgh
Let’s start with a nightmare. Wendy Wason, an Edinburgh comedienne, travelled to LA last year accompanied by her husband, who…
The best of the Edinburgh Fringe
Rain whimpers from Edinburgh’s skies. The sodden tourists look like aliens in their steamed-up ponchos as they scurry and rustle…
Sorry, Gillian Anderson, but you've caught the wrong Streetcar
Streetcar. One word is enough to conjure an icon. Tennessee Williams’s finest play, written in the 1940s, is about a…
Let’s face it, Greek tragedy is often earnest, obscure or boring. Not this Medea
Carrie Cracknell’s new version of Medea strikes with overwhelming and rather puzzling force. The royal palace has been done up…
When Mr and Mrs Clever-Nasty-and-Rich met Mr and Mrs Thick-Sweet-and-Poor
Torben Betts, head boy at Alan Ayckbourn’s unofficial school of apprentices, has written at least a dozen plays I’ve never…
Richard Bean doesn’t believe in humans - just weasels, snakes, rats and vultures
Mr Bean, one of our greatest comic exports, has an alter ego. The second Mr Bean, forename Richard, is the…
The sweating, dust-glazed saints at the Hampstead Theatre tells us nothing new about the miners’ strike
Hampstead’s new play about the 1984 miners’ strike was nearly defeated by technical glitches. Centre stage in Ed Hall’s production…
Fashion Victim – the Musical!: daft camp with a warm heart
Fashion Victim — the Musical!. There’s a title that’s been waiting to be used for ages. The Cinema Museum is…
Mark Benton’s Hobson spares us nothing in his journey from rooftop to gutter
Nice one, Roy. Across the West End secret toasts are being drunk to the England supremo for his exquisitely crafted…
Did Turgenev foresee Russia’s Stalinist future?
Fans of Chekhov have to endure both feast and famine. Feast because his works are revived everywhere. Famine because he…
The Globe's larf-a-minute Antony and Cleopatra
It’s hilarious. It’s also annoying that it’s so hilarious. Jonathan Munby’s earthy and glamorous production of Antony and Cleopatra goes…
