Olivier theatre
Faultless visuals – shame about the play: the National’s Coriolanus reviewed
Weird play, Coriolanus. It’s like a playground fight that spills out into the street and has to be resolved by…
An entertaining display, clearly destined for Netflix: Patriots, at Almeida Theatre, reviewed
Patriots, by Peter Morgan, is a drama documentary about recent Russian history. And though it’s a topical show it’s not…
A well-meaning but dull Official History: Olivier's Normal Heart reviewed
The Normal Heart is not about Aids. Larry Kramer’s play is set in New York in 1981 at a time…
Homeric levels of misery: Paradise, at the Olivier Theatre, reviewed
The National Theatre has given Sophocles’s Philoctetes a makeover and a new title, Paradise. This must be ironic because the…
Racists will love it: National Theatre's Death of England – Delroy reviewed
Death of England: Delroy is a companion piece to Death of England, which ran in February at the NT and…
The National Theatre’s live-streaming policy is bizarre
The National’s bizarre livestreaming service continues. On 7 May, for one week only, it released a modern-dress version of Antony…
Worth watching for the comments thread alone: NT's Twelfth Night livestream reviewed
‘Enjoy world-class theatre online for free,’ announces the National Theatre. Every Thursday at 7 p.m. a play from the archive…
A decorative pageant that would appeal to civic grandees: The Secret River reviewed
The Secret River opens in a fertile corner of New South Wales in the early 1800s. William, a cockney pauper…
The gentle side of Bruckner: Rotterdam Philharmonic’s Prom reviewed
It’s intelligent, enjoyable, beautiful to look at and funny in unexpected places, yet Othello at the Globe didn’t quite meet…
If we offer Ian McKellan a peerage, will he promise not to inflict his King Lear on us again?
Gandalf, also known as Ian McKellen, has awarded himself another lap of honour by bringing King Lear back to London.…
Why has the National given over its largest stage to one of the nation’s smallest talents?
The National has made its largest stage available to one of the nation’s smallest talents. If Brian Friel had been…
Rory Kinnear is less Macbeth, more a tetchy manager of an Amazon warehouse
The Best Man by Gore Vidal is set during a fictional American election in 1960. Two gifted candidates seek their…
Age concern
Stephen Sondheim’s Follies takes a huge leap into the past. It’s 1971 and we meet two middle-aged couples who knew…
Les Blancs at the Olivier is good-ish, but it won't be a classic
Les Blancs had a troubled birth. In 1965 several unfinished drafts of the play were entrusted by its dying author,…
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…
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 Anglican elite laid bare: Temple at the Donmar Warehouse reviewed
In October 2011 anti-capitalist vagrants built an open-air squat outside St Paul’s within shrieking distance of London’s financial heart. The…
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…
