RSC

The bald truth about Patrick Stewart

16 December 2023 9:00 am

The actor best known for his role as Star Trek’s Captain Picard comes across as pompous, chippy and point-scoring as he reminisces about directors and fellow stars

How Facebook became a freedom-gobbling corporate monster

30 January 2021 9:00 am

Southwark Playhouse is beating the latest lockdown with a zingy new musical about social media. The performers, Francesca Forristal and…

Reflections on isolation: the first lockdown dramas reviewed

18 April 2020 9:00 am

High Tide got there first. The East Anglian theatre company has produced a series of lockdown mini-dramas, Love in the…

Riveting and beautifully staged analysis of totalitarianism: Arcola’s #WeAreArrested reviewed

23 November 2019 9:00 am

When the RSC does modern drama it usually lays on an ultra-worthy yarn with a huge cast, dozens of fancy…

Lee Evans in Pinter Three. Photo: Marc Brenner

Lee Evans’s acrobatic clowning is the best thing about Pinter Three

17 November 2018 9:00 am

Pinter Three appeals to opposite poles of the play-going spectrum. The birdbrains like me will enjoy the music-hall sketches while…

Roger Allam as John Christie in David Hare’s The Moderate Soprano

A champion actor and fully paid-up member of the human race: Roger Allam interviewed

26 May 2018 9:00 am

A most excellent fellow, Roger Allam. On the stage he brings dignity to all he does, in the noblest traditions…

Going Dutch: Eelco Smits and Janni Goslinga of Toneelgroep Amsterdam in ‘Kings of War’

This year's must-see Shakespeare? Four hours of history in Dutch

23 April 2016 9:00 am

James Woodall talks to the Belgian director Ivo van Hove, who has brought a swathe of Shakespeare’s history plays to the stage in Dutch (four hours of it)

Shakespeare at his freest and most exuberant: The Wars of the Roses reviewed

24 October 2015 9:00 am

The RSC’s The Wars of the Roses solves a peculiar literary problem. Shakespeare’s earliest history plays are entitled Henry VI…

The way we were: Dame Peggy Ashcroft as Queen Margaret, with Donald Sinden and cast members, in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s ‘Wars of the Roses’, Stratford, 1963

Shakespeare's Wars of the Roses is being staged without a single black actor. So what?

5 September 2015 9:00 am

Trevor Nunn is staging Shakespeare’s Wars of the Roses without a single black actor. So what, says Robert Gore-Langton

Christopher Turner as Artemidoro, the romantic lead transformed into a raving hippy in Trofonio’s ‘cave’

Don’t listen to Amadeus - this Salieri opera is better than Mozart

25 July 2015 9:00 am

Magical transformations are a commonplace of opera. We see our heroes turned into animals, trees, statues; witness wild beasts turned…

Volpone and his coterie of misfits, L–R from the back: Julian Hoult (Castrone), Ankur Bahl (Androgyno), Henry Goodman (Volpone) and Jonathan Key (Nano)

Trevor Nunn’s Volpone reviewed: Henry Goodman bewitches the audience by doing nothing wittily

18 July 2015 9:00 am

Easy playwright to get on with, Ben Jonson. His world is simple, his tastes endearing. He likes golden-hearted swindlers and…

Find the voice, find the character: Steve Nallon as Margaret Thatcher

Even those who reviled Thatcher will be moved, appalled and astonished: Dead Sheep at the Park reviewed

18 April 2015 9:00 am

Dead Sheep is a curious dramatic half-breed that examines Geoffrey Howe’s troubled relationship with Margaret Thatcher. Structurally it’s a Mexican…

Why are Shakespeare’s women so feeble?

29 March 2014 9:00 am

Shakespeare did not give his female characters pivotal roles, but some of his contemporaries did, as Lloyd Evans discovers

The Thomas Cromwell plays would be stronger if they made him weaker 

18 January 2014 9:00 am

Three things you might not expect of the RSC’s adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Tudor novels. First, Mike Poulton’s plays have…

James Delingpole: I'm in love with Shakespeare — and with David Tennant's Richard II

9 November 2013 9:00 am

‘Dad, it’s three hours long,’ says Boy, worriedly. ‘Yeah. And whose bloody fault is it we’re going?’ I want to…