Theatre
Jennifer Saunders is brilliant: Blithe Spirit at the Harold Pinter Theatre reviewed
Blithe Spirit is a comedy with the plot of a horror story. Charles, a middle-aged novelist, lives happily with his…
Sexist, classist and pro-global warming: Frozen, at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, reviewed
Frozen the musical declares war on woke politics. The 2013 Disney movie has been turned into a song-and-dance show that…
Tsunami of piffle: Rockets and Blue Lights at the Dorfman Theatre reviewed
Deep breath. Here goes. Winsome Pinnock’s new play about Turner opens with one of the most confusing and illogical scenes…
Is the life of Jimmy Savile a suitable subject for drama?
Translating the story of Jimmy Savile to stage or screen is a creative minefield, says Jonathan Maitland, who knows from first-hand experience
Glib and snarky: Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cinderella, at Gillian Lynne Theatre, reviewed
It’s a rum beast the new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Cinderella is set in Belleville, a European city of 18th-century…
At last, a dose of up-close culture in London
In London for the first time in 18 months, I was as excited as a child on a birthday outing.…
Captures the rapturous gaiety of the original: Globe's Twelfth Night reviewed
The new Lily Allen vehicle opens in a spruced-up terrace in the East End. Allen plays a self-satisfied yuppie, Jenny,…
How we killed comedy theatre: Nigel Planer interviewed
Lloyd Evans talks to Nigel Planer about the death of comedy theatre — and how he’s trying to revive it
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…
The death of the Edinburgh Fringe
Lloyd Evans finds the newly returned Edinburgh Fringe quieter, more low-key — and all the better for it
The dramatic evolution of ‘actor’
‘That chap in Line of Duty. That’s what I’d call a bad actor,’ said my husband with vague certainty. He…
Sinatra, Bacon and a YouTube star: Edinburgh Fringe Festival round-up
Sinatra: Raw (Pleasance, until 15 August) takes us inside the mind of the 20th century’s greatest crooner. The performer, Richard…
Ian McKellen is riveting: Hamlet, at Theatre Royal Windsor, reviewed
Ian McKellen in his early eighties plays the Dane in his mid-twenties. A production with such a strange innovation should…
The history of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane is the theatrical history of England
The newly renovated Theatre Royal Drury Lane has seen it all and staged it all, says Robert Gore-Langton
One for hardcore Tennessee Williams fans only: The Two Character Play reviewed
It can be difficult to remember that Tennessee Williams, the great songster of the Deep South during the 1950s, was…
What a comic treat: The Game of Love and Chance at the Arcola reviewed
Lady Sylvia is a gorgeous aristocrat whose hand is sought by the charming Dorante whom she has never met. To…
The best theatre podcasts
All the world’s on stage again so where to go to for insight into what to see and why? Podcasts,…
A shrill, ugly, tasteless muddle: Romeo & Juliet reviewed
What shall we destroy next? Romeo & Julietseems a promising target and the Globe has set out to vandalise Shakespeare’s…
Wallace Shawn's Designated Mourner feels like watching the news
Pity the aesthete, the flâneur and the opera-goer. Those who find the contents of their own heads so dull and…
Staged: a handful of VIP events is no substitute for normality
Uncertainty is crippling our cultural life
The true cost of theatre closures
It turns out that if there’s one thing more expensive than making theatre, it’s not making it. Empty buildings haemorrhage…
Enjoyable in spite of the National's best efforts: Under Milk Wood reviewed
Before the National Theatre produced Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood they had to make a decision. How could they stuff…
This interactive Doctor Who show is as bombastic, fey and tedious as the TV series
Death of a Black Man is a little-known script from the 1970s written by Alfred Fagon who suffered a fatal…
Godot Is a Woman will have you laughing all evening and arguing all night
Godot Is a Woman opens with three tramps standing on a bare stage beneath a solitary upright. This isn’t Samuel…
Two hours of kitsch tomfoolery: Amélie at the Criterion reviewed
The latest movie to turn into a musical is Amélie, from 2001, about a Parisian do-gooder or ‘godmother of the…
