The Corn is Green, review: Nicola Walker is unmissable in this riveting production
Unsentimental and unshowy, here Walker projects the subtlest details as though we’re watching her in close-up. Particularly so in the pivotal moment when this no-nonsense figure, all…
For Harrison Birtwistle, composing was a voyage to the unknown
The death of Harrison Birtwistle feels like the passing of an era. He was our very own modernist, the last living link back to that heady post-war…
Jez Butterworth’s bold, brilliant Jerusalem wouldn’t be written today
Then there is Johnny himself. He is feckless, deceitful, deeply dodgy, but Christ, I rooted for him throughout: yearning for him to have a proper relationship with…
Jez Butterworth’s bold, brilliant Jerusalem wouldn’t be written today
Then there is Johnny himself. He is feckless, deceitful, deeply dodgy, but Christ, I rooted for him throughout: yearning for him to have a proper relationship with…
Small Island is a tremendous, tragi-comic dance through a pivotal moment in British history
Given the National Theatre’s reported lockdown losses of £50 million, not to mention its more recent Covid woes and the all-out flop that was Manor (in the…
Our Generation is a frank, fond tribute to the agony and ecstasy of generation Snapchat
The raw material must have seemed as daunting as adolescence itself. Blythe’s project initially lacked an obvious focal event. But, as it turned out, Covid-19 gave the…
Our shouty modern age has no appetite for the complexity of great art
When a theatre critic friend invited me to Wuthering Heights at the National last week, I thought of how I had loved Emily Bronte’s book when I…
Wuthering Heights, National Theatre, review: Brontë turned into a frolicsome, larky romp
A dedicated purveyor of passion on stage, over the years the director Emma Rice has served up love illicit (Tristan and Yseult), love furtive (Brief Encounter) and…
British theatre is out of love with comedy – but not for the reason you think
These are not plays preserved in aspic, but works that offer abstract depictions of humanity which speak to us all; the RSC production of Tartuffe, for instance,…
It’s curtains for theatres unless big business steps into the limelight
What a difference a week makes. Just days before millions of Britons effectively went into their own lockdown, encouraged by the Government’s rhetoric to minimise socialising, the…
Now’s the perfect time to reawaken Sleeping Beauty
Perhaps because we are loath to see the things we love decline and fall, we have imagined places of frozen beauty, such as Venice, from which time…
The biggest stars of British theatre in 2021 didn’t even set foot on a stage
Likewise, you could see why Andrew Lloyd Webber was so keen to get his latest musical, Cinderella, open, even vowing he’d risk jail by flouting social distancing…
Trouble in Mind, National’s Dorfman Theatre, review: a timely – yet uneven – satire of racism in theatre
In the turbulent aftermath of the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests that subsequently erupted, multiple sectors of society have had to take…
Tamsin Greig interview: ‘I probably shouldn’t have been in Friday Night Dinner’
Of course, with series such as Episodes and Black Books, Greig is known for her comic work, but she is also a stage actor of considerable acclaim….
As a vicar, I’d be a baddie in Philip Pullman’s novels. But I love them – his real enemy isn’t God
If Pan may be understood as Lyra’s consciousness, by the second book in the trilogy they are not on good terms, a familiar tension to anyone who…
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, review: this triumph of storytelling has an undying appeal
Almost ten years on from its triumphant West End run, Marianne Elliott’s hi-tech National Theatre production based on Mark Haddon’s evergreen novel remains as fresh as ever…
Death of England: Face to Face, review: raw lockdown drama shines light on the politics of identity
What’s in a face? Quite a lot when you are convinced that your mixed-race daughter has similar features to her racist Engerland-braying grandad. “Alan Fletcher, with his…
A Netflix for arts lovers? It might work in Italy, but not here
But there is a wider problem with the idea of a British cultural Netflix, that is shaped by our national identity. We have a problem with the…
Manor, review: an odd mix of pantomime and socio-political evaluation
As Moira Buffini, writer of hit Netflix film The Dig, rightly asserted in her curtain-raiser piece about her new play in the paper this week, the manor…
Moira Buffini: why I had to set my play in an English manor house
Our mum would sometimes take us to Tatton Park, a stately home near the small town where we lived in Cheshire. She’d set up a picnic and…