Long Day’s Journey Into Night; Where Have I Been All My Life?; Chalet Lines – review
Apollo, London; New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme; Bush, LondonEugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night is a mighty work. It has a straight-from-the-heart punch, a long, allusive reach and a deal of comic irony. Teetering on melodrama, it surges with...
Angela Carter: portrait in postcards
The author was in her literary prime when she died 20 years ago aged 51; since then her brilliantly exuberant novels have influenced a generation of writers. Her friend and literary executor has written an insightful memoir inspired by postcards Carter...
Angela Carter a portrait in postcards
Funny, vivid and revealing, the picture postcards Angela Carter sent to her friend Susannah Clapp in the 1980s provide a unique insight into the life and imagination of the late novelistSusannah Clapp
Lovesong; The Table; A Christmas Carol – review
Lyric Hammersmith; Soho; Arts, LondonLike love itself, Lovesong can take your breath away. This collaboration between the writing of Abi Morgan and the choreography of Frantic Assembly's Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett teeters on the brink of mawkishne...
The Woman in Black; The Mousetrap; Blood Brothers – review
As The Mousetrap celebrates its 60th year on the London stage, our critic sees three of the capital's longest-running shows – and finds plenty to admireBetween them they have run up more than 100 years in the West End. All of them are still packed ou...
Jumpy; Inadmissible Evidence; Sixty-Six Books – review
Royal Court; Donmar Warehouse; Bush, LondonTwo years ago when she was 17, Bel Powley was one of the stars in Polly Stenham's Tusk Tusk. Now here she is again, proving the staying power of the Royal Court's hyper-young talent. In Jumpy, the Court's late...
Anna Christie; The Globe Mysteries; Crazy for You – review
Donmar Warehouse; Globe; Regent's Park Open Air, all LondonJude Law lands on deck, flung from the ocean like a helpless fish. He's been on board only a few minutes before Ruth Wilson gives him a knockout punch: it looks so convincing that for a moment ...
One Man, Two Guvnors; Lord of the Flies; The Acid Test – review
Lyttelton; Regent's Park Open Air theatre; Royal Court, all LondonWithin minutes of appearing on stage he's somersaulted backwards over an armchair – and caught (he claims) a nut in his mouth. One scene later he has appealed to the audience for a san...
Dining with Alice; HighTide festival – review
Elsing Hall, Norfolk; Halesworth, Suffolk"Compared to this," bellows one of the Queens, "other entertainment will be like standing in fog and in mud." She has an angry point. Dining with Alice is vibrantly coloured: great bolts of red and white silk sw...
Swallows and Amazons; Get Santa!; The Animals and Children Took to the Streets; A Flea in Her Ear – review
Bristol Old Vic; Royal Court, London SW1; Battersea Arts Centre, London SW11; Old Vic, London SE1The Christmas show grew up this year. Not into innuendo and violence – panto can take care of all that – but into stylishness, subversion and invention...
Birdsong; On Ageing; The Big Fellah; Yes, Prime Minister | Theatre review
Comedy; Young Vic; Lyric Hammersmith; Gielgud, all LondonNot so much a dramatisation as a reading. Not so much a staging as a checklist of effects. Trevor Nunn's production of Birdsong is a flat-pack version of Sebastian Faulks's 1993 bestseller. It ha...
Andersen’s English | Theatre review
Hampstead theatre, London
Sebastian Barry's new play is a traffic jam of notions. It springs from the protracted visit Hans Christian Andersen made to Charles Dickens in 1857; it evokes the selfish blindness of bleeding-heart geniuses and looks at what it is to be an outsider; Max Stafford-Clark's direction...
