Inside Theatre & Dance
Curtain rises on new dawn for Iraqi theatre
As the clock strikes eight, the curtain is raised at the Iraqi National Theatre in what actors hope is a return to regular night-time performances, six and a half years after the US invasion.
First Impressions: Annie Get Your Gun, Imperial Theatre, New York (1946)
A good professional Broadway musical. Annie Get Your Gun has a pleasant score by Irving Berlin and it has Ethel Merman to roll her eyes and to shout down the rafters. The colours are pretty, the dancing is amiable and unaffected, and Broadway by this time is well used to a book which doesn't get anywhere in particular. Annie, in short, is an agreeable evening on the town.
Nation, National Theatre, London
The Line, Arcola, London
The Priory, Royal Court, London
The National Theatre's adaptation of Terry Pratchett's 'Nation' makes for a poor follow-up to 'War Horse'. More entertaining is a gothic-horror take on the midlife crises of the middle classes
Latest videos
|
|
Most popular in Arts & Entertainment
Read
1
Paranormal Activity, Oren Peli, 85 mins, (15)
Bunny and the Bull, Paul King, 101 mins, (15)
2 Indy Choice: Best of the new films
3 Jessica Biel: Out of this world
4 100 Best Films: The final countdown, 20-1
5 Joss Stone: 'I just think some people are genuinely nasty characters'
6 BANNED: The most controversial films
8 What do Swayze, Motty and Zippy have in common?
9 I created a monster: Julia Donaldson on how the Gruffalo has taken over her life
10 Nowt so cool as folk... and that's no pipe dream
11 Movie heaven: Anthony Quinn's 100 Best Films, Day 4, 40-21
Emailed
1 Travel; 24-Hour Room Service: Weisses Kreuz, Innsbruck
2 When friends fall out: The story of Facebook's creation
3 First Night: Elbow and the Halle Orchestra, Manchester Festival
4 The Christmas arts round-up: It's behind you!
6 Obituary: Sir William van Straubenzee
7 Twilight’s 'New Moon' fastest-selling ticket in US, opening worldwide
8 Best Seat in the House, By Frank Johnson Edited by Virginia Fraser
9 I created a monster: Julia Donaldson on how the Gruffalo has taken over her life
Commented
1Blair's fury: Are mandarins seeking revenge?
2John Rentoul: The really disturbing question about Iraq
3Swiss vote on controversial minaret ban
4The <i>IoS</i> Christmas Appeal: The Taliban are being routed, but at a terrible price in human mise
5Johann Hari: A morally bankrupt dictatorship built by slave labour
6Sir Paul to tell EU: 'Less meat means less heat'
7Johann Hari: The real reason Obama is not making much progress
8Lord Pearson plays the Islam card to win leadership of Ukip
9Banks go on the offensive against customers
10Todmorden's Good life: Introducing Britain's greenest town
|
|
FIVE BEST PLAYS
The Habit of Art
(NT: Lyttelton, London)
Alan Bennett’s multi-layered, hilariously provocative new play stars Richard Griffiths as the poet W H Auden and Alex Jennings as Benjamin Britten.
(020 7452 3000) to 6 Apr
Cock
(Royal Court, London)
The young playwright Mike Bartlett has performed a brilliant and blackly hilarious feat of penile provocation for the Naughties. It’s an intense, unbroken 80-minute encounter with bsexuality and its discontents.
(020-7565 5000) to 19 Dec
The Fahrenheit Twins
(Barbican, London)
Hayley Carmichael and Paul Hunter star as a pair of twins trapped in an artificial predicament by far from natural parenting in this delightfully inventive, funny-sad new double-hander from Told by an Idiot.
(020 7638 8891) to 5 Dec
Our Class
(NT: Cottesloe, London)
Tadeusz Slobodzianek’s new play is a gritty, hauntingly effective take on the massacre of the Jewish population of a Polish town in 1941.
(020-7452 3000) to 12 Jan
War Horse
(New London Theatre, London)
The National Theatre’s moving adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s novel, adapted by Nick Stafford, about a horse sold to the cavalry and pitched into the First World War.
(0844 412 4654) to 12 Feb