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Theatre review: Patti LuPone wreaks vengeance on Andrew Lloyd Webber

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:14:22 +0100

Patti LuPone says she loves London though one sometimes wonders why, given the treatment that Broadway’s original Evita has endured at the hands of a particular English composer, who also happens to sit in the House of Lords.

Theatre review: Daniel Radcliffe gives an admirably honest performance The Cripple of Inishmaan - but his Irish accent isn't quite there

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 08:44:54 +0100

You have to hand it to Daniel Radcliffe. Whether baring his all in the West End and on Broadway in Equus, or winning the New York Outer Critics' Circle Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical for How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, he's not been content to sit back on his pots of Harry Potter money or to settle for soft cinematic options.

John Studzinski: The banker marrying business and the arts

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0100

"Most people don't associate those in business with knowing anything about the arts," John Studzinski declares, raising his voice above the hubbub of creative types sharing a drink with philanthropists at a party in London's Young Vic theatre. "People think the arts and business are very different. They are not."

Why creating the perfect Alice is no tea party

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0100

"I almost wish I hadn't gone down that rabbit hole – and yet – and yet – it's rather curious, you know, this sort of life!" Oh, it is. It really is. Throughout this series of articles I have made frequent mention of the daily curiosities we encounter in our efforts to create other worlds and we chose one of the most jarringly unique of them when we alighted upon Alice. Now we see it coming to life as designer Leslie Travers, fresh from his mega-set for Peter Grimes on the beach at Aldeburgh, showed us his clever, evocative ideas. His presentation was given over Skype, with producer James Clutton huddled over an iPad with a Butterfly dress rehearsal in the background.

New book claims child-catchers kidnapped boys for the Elizabethan stage

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:37:13 +0100

Child-catchers stalked the streets of Elizabethan England seeking out boys they could force on to the stage, an Oxford academic has claimed in a new book.

Daniel Radcliffe on the difficulties of perfecting an Irish accent for his new play The Cripple of Inishmaan

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:31:21 +0100

Daniel Radcliffe has spoken about his struggle with perfecting an Irish accent for his new role as a disabled boy in Martin McDonagh’s play The Cripple of Inishmaan.

Helen Mirren in The Audience breaks audience record as 110,000 people watch in cinemas

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 09:55:41 +0100

It is called The Audience - and the West End play has broken an audience record.

Theatre review: Bracken Moor by Alexi Kaye Campbell is an uncanny ghost story about grief

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 09:53:39 +0100

Alexi Kaye Campbell's new play is set in 1937, with Britain struggling to emerge from the Depression, in the grand, wood-panelled Yorkshire home of Harold (Daniel Flynn), a prosperous middle-aged landowner who is now feeling the pinch.

Theatre review: Sweet Bird of Youth - I wouldn't get out of bed for this, Kim

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 19:30:00 +0100

Innocence has been rotted by the passing of the years in Sweet Bird of Youth, Tennessee Williams's 1950s tragedy set in the American Deep South.

Theatre review: A Mad World, My Masters, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 10:38:30 +0100

The National Theatre scored a massive hit by shifting Goldoni's 18th century commedia dell'arte, The Two Servants of One Master, from Venice to the Brighton underworld of 1963 and re-dubbing the result One Man, Two Guvnors. Now the RSC are up to similar tricks with Sean Foley's uproarious revival of A Mad World, My Masters.

Bitter stage stars out of tune with reality of life in TV

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 14:56:11 +0100

Revenge is a dish best served up in song – if you’re a Broadway star.

Premier performance: Gordon Brown's fall from power inspires new play

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 14:50:25 +0100

An hour and a quarter trapped in a darkened room with a ranting Gordon Brown - it sounds like Tony Blair’s worst nightmare. It’s also the premise for a new play, The Confessions of Gordon Brown, which previews at London’s White Bear Theatre next week ahead of a month-long run at the Edinburgh Fringe in August.

Theatre review: Sex and the drug-addled screen idol - Kim Cattrall excels in Sweet Bird of Youth

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 10:41:39 +0100

Kim Cattrall seems to have cornered the market in raddled, imperiously camp divas. After her Cleopatra at Chichester, she settles, as to manner born, into the role of Alexandra Del Lago, the faded screen icon who is on the run from a failed comeback in this powerful revival by Marianne Elliott of Tennessee Williams's mordantly funny and deeply troubled meditation on the desperate dismay of ageing and the iniquities of racial bigotry.

Ballet review: Swan Lake in the round, Royal Albert Hall, London

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 09:59:53 +0100

English National Ballet’s arena production turns Swan Lake in circles. Created in 1997, Derek Deane’s staging often doubles or quadruples the traditional choreography, so banks of dancers can project it right the way round the Royal Albert Hall. On opening night, Tamara Rojo’s Swan Queen had the charisma to fill the whole space.

Puppet theatre: The Muppets take Broadway!

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 18:40:27 +0100

In the 1984 movie The Muppets Take Manhattan, Kermit, Miss Piggy, Rizzo the Rat and pals negotiate various setbacks including scheming producers, jealous lovers, and memory loss to achieve their dream of appearing on Broadway. And now in a new twist, it looks as if it might actually happen for real.

Theatre review: Time of My Life, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 12:05:24 +0100

When Alan Ayckbourn’s 45th play transferred to the West End in 1993, the critics were a little underwhelmed and disappointed. It had done well in Scarborough but for some reason it failed to excite the passions of the metropolitan taste police.

Theatre review: The Amen Corner, Olivier, National Theatre, London

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 10:32:53 +0100

In the English theatre, you can go for years without bumping into either of the two best-known plays by James Baldwin, the African-American essayist, novelist and eloquent spokesman for the Civil Rights movement.

Sweet Bird of Youth: A journey in search of Tennessee

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:39:00 +0100

My confession is that I'd never read, seen or barely heard of Sweet Bird of Youth before the director Marianne Elliott introduced me to it. Possibly you haven't either. For many it's the blind spot in an otherwise familiar catalogue by that genius American playwright. It has something of a reputation for being... well, a "bit of a problem". It's a gruelling challenge to produce, certainly. But having been on this journey for the Old Vic's new production of the play, I firmly believe it's a valuable one. And, as a playwright used to writing original work (my latest This House just ended its run at the National Theatre), the notion of dramaturging someone else's play – whereby an existing text is analysed and edited – was unknown territory for me.

From Kim Cattrall to Elizabeth Taylor: Tennessee Williams's ageing heroine is an archetype that can be traced back to Shakespeare's Cleopatra

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:38:00 +0100

Fresh from playing Cleopatra in last year's Chichester production of Antony and Cleopatra, Kim Cattrall now takes to the stage as Alexandra Del Lago, the faded Hollywood star in flight from what she imagines (wrongly, it turns out) is a disastrous attempt at a cinematic come-back.

Sex And The City's Kim Cattrall says she's coming to terms with taking 'older women' roles

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 16:49:35 +0100

Sex And The City star Kim Cattrall says she has come to terms with taking on "older woman" roles as she prepares for her latest West End part.

Theatre review: Let the Right One In, Dundee Rep Theatre, Scotland

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:18:55 +0100

At odds with its basking height-of- summer premiere, the National Theatre of Scotland’s stage adaptation of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s cult supernatural coming-of-age novel – later adapted for the cinema in its native Sweden and the US – brings the eerie chill of a northern winter wilderness into the theatre.

Theatre review: The Birthday Party, Manchester Royal Exchange

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 10:36:27 +0100

An evening spent inhabiting Harold Pinter’s tensely disconcerting world is never going to be a sunlit stroll through the daisies.

Oxbridge hedonists and jobless rioters – sound familiar?

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0100

I wrote the play Hard Feelings – which will be revived tonight by Defibrillator Theatre at the Finborough – in early 1982, in the aftermath of the previous year's riots which had torn a great hole in the national fabric and shaken the government to act. The Scarman Report was commissioned, Sus laws were repealed, PACE was introduced and the impact of mass unemployment was assessed.

Dance review: Coppélia, Birmingham Hippodrome, Birmingham

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 11:58:13 +0100

Coppélia, one of the bounciest of 19th-century ballet classics, is a good vehicle for emerging ballerinas. In Birmingham Royal Ballet’s revival, 23-year-old soloist Maureya Lebowitz made a delightful heroine, with strong technique and lively presence. Around her, the company responded with a vivid performance, making this a very cheerful matinée.

Tony Awards 2013: Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber misses theatre awards due to ill health

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 10:31:40 +0100

Andrew Lloyd Webber missed last night's Tony Awards celebration marking the 25th anniversary of the Phantom of the Opera on Broadway due to ill health.

Theatre review: Mission Drift, National Theatre, London

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 09:55:56 +0100

A friend of mine recently got married in Las Vegas and celebrated by going to see Rod Stewart in concert there. He was enchanted by the whole glitzy glamour of the experience, and yet he’s a pretty old-fashioned type of socialist and, as it happens, an actor.

Tony Awards 2013: Winners list in full - from Kinky Boots to Matilda

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 08:39:59 +0100

Feelgood musical Kinky Boots, with songs by pop star and Broadway newcomer Cyndi Lauper, won six 2013 Tony Awards, including best musical, best score and best leading man.

Tony Awards 2013: British theatre dominates as Kinky Boots struts off with six gongs and Matilda scoops four

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 08:31:09 +0100

Feelgood musical Kinky Boots, with songs by pop star and Broadway newcomer Cyndi Lauper, won six 2013 Tony Awards, including best musical, best score and best leading man.

Dance review: Swan Lake in 3D - From Russia, with love... and an extra dimension

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 19:15:00 +0100

Five years from now, popular cinema may have shaken off its infatuation with 3D, but for the moment, the movers and shakers are in thrall to its peculiar approximation of the way the eye sees things for real.

Theatre review: Strange Interlude - Look me in the eye and try not to giggle

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 19:15:00 +0100

Charting the life of a would-be free spirit, Nina, and her menfolk through the decades, Eugene O'Neill's inter-war saga Strange Interlude isn't often staged. Uncut, it can last five hours. Some theatregoers grabbing the chance to see the National's new staging – with Anne-Marie Duff as Nina – may be grateful that it's been pruned to three and a bit.

'Strange Interlude': Careful with that aside, Eugene O'Neill. It might be funnier than you expected

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 00:01:04 +0100

I found myself wondering the other day whether the theatrical aside is an essentially comic device. The occasion was the first night of Simon Godwin's new production of Strange Interlude at the National Theatre (pictured), a positive fiesta of theatrical asides. On the evidence of that evening alone, there wouldn't have been much doubt about the answer. The theatrical aside, you would have concluded, is irresistibly comic in its nature, a rug-pulling bit of verbal slapstick which had the audience in stitches. This might have come as a surprise to Eugene O'Neill, who I don't imagine ever expected his socially daring drama to be hailed as "the laff-riot of 1928" when it was first produced on Broadway. But it seemed intentional in London. And the mechanism of the comedy involved isn't very complicated when you think about it. Someone says something in the imaginary public space of the drama – something bland or grand. And then they immediately contradict it in the real public space of the theatre.

Turmoil at the Royal Opera House as choreographer pulls out of Giuseppe Verdi's Les Vêpres Siciliennes

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 19:47:34 +0100

One of the showpiece productions of the forthcoming Royal Opera season is in turmoil after artistic differences saw the Royal Ballet pull out of Les Vêpres Siciliennes just months before opening night.

Ipswich theatre company helps drug users to break the cycle of addiction in town recovering from 'Suffolk strangler' murders

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 19:46:18 +0100

In 2008, Steve Wright, a forklift truck driver dubbed the “Suffolk strangler”, was jailed for life for murdering five women who worked as prostitutes in Ipswich.

Play of the week: Disgraced, Bush Theatre, London W12

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 19:00:00 +0100

An unnerving frisson runs through the nimble wit, toughness and pressing "now-ness" of New Yorker Ayad Akhtar's new play.

Take That's Gary Barlow to co-pen Peter Pan musical

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 13:55:28 +0100

Take That star Gary Barlow is heading to the West End to co-write a new musical based on the Johnny Depp film Finding Neverland.

Theatre review: Dances of Death, Gate, Notting Hill, London

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 10:05:50 +0100

Strindberg’s The Dance of Death (1900) is a play in two parts. Although Laurence Olivier and Geraldine McEwan played the full saga at the National Theatre in 1966, you only usually see Part One.

The Tony award nominations 2013: Feelgood fun from the best of Broadway

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 11:58:00 +0100

At the end of the new hit play on Broadway, a Chekhov spoof called Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, David Hyde Pierce as a modern Vanya in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, delivers a comic tirade against the loss of shared memory in our disconnected, techno-philiac lives, and about how much he misses the past.

Theatre review: Trash Cuisine, Young Vic, London

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 10:46:55 +0100

Roll up for a whole new concept of a cookery show with a special menu of fried murderer, stoned adulteress, tortured terrorist and, the ever popular old favourite, the slaughter of the innocents.

Dance review: RainForest, Rambert Dance Company, Barbican Art Gallery, London

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 10:12:22 +0100

Andy Warhol’s set for RainForest – a group of silver helium pillows, suspended in the air or floating free – started out as an art installation.

First glimpse of Sam Mendes' Charlie And The Chocolate Factory

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 12:25:46 +0100

Creators of the new West End stage version of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory have given their first glimpse of the production.

Theatre review: Strange Interlude, National Theatre, London

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 10:13:30 +0100

"Pardon me, while I have a strange interlude," said Groucho Marx in Animal Crackers, initiating one of very few jokes ever made in the cinema about the late-1920s experimental American theatre.

Let The Right One In: vampires on stage

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0100

In debates about Scottish independence a theory is regularly put forward that Scotland more resembles a Scandinavian country than an Anglo-Saxon one. The political implications of this aren't high up on John Tiffany's list of considerations in regard to his new play, an adaptation of the hit Swedish vampire novel and film Let The Right One In, but the cultural connection certainly resonates.

Exit, pursued by aunt: Jeeves and Wooster play finally hits the West End

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 11:00:00 +0100

Jeeves and Wooster are heading for the stage, with the adventures of P G Wodehouse’s most famous comic creations being adapted into a West End play for the first time.

Theatre review: Billy, Union Theatre, London

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 10:57:27 +0100

Forget Billy Elliot the musical and remember Billy Liar, the novel by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, template for all northern working-class, aspirational escape stories in the 1960s, the Tom Courtenay movie and, in 1974, this marvellous, resonating and utterly authentic show written by “Bond movie” composer, the late, great John Barry, television comedy writers Dick Clement and Ian La Fresnais (The Likely Lads, Porridge, etc) and Tin Pan Alley and Lloyd Webber lyricist Don Black.

Don't give up the day job: An Evening With Al Pacino at the London Palladium

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 23:00:04 +0100

Sunday night at the London Palladium used to be hosted by Bruce Forsyth or Jimmy Tarbuck. This Sunday, and for one night only, the great Al Pacino trod, or rather, slid across, the hallowed boards and talked about himself. Emma Freud was a tame, charming and rightly subservient interlocutor.

Agenda: 'American Psycho: the Musical'; dog beards; The Eden Sessions; sport drought

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Middle-class problems: Provenance

Theatre review: Race - Even the lawyers are in the dock

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 20:27:00 +0100

A black woman has accused a rich white guy of raping her in a hotel room. He's asking a law firm, comprised of one white and one black man, Lawson and Brown, to represent him. Add into the equation an African-American graduate, Susan, hired as Lawson's protégée, with her hackles raised.

Dance review: Raven Girl - Crack, flutter ... and a baby classic is hatched

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 20:27:00 +0100

Keep ploughing the same furrow. That's what artists tend do in a crowded field, and what our two best-known dance-makers, Wayne McGregor and Akram Khan, have been doing in different ways for well over a decade. Last week, though, both broke new ground that, in one case at least, proved surprisingly fertile.

Heads Up: Manchester International Festival

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 19:30:00 +0100

What are we talking about? The Manchester International Festival – the city's fourth biennial event, combining new art, film, music, theatre, dance, talks, and installations.

Theatre and opera needs to get with the programme

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 00:01:33 +0100

The programme for the recent and excellent Royal Opera production of Verdi's Nabucco must have left a few people at Covent Garden with red faces. An essay on exile, one of the themes of the opera, looked at oligarchs living away from home and ventured that not all lived the wealthy, pampered life of Boris Berezovsky in Britain. By the time opera-goers were reading these words, Berezovsky had been found hanged.

Revenge is a dish best served as a hot pie

Fri, 31 May 2013 19:00:14 +0100

Out of ideas for a dinner party? Why not serve up a dish made out of the heads of two children stewed in their own blood encased in a pie-crust of their ground down bones? Such is the notoriously grisly fare of Shakespeare's revenge tragedy Titus Andronicus and, in a cheeky nod to the play's nasty nosh, two chefs at the RSC's Rooftop Restaurant in Stratford-upon-Avon have devised a Titus Andronicus-themed pie with a steak and KIDney (boom boom) filling as a culinary accompaniment to the RSC's new production.

Play of the week: To Kill a Mockingbird, Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park, London NW1

Fri, 31 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

Robert Sean Leonard gives a quiet, shadowy but highly effective performance as Atticus Finch, the Alabama lawyer who makes a stand against the rape and racism that disfigure a small town in Harper Lee's classic novel, adapted for the stage by Christopher Sergel.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare’s Globe, London

Fri, 31 May 2013 10:55:47 +0100

Proving that she’s as good an essayist as she is brilliant an actress, Michelle Terry discusses the role of Hippolyta, Theseus’ bride and Amazonian queen, in the programme, suggesting that her mere presence disrupts the patriarchal law of Athens in Shakespeare’s imperishable comedy of love, marriage and fornication in the forest.

Theatrical device? The actors who want your mobile phone to go off in the auditorium

Thu, 30 May 2013 15:37:16 +0100

Audiences will be reminded to leave their mobile phones on at a new play at Pulse Fringe Festival in Ipswich on Monday.

Inside: Edinburgh Fringe to showcase timely new drama inspired by Natascha Kampusch, Elisabeth Fritzl and Jaycee Lee Dugard

Thu, 30 May 2013 15:08:09 +0100

Weeks after the dramatic escape of three kidnap victims in Cleveland, Ohio a new one-woman show set in a basement will put the harrowing story of a young, female abductee on stage. Inside, written by and starring Rosie MacPherson (above), will preview at the Lowry Studio in Salford and London’s Theatre 503 next month before a month-long run at the Edinburgh Fringe in August.

Reginald D Hunter, Lucy Porter and Jason Manford set to appear at largest-ever Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Thu, 30 May 2013 15:00:37 +0100

This year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe will be bigger than ever before, with a record 2,871 shows.

Theatre review: Race, Hampstead Theatre, London

Thu, 30 May 2013 10:29:26 +0100

Sitting awkwardly at the centre of David Mamet’s eighty-minute play about race called Race is a four-letter word about sex.

Dance review: iTMOi, Sadler’s Wells, London

Thu, 30 May 2013 10:21:16 +0100

Akram Khan’s new iTMOi (in the mind of Igor) starts with a roar, a bellowing shout that makes the audience jump. The confrontation goes with the theme. iTMOi marks the centenary of The Rite of Spring, the iconoclastic ballet with music by Igor Stravinsky and choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky, which sparked a riot at its first performance.

Theatre review: Chimerica, Almeida Theatre, London

Wed, 29 May 2013 10:18:30 +0100

Lucy Kirkwood has taken her title from a coinage in Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money and the mystery at the centre of her play from one of the most evocative photographs of the last century: that of the unidentified Tank Man in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

David Mamet on 'Race', his provocative new play

Wed, 29 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

To the Broadway and Hollywood establishments, it was as though Edward Albee had let it be known that he had joined the National Rifle Association or that Tony (Angels in America) Kushner had allowed the news crews to film him as he voluntarily checked into a Christian-run gay-to-straight conversion camp. These analogies give you some idea of the ruffled feathers in the liberal dovecot when David Mamet – author of such abrasively anti-capitalist stage classics as American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross – published an article entitled "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'".

Theatre review: Disgraced, Bush Theatre, London

Tue, 28 May 2013 10:41:55 +0100

There's an unnerving frisson of electricity running through this new American play by New Yorker Ayad Akhtar. Disgraced won last year’s Pulitzer prize for drama, not usually a signal of quality. But this play's a cut above the norm in its nimble wit, toughness and pressing "now-ness".

Theatre review: How to Host a Dinner Party, Brighton Fringe

Mon, 27 May 2013 12:29:22 +0100

The Sussex company Park Bench Dance Theatre’s show opens with two barefoot, smartly dressed women shuffling on to a empty stage with a dining table. They disappear again and return with some chairs. A long and wordless tussle ensues in which identical dining chairs are shifted and swapped, shunted and dragged, and swapped and shifted again.

Classical review: Raven Girl -The Time Traveler's Wife ballet fails to take flight

Mon, 27 May 2013 09:50:43 +0100

Like its heroine, the new collaboration between choreographer Wayne McGregor and author Audrey Niffenegger is neither one thing nor the other. Caught between worlds, the ballet has striking elements but doesn’t take flight.

Theatre review: Disgraced - When the melting pot boils over

Sat, 25 May 2013 18:00:00 +0100

Amir had a Muslim surname, but has changed it to Kapoor. He has also fudged whether his parents came from Pakistan or India and spurned his mother's virulent anti-Semitism. Now a dapper New York attorney – more than a decade after 9/11 – he scorns Islam as backward and chauvinist.

Heads Up: The Drowned Man

Sat, 25 May 2013 18:00:00 +0100

What are we talking about? A new show from immersive, site-specific theatre company Punchdrunk. It's a promenade performance through a large building next to Paddington station, which they promise to transform into "the forgotten world of Temple Studios", a British outpost of a Hollywood film-making powerhouse studio. Subtitled A Hollywood Fable, expect golden age glamour cut with lost dreams, all inspired by Georg Büchner's incomplete play, Woyzeck.

Theatre review: Titus Andronicus, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

Sat, 25 May 2013 16:52:34 +0100

“But must my sons be slaughtered in the streets for valiant doings in their country’s cause?” asks Titus Andronicus, mourning a stage full of corpses as prelude to three hours of gratuitous violence with knives, daggers and meat cleavers.

The last days of Anne Boleyn

Fri, 24 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

The room is dominated by a four-poster bed. Its velvet covering glows richly red under the light. In a few moments a young man will be interrupted by his sister, 19-year-old Anne Boleyn.

Theatre review: Sherlock Holmes – The Best Kept Secret, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:50:03 +0100

The Sherlock Holmes franchise has been assiduously exploited on the written page, on stage, cinema and TV ever since A Study in Scarlet announced the arrival of the world’s greatest detective back in 1887.

Theatre review: The History Boys, Sheffield Crucible

Thu, 23 May 2013 13:19:20 +0100

When The History Boys was first performed at the National Theatre in 2004 the reverential cupping of a sixth former's genitals by an appreciative retirement-age teacher was enough to elicit ceaseless gales of laughter. Today it is more likely to form the basis of an investigation by detectives from the public protection division.

Shameless actor David Threlfall cast as Tommy Cooper

Thu, 23 May 2013 13:10:10 +0100

Shameless star David Threlfall has landed a role as the late comic Tommy Cooper - just like that.

Theatre review: 4000 Miles, The Print Room, London

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:20:17 +0100

Amy Herzog's play has travelled, well, nearly 4,000 miles: it premièred in New York in 2011 – winning its young author an Obie – while in the UK it opened at the Ustinov Studio in Bath, directed by James Dacre, earlier this year.

Theatre review: The Kite Runner, Theatre Royal, Brighton Festival

Thu, 23 May 2013 10:52:27 +0100

It was always going to be a tall order bringing Khaled Hosseini’s mega-selling 2003 novel about friendship, betrayal and exile to the stage.

Theatre review: To Kill a Mockingbird, Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park, London

Thu, 23 May 2013 10:49:03 +0100

The only sin Scout Finch, the eight-year-old narrator of Harper Lee’s classic novel, has ever heard her lawyer father denounce was to kill a mockingbird; they do nothing but make music for us to enjoy.

How to follow The Time Traveller's Wife – a ballet

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Audrey Niffenegger, author of the bestselling The Time-Traveler's Wife, has never felt that she was cut out for ballet. "I'm five foot nine, I'm not the most athletic person by any stretch of the imagination and I've always had a poor sense of balance," she remarks. "Watching someone go up on pointe, it's like, 'How does she do it?'. I didn't even learn to ride a bike until I was nine – I kept falling over. I felt like another species!"

Theatre review: Table Manners, The Basement, Brighton Festival

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:23:08 +0100

Table Manners is a triple bill inspired by that most genteel of gatherings: the dinner party. But this is no cosy, bring-a-bottle, one-pot-on-the-scrubbed-kitchen-table affair. Rather it is a “trip to the end of etiquette”, courtesy of three young groups of theatre-makers who see gathering friends for a bite to eat as the excuse for some very bad behaviour indeed.

Theatre review: The Contents of a House, Preston Manor, Brighton Festival

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:20:40 +0100

One of the main attractions of this year’s Brighton Festival is a night-time traipse around Preston Manor, a gorgeous historic house in the suburbs which was bequeathed to the city by the Stanford family in 1932.

Dance review: Sylvie Guillem, Sadler’s Wells, London

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:50:03 +0100

Some stars become famous far beyond their own fields. You don't need to be interested in running to know about Usain Bolt; you don’t need to be interested in dance to have heard of French ballerina Sylvie Guillem. In both cases, the fame comes from something beyond their undoubted skill. It’s about charisma, the personality that shines through the technique.

How Alice became opera's answer to the Sex Pistols

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Amonth of ups and downs with difficulties throughout the production stable. Classic FM turned us into the operatic version of the Sex Pistols by banning us from the station; well, not so much banned but judged our single from the opera Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ("I Flew High in My Dreams") to be "not for them". The rock'n'roll rebel that lurks within us means we prefer to think of it as being banished (well, it never did Johnny Rotten any harm). I am certain that if promoting records was my primary role in life, I would be quite the tyrant and that producers and radio bosses would hate me. Even more than they already do, in fact.

Tom Hiddleston heads new Donmar Warehouse season as Hollywood stars make way for British talent

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:00:28 +0100

Hollywood imports are no longer required to make a buzz on the West End stage, the head of the Donmar Warehouse said, after unveiling a new Autumn season starring Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Raine.

Theatre review: The Victorian in the Wall, Royal Court Theatre, London

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:37:30 +0100

When Dominic Cooke took over at the Royal Court, he said he wanted to stage more plays about “what it means to be middle class”. Now, as the reins of artistic director pass to Vicky Featherstone, comes possibly the most middle-class play of his era - and very funny on the topic it is too.

See Ibsen’s Public Enemy at the Young Vic

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:57:10 +0100

Ibsen’s timeless story of corruption, pollution and courage is revived in David Harrower’s powerful new version at London’s Young Vic theatre.

Dance review: The Great Gatsby at Sadler's Wells: The Roaring Twenties, by the book

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:15:00 +0100

You can't fault Northern Ballet for timing, as its new stage adaptation of The Great Gatsby drops on London the same week as Baz Luhrmann's film remake is shown in Cannes. The first night even mustered a red carpet and a posse of paparazzi at the door. But what works on stage is not what works on screen. There can be no panoramic camerawork to establish Jay Gatsby's palatial estate, no text with which to convey "the exhilarating ripple" of Daisy Buchanan's voice. What's more, the characters must identify themselves without being named. So, it's a credit to David Nixon as both director and choreographer that he not only succeeds in telling the story clearly, and pacily, but with a depth of visual detail that sends you scurrying back to F Scott Fitzgerald's prose to verify the exact descriptive phrase. And it's all there. For once, no one goes home muttering "that's not how I remember the book".

Theatre review: Public Enemy - Every good town needs its scapegoat

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:15:00 +0100

In the popular imagination, clean living and Scandinavia are firmly associated. The former goes with the latter's terrain, the snow-capped peaks, the mountain lakes. In the 1980s, Norway was memorably outraged by the acid rain blowing over from dirty, industrial Britain.

Play of the week: The Hothouse, Trafalgar Studios, London SW1

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

Simon Russell Beale transforms into a manic version of Ronnie Barker in this merciless, very funny revival of Harold Pinter's second major stage play.

Dance event of the week: Sylvie Guillem, Sadler's Wells, London EC1

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

The French ballerina Sylvie Guillem is one of dance's biggest stars, known for her headstrong charisma and the extreme lines of her long, elegant limbs.

Theatre review: Mess, The Nightingale, Brighton Fringe

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:02:51 +0100

It has become the fashion to make musicals out of apparently untouchable subjects. The Ipswich murders in London Road, female genital mutilation in Book of Mormon and now, Mess, which makes a song and dance out of anorexia. “Don’t leave!” as the cast shout at the top of the show. It sounds appalling but in fact it is one of the oddest, funniest, saddest pieces of theatre I’ve seen in some time.

Rediscovered two page plays by Harold Pinter and John Mortimer to be performed

Thu, 16 May 2013 12:36:50 +0100

When Umbrellas, a lost sketch written by Harold Pinter for a revue at Nottingham Playhouse in 1960, resurfaced two years ago, it sent Giles Croft, the theatre’s artistic director, scurrying to the archives.

Theatre review: These Shining Lives, Park Theatre, London

Wed, 15 May 2013 23:00:04 +0100

The new Park Theatre in Finsbury Park, north London, is a spanking new five-star neighbourhood theatre opening with a three-star play about girls in a 1920s Chicago watch-making factory who are gradually alerted (though not by the bosses) to the dangers of radium in the illuminated dials when one of them becomes seriously ill.

Celebrities gripped by Great Gatsby-mania at premiere of new ballet

Wed, 15 May 2013 09:37:38 +0100

Stars were gripped by Great Gatsby-mania last night as they flocked to the London premiere of a new ballet based on the in vogue Jazz Age tale.

Theatre review: Pastoral, Soho Theatre, London

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:10:46 +0100

Thomas Eccleshare’s first play won the 2011 Verity Bargate award, so named in honour of the Soho’s founding co-director, and it arrives in London from a season at the High Tide Festival in Halesworth, Suffolk (where I saw it), full of bleak poetry and hilarious stage action.

Theatre review: Public Enemy, Young Vic, London

Tue, 14 May 2013 09:50:38 +0100

A tale of corruption, greed and the responsibility of the press, states the Young Vic's publicity, and you can't say fairer than that. Ibsen's perennially pertinent dissection of spa town fall-out after the chief medical officer, Doctor Stockmann, undermines the tourist industry by pointing out that the water is contaminated, never fails.

Nirbhaya: Play about the Delhi rape that shocked the world set for Edinburgh

Tue, 14 May 2013 09:00:00 +0100

No play currently in London has made a more powerful impact than Mies Julie. But as the production was being bedecked with five-star reviews for supercharging Strindberg's 19th-century drama with sex, and boldly transporting it to post-apartheid South Africa, the show's creator Yael Farber was focusing on a project that may make that show appear timid by comparison.

Theatre review: High Tide Festival, Halesworth

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:24:48 +0100

The Suffolk town of Halesworth might look idyllic but don’t be fooled, there’s darkness lurking behind the half-timbered facades. This year’s High Tide festival of new writing tackles everything from heroin addiction to Hillsborough, bullying to black actors in “blackface”. You couldn’t accuse it of being twee, although you might wish for a bit of light relief. Small-scale doesn’t have to equal issues-driven.

Comedy review: Daniel Kitson: After The Beginning, Before The End Theatre Royal Brighton Festival

Mon, 13 May 2013 10:14:12 +0100

Daniel Kitson’s new show is a reflection on reality, memory and our sense of self. Hardly wall-to-wall giggles, you might think, but this publicity-shy, TV-shunning, Perrier Award-winning comic’s talent lies in burrowing into the human psyche and dispensing profound nuggets through tales in which, more often than not, he is the hapless protagonist. After The Beginning, Before The End is like a TED talk with added LOLs.

Theatre review: London Wall, St James Theatre, London

Mon, 13 May 2013 09:59:30 +0100

As a study in the personal trials and tribulations of life in the office, John Van Druten’s 1931 play is a little closer in style and banality to Ricky Gervais than to the advertising agency in Mad Men.

Dance review: Hansel and Gretel - Something very nasty beneath the woodshed

Sat, 11 May 2013 19:10:00 +0100

The reason fairy stories have endured in the collective consciousness is not just that successive generations have been offered them as childhood fare. It's that they give a manageable shape and form to our deepest adult fears. So it should come as no surprise that Liam Scarlett, whose last ballet tackled the murky world of the painter Walter Sickert and his possible identity as Jack the Ripper, is now peering into the darkest corners of a Grimm Brothers' tale.

Theatre review: Passion Play - Can I speak to the real operator?

Sat, 11 May 2013 19:10:00 +0100

We used to have angels on our shoulders, according to the old morality plays. There would be a bad one whispering devilish suggestions in our left ear while a good one – on the right side – tried to pull us back from temptation. You could say they were allegorical precursors of Freud's id and superego.

Theatre review: Sons Without Fathers, Arcola Theatre, London

Sat, 11 May 2013 13:44:08 +0100

Everything is weird about Chekhov’s first play, best known as Platonov, and here given a tremendous, roistering, sex-and-vodka update by Polish director Helena Kaut-Howson that suggests life in the Russian countryside today is not much more fun than it was for the serfs.

I'm sorry, Helen Mirren, but with this latest crowd-pleaser you broke the golden rule of acting

Sat, 11 May 2013 00:01:45 +0100

What a moment it must have been when Dame Helen Mirren walked into the street in the interval of the West End production of The Audience in which she plays the Queen and reprimanded a bunch of drummers drowning out her words. It's a great story, that the drummers promoting a festival were confronted by a woman the image of Her Majesty. How they must now be wishing they had been promoting a festival in similar, noisy fashion outside the Donmar theatre when Nicole Kidman was famously appearing there naked. That would have been a confrontation beyond your average drummer's dream.

The Saturday Miscellany: Long-running musicals; Alan Sugar; How the Light Gets In; Roger Kasparian; Cathy Azria

Sat, 11 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

CULTURE CLASH: LONG-RUNNING MUSICALS