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Matthew Bourne's Early Adventures, Sadler's Wells, London; Ballo della Regina/La Sylphide, Royal Opera House, London

Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

It's not just the humour of Matthew Bourne's early work that makes it so remarkable. It's also the gayness. Emerging from dance training in the late 1980s, Bourne set up his fledgling company in a world still sniggering behind its hand, pre-Section 28, at the notion of male love.

Chariots of Fire, Hampstead Theatre, London Children's Children, Almeida, London In the Next Room (The Vibrator Play), Ustinov Studio, Bath

Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Adapted from the award-winning film, Edward Hall's staging of Chariots of Fire is just out of the starting blocks at Hampstead. Yet this homage to Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell – Britain's triumphant Olympic sprinters of 1924 – already has a West End transfer confirmed for mid-June. Is Chariots merely hitching a ride on the London 2012 bandwagon? Is it a winner, theatrically?

The London 2012 Festival: The greatest show of a great year

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

You have to hand it to the London 2012 Festival team. When they call it "a once in a lifetime experience", I rather think they mean it. In an "age of austerity", this almighty splurge is not to be sniffed at. More than 25,000 performers and 12,000 events are involved, with every corner of the country, more or less, becoming part of it. Heaps of it is free at the point of use. And if the full programme is... well, a little confusing, perhaps it could scarcely be otherwise, given the sheer scale of the bonanza.

David Lister: The little niggles keeping the arts from entering an Elizabethan golden age

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

On Wednesday night I joined the great, the good and the odd crafty ligger at the Royal Academy, where the Queen hosted a celebration for the arts. I'm with Her Majesty on this one. There's quite a lot to celebrate. As a look at the cultural fare in the London 2012 festival, detailed in this issue, shows, you can't move for arts this summer. Sport, slightly bizarrely in Olympics year, has become a brief interlude in the weeks and weeks and weeks of Cultural Olympiad shows, exhibitions and mini-festivals that owe their existence to the Olympics. They grew out of the Games, and are almost devouring them.

Observations: Literary lessons from N F Simpson - an absurdly good playwright

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Tomorrow, London's Royal Court Theatre will hold a celebration of the life and work of Britain's greatest absurdist playwright, N F Simpson (1919 -2011). And I imagine we will hear much talk of the lunatic imagination that could summon up a suburban man teaching 500 speak-your-weight machines to sing the Hallelujah chorus, or a world where, if your wife says, "There's a man outside wanting you to form a government," you reply: "At this time of night?"

First Night: Posh, Duke of York's Theatre, London

Thu, 24 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

"Posh off!" was the headline in The Sun when, in the wake of the last Budget, Conservative MP Nadine Dorries described her own Prime Minister and Chancellor as "two arrogant posh boys" who don't know the price of milk and who show "no remorse, no contrition, and no passion to want to understand the lives of others". Both the headline and the comment must have been music to the ears of Laura Wade, whose Royal Court play Posh, revised to keep abreast of events, was readying itself to transfer to the West End after a two-year gap.

Matthew Bourne's Early Adventures, Sadler's Wells, London

Wed, 23 May 2012 11:39:08 +0100

We're already in classic Bourne territory, with comedy masking yearning and repression, woven through with sharp movie references. For all the wit, this revival is hit and miss. At its best, it’s funny and touching at once. Elsewhere, you can tell that it should be.

Laura Wade: Queen of theatre's brat pack

Tue, 22 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

You might not expect the playwright of the incendiary and savage Posh, to look like the elfin 34-year old, Laura Wade. With her long blonde hair, bright eyes and gentle laugh, Wade's amiable demeanour doesn't reflect any of the darkness that lurks at the centre of her most famous play. A self-confessed theatre geek, she is constantly watching plays that are not of her own creation. The only thing that tears her away from the theatre is her very English hobby of bird-watching. In all, not what you would expect from a angry young writer at the Royal Court.

The Jolly Folly of Polly the Scottish Trolley Dolly and Other Mini-Marvels, Brighton Fringe, Brighton

Mon, 21 May 2012 11:18:29 +0100

In a tiny upstairs theatre, a man in a wig and kimono asks us to imagine we’re in the Albert Hall. We never discover his name though, in his role in a glittering production of Madame Butterfly, he is known as “Second Japanese villager on the left”.

Pop and pregnancy as a solo star gets back in the groove

Mon, 21 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Sadie Frost, 46, is curled up on a sofa while rehearsing her new one-woman show, Touched...Like a Virgin.

Slumdog the musical calls in Julian Fellowes

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

It was an old-fashioned Hollywood fairy tale: the low-budget movie, with a feel-good plotline and a virtually unknown cast, that managed to capture the public imagination before walking away with no fewer than eight Oscars at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles.

Agenda: Hand-printed Bauhaus tights; Queen of Hearts; Cinemagram;

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Fashion: Be haus proud

Rambert, Sadler's Wells, London François Testory, Robin Howard Dance Theatre, The Place, London

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Next year Rambert really will have something to celebrate, when it moves to gleaming new premises on London's South Bank. But for the moment it has the 100th birthday of the world's first piece of modern dance to toast, and 10 years of able leadership from Mark Baldwin, who offers his own choreographic answer to Nijinsky's strange, feral L'Après-midi d'un faune.

What the Butler Saw, Vaudeville Theatre, London The Sunshine Boys, Savoy Theatre, London Detroit, NT Cottesloe, London

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Vintage comedies are all the rage. The West End can't get enough of them since One Man, Two Guvnors (an 18th-century classic that was rejigged as a Sixties seaside caper) proved a roaring, award-winning success, alongside Noises Off and The Ladykillers. Are theatreland's latest additions to this retro craze going to raise the roof, though?

Observations One to Watch: Carmen Giannattasio, Opera singer

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:41 +0100

Observations: If only Irving Berlin had had broadband

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:18 +0100

When UK-based Jonathan Kydd and Californian-based Andy Street, who writes the incidental music for American Idol, decided to write a musical together they were not deterred by distance.

Cultural Life: Arnold Wesker, Playwright

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:12 +0100

DVD/Blu-ray: Haywire (15)

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:12 +0100

Martial-arts champion Gina Carano is convincing as lethal Mallory, a black ops commando who is assigned by her slimy boss (Ewan McGregor) to “babysit” Michael Fassbender's agent in Dublin.

Top Hat, Aldwych Theatre, London WC2

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The producers of this irresistible show, a freely adapted version of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie, don't subscribe to the precept of deferred gratification. Once the deliciously orchestrated overture is over, Matthew White's production unleashes a knock-'em-dead account of "Puttin' on the Ritz".

Mother Adam, Jermyn Street Theatre, London

Fri, 18 May 2012 15:21:49 +0100

Resplendent in a tangerine toque and monitoring her middle-aged son with a manipulative, faux-beaten-dog wariness, Linda Marlowe's marvellous Mammles looks like the lost love child of Gloria Swanson and Albert Steptoe in Gene David Kirk's revelatory and richly entertaining revival of Mother Adam (1971).

Dawn French and Jason Donovan search for the new Jesus Christ Superstar

Fri, 18 May 2012 07:07:08 +0100

Dawn French and Jason Donovan have been signed up as judges for Andrew Lloyd Webber's search for the lead in his musical Jesus Christ Superstar.

First Night: The Sunshine Boys, Savoy Theatre, London

Fri, 18 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Put the diminutive Danny DeVito in anything and it's virtually impossible to avoid visual jokes about scale. This was seen at its purest in the movie that had DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the eponymous twins that had been produced by a botched genetic experiment.

Wings of Desire, Victoria Square, Birmingham

Thu, 17 May 2012 15:28:04 +0100

Wings of Desire starts with angels roosting on rooftops, white-clad figures silhouetted against a darkening sky. It ends with an astonishing blast of digital imagery, Birmingham’s Town Hall transformed as the performers move across it.

Interiors, Brighton Festival

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:39:00 +0100

There’s domestic drama at Brighton's Theatre Royal where the stage is filled with a large window, behind which twinkles an invitingly lit dining room. This is the setting for Interiors, first seen at Edinburgh’s Traverse in 2009 and now, thankfully, revived.

Domestic, Brighton Festival

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:36:52 +0100

Strange things are happening in The Basement, Brighton’s buzzy home for avant-garde theatre.

A tale of two Zionists: Ze'ev Jabotinsky, David Ben Gurion and the dramatic origins of Israel

Wed, 16 May 2012 09:30:01 +0100

Two charismatic men born in Eastern Europe meet in 1934, first in a London hotel room and then in a Golders Green flat, in an effort to resolve their political differences in the shadow of Nazism’s rise. Within 15 years one of them, who more than once interrupts the electrifying argument by reciting his own translation into Hebrew of Edgar Allen Poe’s darkly mysterious poem The Raven, will have died in exile; and the other will be the founding Prime Minister of Israel.

Consternation over Coronation Street musical

Wed, 16 May 2012 09:00:01 +0100

An arena tour of a high-profile musical adaptation of Coronation Street has been postponed amid withering reviews and artistic concerns over the production's quality.

Swan Lake: A leap into the future

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

It's the unforgettable concluding image of Billy Elliot: our hero blossoms into adulthood in Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, taking an elemental leap onto the stage. Now, the choreographer's famed and radical reinterpretation of the ballet is leaping, complete, into cinemas internationally as a 3D film. It is a landmark moment for a production that has enjoyed phenomenal success since it first took wing back in 1995, becoming the longest-running ballet on Broadway and in the West End. The big-screen release arrives just in time for the 25th anniversary of Bourne's dance company, New Adventures.

A World I Loved, Brighton Festival

Mon, 14 May 2012 13:38:55 +0100

Among the many heartening aspects of last year’s Arab uprisings was the visible role of women in the protests. These women might easily have looked to the writings of Wadad Makdisi Cortas for inspiration.

The curtain rises on London's brave new world

Mon, 14 May 2012 09:00:01 +0100

World Stages London is the first time a group of London theatres have worked together.

Motor Show, Black Rock, Kemp Town, Brighton

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Superstore access roads are built, you imagine, with one function in mind, but the slip road to Asda at Brighton Marina does surprisingly well as a backdrop to theatre. Curving up and away on concrete stilts, it supplies a steady cavalcade of headlamps. Beneath are garlands of graffiti, above it gulls idle, stars come out.

Top Hat, Aldwych, London Babel, Caledonian Park, London The Rest is Silence, Malthouse Estate Warehouse, Shoreham, West Sussex

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Out of work and forsaken in love, Mia Farrow wanders into a cinema in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo. There her Depression-era grief melts away as she's drawn in by Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, dancing on the silver screen, in Top Hat.

Heads up: Crow

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

What are we talking about? A new theatrical version of Ted Hughes's poetry collection Crow, part of the Greenwich+Docklands International Festival (GDIF) and London 2012.

Babel, Caledonian Park, London

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:35 +0100

There’s a gathering of tribes in the city. “Our languages, our backgrounds, our cultures are different, but together we have been drawn to this place…” No, it’s not the Olympic village – we’re in Caledonian Park, and Babel isn’t part of any Olympic fandango (though it is brought about by World Stages, a project between eight theatres celebrating ‘London in the world’.)

Observations One To Watch: Pippa Bennett-Warner, Actress, 23

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:15 +0100

"It wasn't until after I did The Lion King that I decided maybe straight acting could be fun". Happily for the theatre, Bennett-Warner was just 11 at the time.

Featherstone takes over Royal Court

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The Royal Court theatre in London has appointed the first female artistic director in its 56-year history.

Must see: Abigail's Party, Wyndham's Theatre, London WC2

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Since the fabled 1977 television version, Mike Leigh's stage play has pitched camp as a classic of excruciatingly comic social embarrassment. It's a case of Who's Afraid of Beverly Moss?, not just in the "get the guests" format, but in the preoccupation with having and not having children.

Dance show of the week: Wings of Desire, Victoria Square, Birmingham

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Angels gather on rooftops and Victoria Square comes alive with acrobatics and dance in this free event, inspired by the Wim Wenders film.

RSC to produce 'Winter’s Tale' for toddlers

Fri, 11 May 2012 18:25:48 +0100

The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is trying to do what Shakespeare himself would have done for “young babes” – “do it with gentle means and easy tasks”.

Dip Your Toe, Brighton Fringe

Wed, 09 May 2012 16:42:14 +0100

Just outside the Brighton Grand, on the shingly beach, sits a barnacle-encrusted, sea-green hut on wheels.

The rest is silence, Brighton Festival

Mon, 07 May 2012 14:35:52 +0100

Who knows what goes on behind closed doors? But for a rain-battered Brighton Festival banner on the gate you'd never guess that the nondescript lock-up on a industrial estate in Shoreham-by-Sea was playing host to one of the most eagerly anticipated theatre events of the year.

Brimstone and Treacle, The Arcola, London

Mon, 07 May 2012 11:24:06 +0100

Dennis Potter thought his twisted miracle story Brimstone and Treacle his best play.

Breakin' Convention, Sadler's Wells, London

Mon, 07 May 2012 11:20:33 +0100

The May Bank Holiday may have been wet and bitterly cold, but Breakin’ Convention hasn’t lost its bounce. Now in its ninth year, the festival of hip hop dance theatre has a solid history, covering everything from rising youth groups to international acts. The weekend festival will be followed by a UK tour; today’s performance will be streamed live online.

Dame Monica Mason: 'The life of a dancer is incredibly tough. Sometimes we have to question what we ask of them'

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

More than half a century ago, when Dame Monica Mason started dancing at the Royal Ballet, she had no idea that some of her colleagues suffered from eating disorders. She would see her fellow dancers drinking black coffee, smoking cigarettes and eating nothing but the occasional lettuce leaf but never quite made the connection. Today, as the company's vastly respected artistic director, it's the kind of topic she has to be thoroughly aware of. "Eating disorders weren't talked about," she says. "Today, the issue is much more in the open. But that doesn't make it less complicated."

Schoolboy wins rare place to train at Bolshoi Ballet

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Last year Alex Caggegi was an ordinary teenager from a state school in the North of England with one difference: he dreamt of becoming a ballet dancer. Now he has become only the fourth Briton in history to win a place at Moscow's prestigious Bolshoi Academy.

Enquirer, The Hub at Pacific Quay, Glasgow Richard III, Shakespeare's Globe, London Making Noises Quietly, Donmar, London

Sun, 06 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

They used to be impaled. In days of yore, when journalists clattered away on typewriters, articles ditched by the editor were literally "spiked" – on a metal prong. Now, the National Theatre of Scotland is asking whether the entire British newspaper industry is in its death throes. Its keenly awaited docudrama, Enquirer, is "a theatrical investigation into the current crisis". It's staged as a promenade in an office in Clydeside media quarter, a vast open-plan room scattered with desks and bundled newspapers.

Epic shows: Never mind the quality, feel the length

Sun, 06 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

It looks set to be a summer of endurance – and we aren't just talking about Olympic athletes. If you're heading to a theatre or opera house any time soon, you might well be letting yourself in for the long haul. Artworks are going epic.

Ballet Revolution, Peacock Theatre, London

Sun, 06 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Cuba's got talent – that much is established. Any country of only 11 million souls that can produce Carlos Acosta and field more than 50 dance companies, one of them world-renowned, does not have a lot left to prove.

Observations One To Watch: Beatriz Stix-Brunell, Ballerina, 19

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:48 +0100

The Royal Ballet's Beatrix Stix-Brunell replaced an injured Marianela Nuñez as Alice in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Observations: Hang out in the forest for saunas, songs and the circus

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:37 +0100

Would you like to spend the night in a sleeping pod suspended from a tree as part of the theatregoing experience?

Observations: Shakespeare shake-up in Shoreham-by-Sea

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:16 +0100

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Or at least in the rubbish tip of Shoreham-by-Sea, which forms the malodorous backdrop for an ambitious new take on Hamlet, opening this weekend.

A flood of plays by Middle-Eastern writers are revealing the dark side of the Arab Spring

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

A new wave of plays by Arab writers is hitting the British stage. Some are being seen first at Glasgow's Òran Mór and then at Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre as part of this month's One Day in Spring festival.

Must See: Breakin' Convention, various venues

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Now in its ninth year, the Sadler's Wells hip-hop festival celebrates the range of hip-hop dance, from international headline acts to local crews, from onstage dazzle to freestyle sessions in the foyers.

Play of the Week: Enquirer, The Hub, Glasgow

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

"Journalism is a sexy profession full of ugly people," laughs a character in this new dissection of today's newspaper industry from the National Theatre of Scotland.

Talking about her generation: Laura Poliakoff's debut play shows she has a voice all of her own

Thu, 03 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Let's start with the similarities. They share the same surname, obviously. And quite a lot of genetic material. And they're both writers. Apart from that, Stephen Poliakoff and Laura Poliakoff don't appear to have an awful lot in common. As Stephen, 59, puts the finishing touches to his first BBC television series, Dancing on the Edge, a typically sumptuous, polished period affair following the fortunes of a black jazz band in 1930s London, his daughter, Laura, 27, is preparing to bring her first play – a sweary, dystopian black comedy set in a grimy old people's home in 2065 – to the stage.

The Impending Storm, Patrick Centre, Birmingham Hippodrome

Wed, 02 May 2012 09:50:13 +0100

David Toole sits in the centre of a bed, arms reaching out. Born without legs, Toole is an extraordinary performer, charismatic and precise. There’s a sumptuous flow of movement through his powerful shoulders, while his hands are delicately articulate. Walking on his hands, he seems to caress the floor.

Cymbeline: From war-ravaged South Sudan to the Globe Theatre

Wed, 02 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

As part of the Cultural Olympiad, London's Globe Theatre this month plays host to 37 Shakespeare plays in 37 languages. Each has its own compelling story to tell. But of all the players from war-torn, drowned and oppressed countries, few can have made such an extraordinary journey as the South Sudan Theatre Company, which presents Cymbeline tonight and tomorrow.

James Corden nominated for Tony Award

Tue, 01 May 2012 16:09:08 +0100

James Corden has been nominated for a prestigious Tony Award for the Broadway production of his hit show One Man, Two Guvnors.

Rupert Friend: 'There is no other way of acting than to become the person'

Tue, 01 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Rupert Friend asks to meet me at a farm café in Dalston, east London, near to where he lives. There are chickens on the roof laying eggs, which are used in the sandwiches. We sit in a greenhouse, surrounded by wild flowers, while it pours with torrential rain. There are thunder claps and lightning strikes. "It's so peaceful," says Friend, 30, wearing a Beanie hat. "I grew up in the Oxfordshire countryside so this café is as close as it gets."

Mary Peters' Olympic glory remembered in mini opera

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Her dramatic gold medal at the Munich Olympics in 1972 ensured her status in her home country of Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles.

Visit the seaside for electric cucumbers, nudity and more!

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Take a trip to the seaside in May, and there's no telling where or when you might find yourself in the midst of a theatrical event.

Heads up: Macbeth

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

What are we talking about? A staging of Shakespeare's Macbeth by National Theatre of Scotland, with a twist... It's set in a psychiatric unit, full of CCTV cameras, where a patient relives the story of Macbeth's reign.

Globe to Globe. Shakespeare's Globe, London Wild Swans, Young Vic, London What Country Friends is This?, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Cultural Olympiad's World Shakespeare Festival is all set to be a marathon. The Globe to Globe season – now under way at Bankside's timber-framed Globe – is an unparalleled celebration of the Bard: 37 plays in 37 languages, by troupes paying flying visits from all over the planet.

A Streetcar Named Desire, Sadler's Wells, London

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Impossible is clearly not a word Nancy Meckler chooses to hear. The theatre director who made her name compressing vast, sprawling novels for the stage with the company Shared Experience has now tackled a famously text-heavy play for Scottish Ballet.

South Downs / The Browning Version, Harold Pinter Theatre, London

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:01:27 +0100

David Hare and Terence Rattigan have a lot in common, apart from their public schools and knighthoods.

Every body's welcome to this perfect storm

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

In the opening scene of The Impending Storm, a bold new production which is receiving its world premiere at the International Dance Festival Birmingham next month, an integrated company of able-bodied and disabled dancers are writhing on the floor, thrashing it with pillows. It is a strange, yet strangely mesmerising sight. The seven performers are simultaneously whipping up a storm and strong emotions within me.

ENO to stage Philip Glass opera about the last days of Walt Disney

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:10:15 +0100

The English National Opera is set to stage a series of new works next year including a Philip Glass opera about the last days of Walt Disney and an experimental piece scripted by Cloud Atlas author David Mitchell.

Here's fun for all the family: American Psycho, the musical

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The book was meant to be unfilmable. But more than a decade on from the acclaimed movie adaptation of American Psycho, a theatre company is to go one step further and bring the bloody satire to the British stage; with some musical numbers along the way.

National Youth Theatre vows show must go on as debts threaten its future

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Management at the National Youth Theatre (NYT), which helped kick-start the careers of stars including Daniel Craig and Dame Helen Mirren, is drawing up a rescue plan after mounting debts left the company facing the threat of closure.

Artifact/Royal Ballet of Flanders, Sadler's Wells, London

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 00:00:34 +0100

Radical art, especially in live performance, can only be shocking once. Thereafter, it's a piece of history – interesting, bracing even, but a thing that no longer holds surprises.

Big and Small, Barbican Theatre, London / The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning, Cardiff High School, Cardiff / Misterman, NT Lyttelton, London

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 00:00:27 +0100

Is Cate Blanchett hallucinating? In the opening scene of Big and Small – Botho Strauss's radically fractured play from the 1970s, aka Gross und Klein – her Lotte slurps a tangerine cocktail, looking slightly dishevelled. She sniffs her armpits and sprays clouds of scent as she yaks away, in an earthy Australian accent, about the amazing – AMAZING! – guys she can (supposedly) hear outside her hotel window. What are they saying? Something about the need to think the unthinkable, about patterns of greed, about there being 1,260 days before the termination of mankind, about how the fields will invade the empty cities.

Sea Odyssey: Giant hopes for Liverpool

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 12:00:57 +0100

Something is happening in Liverpool. Radio Merseyside has been broadcasting the sound of snoring in the background of its programme all morning, there is a giant deep-sea diver’s helmet, just visible above the surface of the Mersey, some electricity pylons have moved and there are a lot more French people here than usual.

King's Speech film killed us off, say stars of stuttering West End show

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

King George VI may have overcome his speech impediment for a crucial radio broadcast in the feel-good movie of last year, but slow ticket sales for the theatrical version means the curtain will fall for the last time next month.

In pictures: Giants come to Liverpool for Sea Odyssey spectacular

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:52:29 +0100

Giants walk the streets of Liverpool today, as an estimated 250,000 people line the streets for puppet theatre on a grand scale.

Artifact, Sadler’s Wells, London

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:21:29 +0100

William Forsythe’s Artifact is self-conscious and self-aware, a ballet about being a ballet. As dancers run through patterns or wind themselves into fractured duets, curtains descend with a thump or speakers try to pin down an act of memory. The Royal Ballet of Flanders could be tauter in Forsythe’s patterns, but push confidently through his games.

The Diary: Damien Hirst; Cate Blanchett; Granta magazine; Assassination Diaries; Bram Stoker

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Stop making an exhibition of yourself

The unhappiest time of his life: David Hare on dramatising his school days

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

If, 30 years ago, you had said that Sir David Hare, scourge of the establishment and intellectual leftie given to cracking scornful jokes, would one day open a new public school play in the West End on a double-bill with a dusty old classic, The Browning Version, by Terence Rattigan – and, what is more, in a theatre re-named for the resolutely non-knighted Harold Pinter – you might have been told to go away, or whistle, or have your head examined.

Oh Meryl, did my heart love till now?

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

If you've always thought that Romeo and Juliet was a flaky conceit with callow youths at its heart, now's your chance to see it reimagined. The mighty Meryl Streep and distinguished Kevin Kline will play the star-cross'd lovers – for one night only – at an 18 June reading of Shakespeare's play in New York's Central Park.

Keeffe's Barbarians tip up in Tooting bringing 'astonishing relevance'

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:17:21 +0100

A revival of a drama written in 1977 with “astonishing relevance” to contemporary Britain opened in South London this week. Barrie Keeffe’s Barbarians is a trilogy of plays about disaffected youth amid record youth unemployment.

Venus and Adonis, performed by Isango Ensemble, directed by Mark Dornford-May

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:08 +0100

The opening performance which will kick off the Globe Theatre’s pre-Olympic Shakespeare festival on April 21 is taking shape just a stone’s throw from South Africa’s parliament and President Zuma’s Cape Town office.

Poetry in motion as South Africans tackle Shakespeare

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The opening performance that will kick off the Globe Theatre's pre-Olympic Shakespeare festival on Saturday is taking shape just a stone's throw from South Africa's parliament and President Zuma's Cape Town office. South Africa's contribution is a home-made adaptation of Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare's epic poem.

The Iron Lady takes centre stage once again

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

"As a portrait of Thatcherism... it feels about as reliable as an MP's expenses claim." The Independent's Anthony Quinn's verdict on The Iron Lady summed up the general sense of antipathy towards a film that hardly brushed Margaret Thatcher's seismic political legacy. Where film had its chance to define her and failed, it falls to a new generation of young theatre-makers to assess the legacy of a woman whose rule they weren't old enough to influence with their vote.

See Babel for just £15 (usually £22.50)

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 09:28:17 +0100

Promising to be one the most talked about events of 2012, Babel will be an immersive theatrical experience of truly epic proportions.

First Night: Big and Small (Gross und Klein), Barbican, London

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Botho Strauss is one of the most widely performed of post-war German dramatists, but he has never been a name to conjure with in Britain.

Matilda musical takes record haul at the Oliviers

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Matilda the Musical dominated UK theatre's most prestigious awards ceremony last night as the adaptation of Roald Dahl's book picked up a record seven Olivier Awards.

Chalet Lines, Bush Theatre, London

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Madani Younis, the new artistic director of the Bush Theatre, inaugurates his regime with Lee Mattinson's Chalet Lines, a bleakly comic play that fails to shed much fresh light on the problem of being trapped in inherited patterns of family behaviour. This plight is exemplified by four generations of women in the Walker family from Newcastle. Set over 50 years in the same scuzzy chalet at the Skegness Butlins, the play tracks the recurring cycles of loveless marriage to the wrong husband and of viciously invidious favouring of one daughter over another that are the emotional heirlooms, so to speak, of this clan.

Long Day's Journey into Night, Apollo, London Uncle Vanya, Festival Theatre, Chichester Chalet Lines, Bush Theatre, London

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

A month in the country could drive anyone mad, even if all appears idyllic at first. It's August 1912 and the Tyrones – namely the veteran thespian James, his wife Mary and their two grown-up sons – have gathered at the family's summer home. This looks like Connecticut's answer to Chekhov: clapboard, wicker chairs, morning sun streaming through the windows. David Suchet's James, in cream linen, seems maritally blissful, whispering sweet nothings to Laurie Metcalf's Mary. Still beautiful, she smiles and checks the pins holding up her snow-white chignon.

Underman, The Roundhouse, London

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The clown with a broken heart was already an overworked trope when Marcel Carné made the film Les Enfants du Paradis in 1939. A lovelorn acrobat in 2012, then, is hardly going to wring any more juice from the image, but three lovelorn acrobats who happen to be chunky, beardy Vikings ... that starts to be interesting again.

Larry! Dear Larry! Not the Olivier Awards

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The chaperone

Ann Widdecombe: 'I don't act... I have a talent to amuse'

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

She can't sing, she can't act, God knows she can't dance, and she struggles with basic O-level French. So what on earth is Ann Widdecombe, the hard-line Tory ex-minister of legend, doing appearing this week in a French language opera? At the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden?

Scots get a really Horrible History of the English

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The Sassenachs will meet a bloody end when Horrible Histories, the all-conquering children's show secretly loved by adults, is given a tartan makeover for the Edinburgh Fringe.

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