Features
Now the whole of Britain's a stage
The provinces used to be an after-thought for London venues. But these days a West End run is just the start of it. Arifa Akbar reports on the boom in touring theatre
Inside Features
First Impressions: Annie Get Your Gun, Imperial Theatre, New York (1946)
Friday, 27 November 2009
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.
Party of the Week: Legends in their own lunchtime
Friday, 27 November 2009
Lenny Henry was accompanied by his wife Dawn French to the London Evening Standard Theatre Awards at the Royal Opera House, where he won the Best Newcomer prize for his lead role in Othello.
How Peter Pan grew up
Thursday, 26 November 2009
As a riveting take on J M Barrie's classic prepares to take flight at the O2 this Christmas, Paul Taylor looks at how different adaptations of the tale have found hidden depths – and not a little tragedy
Vampires: From freak to chic
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
In literature vampires are terrifying, shadowy figures who "vant to suck your blood", and whose heads need to be cut off and stuffed with garlic to prevent them returning from the dead. But in cinema vamps appear to be, well vampish.
First Impressions: Porgy and Bess, Alvin Theatre, New York (1935)
Friday, 20 November 2009
Porgy and Bess represents George Gershwin's longing to compose an American folk opera on a suitable theme. Although Mr Heyward is the author of the libretto and shares with Ira Gershwin the credit for the lyrics, and although Mr Mamoulian has mounted the director's box, the evening is unmistakably George Gershwin's personal holiday.
On the agenda: Harry Brown; Radley; Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre; Masterchef; Ctrl.Alt.Shift
Sunday, 8 November 2009
You've got to ask yourself, 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, you should – the vigilantes are back...
A very English playwright: The return of Alan Bennett
Friday, 6 November 2009
Alan Bennett stages his first play for years this month, at the National Theatre. Paul Taylor, who has met him many times, looks at how the butcher's son from Leeds became Britain's best loved playwright, and tries to unravel his complex personality
Akram Khan: 'You have to become a warrior'
Friday, 6 November 2009
He's the darling of the dance world, and beyond, with artists such as Anish Kapoor and Antony Gormley lining up to work with him
The ten biggest Broadway turkeys
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Following the shock closure of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs and the cancellation of its companion piece Broadway Bound, we look at ten of the biggest flops to grace Broadway.
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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