News
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.
Inside News
Don't believe the hype: theatre in trouble over misleading billboard
Thursday, 26 November 2009
Advert used critic's praise to promote 'Shawshank Redemption' the play – when he was really referring to the film
Henry (age 51) wins award for best newcomer
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
'Streetcar' star Rachel Weisz wins first Natasha Richardson memorial award
Play about the Burnley riots banned ... in Burnley
Saturday, 21 November 2009
Theatres refuse to perform work that displays town in a 'negative light'.
Hard-hitting take on military life draws blood
Saturday, 14 November 2009
Actor retires hurt from Royal Shakespeare Company drama after stage fight gets out of hand
Turing play stays on website indefinitely
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
The pioneering internet audio drama about the death of the Enigma code-breaker Alan Turing, is to remain available indefinitely on The Independent website.
Phillips gets job on Sadler's Wells board
Saturday, 7 November 2009
Doubters might have predicted an early retirement for Arlene Phillips after she was ungraciously dropped as a judge on the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing. But yesterday she cemented what can only be described as an extraordinary career comeback when Sadler's Wells Theatre announced her appointment to its board of directors. The position will become effective with her first board meeting on 25 November.
Outrage as Jesus portrayed as transsexual woman
Thursday, 5 November 2009
Creator of controversial play accuses critics of misinterpreting her work.
Neil Simon 'dumbfounded' after play flops
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
The old trouper's classic coming-of-age comedy goes prematurely dark as rival shows with big-name stars lure punters away
A frightening 24 hours for thespians
Monday, 2 November 2009
On Halloween night an eclectic bunch of actors and writers gathered in the auditorium of London’s Old Vic theatre preparing to write, rehearse and perform six plays in 24 hours to raise cash for charity.
Soldier's letters feature in Eloquent war memorial
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
Cyrus Thatcher was a teenager from Reading who joked that his atrocious spelling was typical of a young infantryman. Yet this Remembrance Sunday his words will echo out across a West End theatre alongside those of the noted poet Wilfred Owen - another soldier who died in battle.
Most popular in Arts & Entertainment
Read
1 Stage rage: Are actors right to berate their audiences?
2 'I love being on this show': Louis Walsh on life in the X Factor bubble
3 XFM names songs of the decade
4 100 Best Films: The final countdown, 20-1
5 BANNED: The most controversial films
6 All her material possessions: Sally Ann Lasson gets a tour of supermodel Marie Helvin's wardrobe
8 Video: Top 20 guitar riffs of all time
9 Music Monday Twitter top ten: Lady Gaga, Owl City, 30 Seconds to Mars
10 Body works: Photographs from the weird world of bodybuilding
11 Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Novello Theatre, London
12
Last Night's Television: Big Top, BBC 1
The Man Behind the Masquerade, BBC4
13 NME names top 50 albums of the decade
Emailed
1 'I love being on this show': Louis Walsh on life in the X Factor bubble
2 Now the whole of Britain's a stage
4 Phillips gets job on Sadler's Wells board
6 Fazil Say, Lucerne Piano Festival, Lucerne
7
8 Music Monday Twitter top ten: Lady Gaga, Owl City, 30 Seconds to Mars
9 Henry (age 51) wins award for best newcomer
10 Book Group: Your views on the July book - Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam
11 The Fahrenheit Twins, Pit, Barbican, London
12 Jessica Biel: Out of this world
13 OK Go builds on YouTube, 'New Moon' success with 2010 CD and tour
14 First Impressions: Annie Get Your Gun, Imperial Theatre, New York (1946)
Commented
1Warning: Do not take this picture
2Twelve days to save the world
3Matthew Norman: Justice vs Mercy: the impossible conflict behind Demjanjuk's trial
4US politics: Every man for himself!
5Cyclists three times more likely to die on UK roads than abroad
6Get tough over threat by RBS board, says Cable
7Robert Fisk: This strategy has been tried before ? without success
8Cameron's team turn on Davis for attack on green agenda
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



