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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?

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.

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”.

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?

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).

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 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.

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.

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’.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Echoa, Sadler’s Wells

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 10:04:11 +0100

Children’s show Echoa came to Sadler’s Wells as part of a Family Weekend, which featured workshops and activities as well as performances.

Onegin, London Coliseum

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 10:48:47 +0100

Rejected Onegin, by the man she loves, Tatiana has a nightmare. In the Eifman Ballet’s version of the Pushkin story, the poor girl goes to Vegas in her dreams, tormented by red-clad rock musicians with terrible hair. This updated ballet plunges into cheesy extremes whenever it gets the chance.

Royal Ballet Triple Bill, Royal Opera House, London Anna Karenina, Coliseum, London

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

They came in all their finery: glam-rockers in nose-rings and dog-chains, the Kensington set in full-fig Chanel. The last time the Royal Ballet attracted such a mixed crowd was in 2006, when ballet last met pop and fashion head-on. Once again the kingpin is choreographer Wayne McGregor, but now he has even more clout, summoning Gareth Pugh as designer, Mark Ronson as guitarist-composer, singer Alison Mosshart of The Kills, rappers Black Cobain and Wale, and – goodness, could that really be? – Boy George. Rufus Wainwright is credited with orchestration, though the ROH Orchestra mysteriously stayed at home. With so much else going on, no one seemed to notice.

Wonderful Town, The Lowry, Salford

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Showbiz legend has it that Leonard Bernstein knocked out the music for Wonderful Town (the second of his three New York shows) in only five weeks. With Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who wrote the lyrics, he locked himself in a room with daylight shut out and walls painted grey. According to Bernstein's biographer Humphrey Burton, the air was so blue with cigarette smoke that they could barely see each other across the room from piano to typewriter.

Uncle Vanya, Minerva Theatre, Chichester

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 12:11:22 +0100

Caryl Brahms, an astute critic and a funny writer, said that characters in Chekhov always harked back to their beginnings but learnt no lesson from their past; they were content to sit around the samovar and talk.

Made Up, Upstairs at Soho Theatre, London

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 11:24:04 +0100

How do you review a play that is different every night? Theatre troupe Cartoon de Salvo have been around for fifteen years offering up varying levels of improvisation in their devised works. For their latest show, Made Up, the three actors ask the audience to come up with a title and we watch them conjure a show from thin air. The play changes every day, depending on the title. When it works, the superb actors are like magicians, producing comedy, pathos and music from nowhere (I know this, having seen their 2008 hit Hard Hearted Hannah). But when it doesn’t work, as it didn’t this evening, the result is agonising.

Carbon Life/Sweet Violets/Polyphonia, Royal Opera House, London

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 09:57:15 +0100

The Royal Ballet’s latest works are very busy. Wayne McGregor’s glossy Carbon Life is a pop-fashion collaboration with Mark Ronson, Gareth Pugh and a great many pop stars. Liam Scarlett’s Sweet Violets is a mess of bad and good ideas about Walter Sickert, Jack the Ripper and an artist at work. Christopher Wheeldon’s 2001 Polyphonia, which opens the evening, is sleek and just right.

Anna Karenina, Coliseum, London

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 11:39:06 +0100

Boris Eifman's dancers launch themselves into tortured poses, hauling each other through lifts or folding into gymnastic knots. There's certainly a lot of angst, but this version of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is short on specific insight.

The Duchess of Malfi, The Old Vic, London The King's Speech, Wyndham's, London Uncle Vanya, Print Room, London

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

She is determined to wed the man she loves. In John Webster's grisly Jacobean tragedy The Duchess of Malfi – staged by Jamie Lloyd – Eve Best plays the titular heroine as a naturally sensual woman and spirited feminist ahead of her time. Defying her marriage-forbidding brothers, she woos her lowly steward, Antonio.

Cirque Mandingue / The Great Spalvados, Roundhouse, London (3/5, 4/5)

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 10:36:18 +0100

Cirque Mandingue, who open the Roundhouse’s Circusfest season, have strong and exuberant acrobats, slightly hampered by a clichéd sense of theatre. The core team do pyramid balancing, tumbling and stomping dance moves. The energy dips when they start clowning or telling stories.

Beyond Ballets Russes 2, London Coliseum

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:57:46 +0100

English National Ballet’s second Beyond Ballets Russes programme goes from the lucid beauty of Apollo to the fireworks of Suite en blanc, with some unexpected novelty in the middle. This is a company on confident form.

Beyond Ballets Russes, Coliseum, London

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

You could be forgiven a sense of déja vu. All last year, dance companies were queuing up to pay their dues to the Ballets Russes, the phenomenon that first united art, sex, music and fashion on the theatre stage. The V&A's Diaghilev exhibition opened in 2010. How long can a centenary be?

The Master and Margarita, Barbican, London Sweeney Todd, Adelphi, London Filumena, Almedia, London

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Demons do not exist any more than gods do, said Sigmund Freud. Ivan Bezdomny would beg to differ in Mikhail Bulgakov's great, darkly surreal and satirical novel The Master and Margarita – newly staged by Complicite's Simon McBurney (drawing on Edward Kemp's adaptation). Bezdomny has seen Satan sloping around Stalin's Moscow with a gang of fiends, including Behemoth – a black cat who stands as high as a man on his hind legs, and can talk.

Life is a Dream, Argyle Works, Birmingham

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 12:22:44 +0000

When the young Pierre Boulez said that opera houses should be blown up, he was attacking, not opera, but its cultural ambience- the snobbery, exclusivity and expense.

Beyond Ballets Russes 1 London Coliseum, London

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 11:58:53 +0000

After a winter of limited repertory, English National Ballet burst into spring with two ambitious programmes. The Beyond Ballets Russes season starts with a new ballet, new designs and some bright performances. The new Firebird doesn’t take off, but Erina Takahashi is a blazing Chosen One in The Rite of Spring.

Love's Labour's Lost, Viaduct Theatre, Halifax

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 00:00:02 +0000

There is a great chemistry between the Northern Broadside casts that seems to get better every time you see them and which on this occasion helps bring one of Shakespeare's less performed comedies to glorious life.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Royal Opera House, London

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 11:54:49 +0000

The Royal Ballet’s Alice has sensational production design and an overstuffed storyline. Putting Lewis Carroll’s Alice books on stage, choreographer Christopher Wheeldon wants to include all the famous bits. He and his design team conjure dazzling illusions, from shrinking Alice to a marvellous Cheshire Cat, but the dancing can get squeezed to the sidelines.

Coppélia, London Coliseum, London

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 11:53:52 +0000

Coppélia is a village comedy with a streak of fantasy, from quarrelling lovers to dancing mechanical dolls. Birmingham Royal Ballet’s production has a light touch and a sunny atmosphere, from the bouncy corps dances to Nao Sakuma’s heroine.

Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, National Theatre, Cottesloe, London

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Thirty years after it won a newspaper playwriting competition, Errol John's Trinidadian "street scene" was happily revived, twice, at Stratford East and the Almeida, in 1986 and 1988.

Spring Passions, Coliseum, London

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

In Daphnis and Chloë, the dancers of Birmingham Royal Ballet wind in chain dances to Ravel's shimmering score. As they twist and sway, there's a sensuous ripple to their shoulders, as if they feel the warmth of the Mediterranean sun on their skin.

Can We Talk About This?, NY Lyttelton, London Shobana Jeyasingh's Classic Cut, Linbury Studio, London

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Talk about going in at the deep end. "Raise your hand," demands the man on the stage of a packed auditorium of people who think they've come to see some kind of dance, "if you think you're morally superior to the Taliban."

Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, NT Cottesloe, London Shivered, Southwark Playhouse, London Abigail's Party, Menier Chocolate Factory, London

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Don't miss this: revivals of Moon on a Rainbow Shawl are rare and Errol John's seminal Caribbean drama deserves to be recognised as a 20th-century classic. First staged in 1958 and now enjoying a National Theatre production with an excellent ensemble directed by Michael Buffong, John's tough and tender tragicomedy follows a group of neighbours at the end of the Second World War in Trinidad's Port of Spain. Living around a communal yard, they yearn to escape poverty and institutional prejudice.

Death of a Salesman, Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 15:08:00 +0000

Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is the sort of play that benefits from a pertinent revival. Rarely has his take on the hollow heart of the American Dream seemed more relevant as American self-belief continues to falter amid economic fragility and continued job insecurity.

Shivered, Southwark Playhouse, London

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 12:36:26 +0000

When some artists affect to say the unsayable, the result is simply unspeakable. To listen to some folk, you might run away with the idea that Philip Ridley - renaissance man of the East End and master of the sawn-off baroque - is just a sensationalising miserabilist out to exploit and maximise everything that is morally and viscerally gross and triple-X rated.

Birmingham Royal Ballet, London Coliseum

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 10:17:16 +0000

In Daphnis and Chloë , the dancers of Birmingham Royal Ballet wind in chain dances to Ravel’s shimmering score. As they twist and sway, there’s a sensuous ripple to their shoulders, as if they feel the warmth of the Mediterranean sun on their skin.

Men in Motion, Sadler’s Wells, London

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 09:50:33 +0000

Ivan Putrov’s Men In Motion suffers from the law of diminishing returns.

Can We Talk About This, Lyttelton

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 12:07:20 +0000

Can We Talk About This? -- a broadside by Lloyd Newson and his dance company DV8 against the allegedly soft and supine liberal propritation of Islamic fundamentalism and its threat to (amongst other things) free speech -- should be subtitled Can We Dance About This?

Going Dark, Young Vic, London

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 12:51:27 +0000

It was Milan Kundera, I think, who said that an author should, as a point of firm principle, avoid giving a character a job or a profession that is too convenient to the thematic or symbolic intent of the work of art.

Maverick Sabre, Roundhouse, London

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 10:36:43 +0000

Michael Stafford, better known by his stage name Maverick Sabre, is in the middle of his set when a fight breaks out.

Farewell to the Theatre, Hampstead Theatre, London A Provincial Life, Sherman Cymru, Cardiff Going Dark, Young Vic, Clare Studio, London

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Harley Granville-Barker played a vital role in revolutionising British theatre in the early years of the last century. As a young actor-manager, dramatist and director he ran the Royal Court, championed George Bernard Shaw, and revitalised Shakespeare's plays, stripping them of Victorian clutter and grandiosity.

NDT2, Sadler's Wells, London ENB Late at Tate, Duveen Gallery, Tate Britain, London

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Dutch courage, Dutch old masters, tulips and coffee shops that don't smell of coffee. By rights, contemporary dance should leap similarly to mind as one of Holland's gifts to the world.

Abigail's Party, Menier Chocolate Factory, London

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 10:29:56 +0000

"Tone? A little cheesy-pineapple one?": yes, it's that bag again. This time, she comes in the slim-line, lime-green-gowned form of Jill Halfpenny in Lindsay Posner's vibrant, splendidly cast revival of Abigail's Party.

SKIN, The Place, London

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 12:45:56 +0000

There's a lot of self-consciousness in Pia Meuthen's dance work SKIN, starting with the audience.

Farewell to the Theatre, Hampstead Theatre, London

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 12:08:02 +0000

The specialist subject of American playwright, Richard Nelson, is the tension in the so-called Special Relationship between the UK and the US.

A Provincial Life, Sherman Cymru, Cardiff

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 11:05:09 +0000

As both a great theatre director and a dramatist of extraordinarily distinctive gifts, Peter Gill is one of Cardiff's most celebrated sons. But it's only now, when he's pushing seventy three, that he has got round to staging a piece in his native city.

Elektro Kif, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 16:06:56 +0000

Blanca Li’s Elektro Kif is an upbeat jumble of street dance, observational comedy and high school clichés. The different episodes go on too long, but Li’s all-male company are bright dancers with cheerful stage presence.

Hay Fever, Noël Coward Theatre, London The Leisure Society, Trafalgar Studios, London All New People, Duke of York's Theatre, London

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

When they're not squabbling histrionically, the Bliss family favours lounging around, boho-style. They appear to be living out some kind of artsy, Arcadian fantasy at the start of Hay Fever, Noël Coward's country-weekend comedy from 1924, as staged by director Howard Davies. Their rural retreat is a converted coach house, more rough brick atelier than drawing room.

Richard Alston, Sadler's Wells, London Ballet Black, Linbury Studio, London

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Nineteen little boys in purple cassocks make an arresting visual backdrop to Richard Alston's latest work, a setting of Benjamin Britten's A Ceremony of Carols, itself a setting of some of the loveliest poetry to have come out of medieval England.

The Leisure Society, Trafalgar Studios 2, London

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 12:47:10 +0000

Agyness Deyn sure knows how to wear a frock. It was, after all, in the large print of her separate metier as an ex-supermodel.

Ballet Black, Linbury Studio Theatre, London

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 10:53:19 +0000

Now eleven years old, Ballet Black has a confidence and spark. Initially founded to promote black dancers in classical ballet, the company has become an end in itself. This is a taut evening of new work by rising and established choreographers, fluently staged and danced.

First Night: The Lady from the Sea, Rose Theatre, Kingston-upon-Thames

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

This is the sixth Henrik Ibsen play the Rose Theatre's artistic director Stephen Unwin has taken on. His self-diagnosed "Ibsenitis" has taken such a hold that for this project he wrote a brand new translation of The Lady from the Sea himself. This is its first airing. The script is spare, precise and modern. It retains Ibsen's trick of repeating phrases, like a refrain, which lends it an undulating quality. The dialogue reflects the sun-bleached Norwegian fjord on which the play is set: stunning to look at, dramatic and engaging. But the detail of this complex tale is, occasionally, washed out.

Goodbye to All That, Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, London

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 12:01:28 +0000

Talk about a striking case of "Snap!". To be seen at the Royal Court now - on both the mainstage and in the Theatre Upstairs - is the spectacle of a helpless ageing man in a bed, hooked up to things like saline drips and catheters, and flanked by two women who are warring because of him.

King Lear, Tobacco Factory, Bristol

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 00:00:52 +0000

An old man sits on the ground, his feet clapped in stocks. But he doesn't much want rescuing – in fact, he could do with the sit down.

’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Silk Street Theatre, Barbican, London The Bomb – A Partial History, Tricycle Theatre,London In Basildon, Royal Court, London

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

In the corner of Annabella's blood-red bedroom is a poster of the Virgin Mary. The Madonna's immaculate heart floats, spookily, outside her bosom. Pictures of teen-icon vamps cover the remaining wall space and Annabella (Lydia Wilson) is dancing wildly on her bed like a would-be rock chick. She's a wafer-thin adolescent: leggings, hot pants, punky, half-shaved haircut.

Bingo, Young Vic, London

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 11:01:36 +0000

I once received a very nice card from an actor who said that my trashing of his performance had made him laugh out loud.

In Basildon, Royal Court, London

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 11:12:45 +0000

David Eldridge's In Basildon is a gloriously rich, humorous, agonising and politically provocative play, but it has been staged by the Royal Court's artistic director, Dominic Cooke, in a bafflingly peculiar, not to say, counterproductive way.

Midsummer Night's Dream, Lyric, Hammersmith, London

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:49:27 +0000

The idiosyncratic and richly intentive Filter Company are one of my favourite theatrical outfits.

Poet in New York, Sadler’s Wells, London

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 11:13:02 +0000

Towards the end of his show Poet in New York, flamenco star Rafael Amargo tenderly leads each of his musicians off stage, one by one. You might think this was an early curtain call, a chance to thank each performer. It isn’t: Amargo dominates each exit, playing to the audience as he shuffles his co-stars out of the way.

La Shica Lilian Baylis Studio, Sadler’s Wells, London

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 10:39:16 +0000

Flamenco singer-dancer La Shica performs a traditional Sevillanas, moving with courtly seriousness. Then she and her band add a bassline, teasing rhythms and shapes. She turns to the audience, with beaming delight: “Now you understand why some purists in my country think I am Satan’s daughter!”

The Recruiting Officer, Donmar Warehouse, London The Taming of the Shrew, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon A Midsummer Night's Dream, Lyric Hammersmith, London

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

The best a fellow can do, says Captain Plume, is concoct for himself "some pleasure amidst the pain". Writing The Recruiting Officer in 1706, George Farquhar had experience of Plume's tough profession. The dramatist had been on the recruiting circuit, trying to induce skint Shropshire lads to join the army – till debts forced him to sell his commission.

Snookered, Oldham Coliseum

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 18:53:51 +0000

Wow! This is the most accomplished and assured first play I have seen for years. It is all the more extraordinary for being written by an Asian taxi driver from Middlesbrough who was driving his cab one night listening to Five Live when it announced a writing competition. Next day he sat down at his new computer.

Singin' in the Rain, Palace Theatre, London

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 10:42:09 +0000

When Jonathan Church's production of Singin' in the Rain opened in Chichester last summer it brought the reviewers out in a fevered rash of five star raves.

The Recruiting Officer, Donmar Warehouse, London

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:22:03 +0000

Sam Mendes was a hard act to follow as inaugural artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse. But Michael Grandage overcame that difficulty with flamboyantly flying colours.

Absent Friends, Harold Pinter, London The Way of the World, Crucible, Sheffield The Devil and Mr Punch, Barbican Pit, London

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

A large clock projects on to the front curtain at the start of Absent Friends, its second hand spinning.

Flamenco Festival, Sadler's Wells, London At Swim Two Boys, Riverside Studios, London

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Every February for the past nine years, the Sadler's Wells Flamenco Festival has endeavoured to beam some Spanish sun into chilled, grey souls. In the early days the components were predictable.

First Night: The King's Speech, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

It has raked in more than $400m worldwide.

Absent Friends, Harold Pinter Theatre, London

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:46:48 +0000

A recurring figure in the world of Alan Ayckbourn is the utterly well-meaning interloper who, by his cheerful immunity from the woes of the others, wreaks emotional havoc amongst the depressed, fragile people on whom he descends.

The Heresy of Love, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:30:16 +0000

Eight years ago, in their excellent Spanish Golden Age season, the RSC presented the English premiere of House of Desires, a surprising event on several levels.

Master Class, Vaudeville Theatre, London

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:47:50 +0000

"Is this a classroom or a circus?" asks Maria Callas at one point in Terrence McNally's 1995 piece that is partly based on the masterclasses that La Divina, her voice now wrecked, gave at the Juilliard School in New York in the early 1970s.

Jealousy, The Print Room, London

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:28:57 +0000

Jealousy is the first dance work presented by The Print Room, a new venue in west London.

Sex with a Stranger, Trafalgar Studios 2, London

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:21:23 +0000

The singular comic talents of Stefan Golaszewski are mostly expended on works for television - as in Him & Her, a sitcom that applies Royle Family techniques to twentysomething slackerdom with intermittently hilarious results.

Bloody Poetry, Jermyn Street Theatre, London

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:06:07 +0000

The hotel on the other side of Lake Geneva cashed in on the delicious shamelessness of it. They hired out binoculars so that tourists could gawp pruriently at the Villa Diodati and its scandalous summer menage of the Shelleys; the "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" Byron, and Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley's half-sister, who had slept with both poets and was carrying Byron's baby.

The Rodin Project, Sadler’s Wells, London

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:53:31 +0000

It takes a while for The Rodin Project, the latest work from choreographer Russell Maliphant, to get out from under its own draperies. Inspired by the work of the French sculptor, with a fascinating cast who can do everything from hip hop to burlesque, the show spends too long in artistic poses.

The Dream/ Song of the Earth, Royal Opera House, London Without Warning, Old Vic Tunnels, London

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

If anyone had set out on Wednesday night feeling short-changed by the absence of Sergei Polunin – scheduled to dance his first Oberon at Covent Garden but now in self-imposed exile – they had forgotten about it by the interval.