Partially Obstructed View

The latest production to employ the staging conceit of the lead actors alternating roles is Benedict Andrews' Electra Forward Slash Persona, a show that already has a pretty high concept as its starting point: Andrews' play is a mashup of Sophocles' Elect…

Ivan Turgenev predates Chekhov by a few decades but his work certainly shows him as a likely influence on the more celebrated playwright's world of terminally disappointed upper middle classes turning ennui into their whole personality - or at least Brian…

It's a cliché about farce that it relies heavily on characters running in and out of multiple doors, but most of Alan Ayckbourn's plays have premiered in the round.

Simon Stephens has had shows open in major West End houses but his latest gets its UK premiere in one of the most intimate spaces in the middle of Theatreland: Written for Irish theatre company Glass Mask, A Slow Fire transfers to Jermyn Street, a venue f…

Mike Leigh's name might always be brought up in relation to a kind of bleak, gritty realism, but it's his 1977 black comedy Abigail's Party that remains his most famous, beloved, and frequently-revived play.

In the latest attempt to plug the Les Mis-shaped hole in their budget the RSC have taken a break from Celebrity Antisemite Roal Dahl and moved on to Celebrity Pirate George Arrr!

It's been a much-loved manga and a much-loathed film, now Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata's Death Note becomes a dynamic, tragicomic stage show.

T.S.

The comparative theatrical quiet of August often means a chance for me to catch up on some digital versions of shows I'd missed, and NTatHome have just added Thornton Wilder's Our Town, in its recent touring co-production from The Actor Michael Sheen's We…

For my roughly annual trip away from Dame Theatre to Baroness Dance, it's one of the Matthew Bourne ballets I've managed to miss on its numerous previous visits to London since its 2000 debut.

A pair of fraternal twins are separated; the female twin, believing her brother to be dead, goes to a strange and possibly dangerous place where she takes on his identity, only to reconnect with him in an unexpected way.

I've got a couple of shows planned for later this week notorious for their nudity, and it feels like the theme has started early with Love's Labour's Lost: While everyone more or less keeps their kit on at the Globe, Ned Costello spends much of it in mata…

By now I think we can take it as read that Simon Stone's adaptations of classic texts will actually be devised riffs vaguely inspired by a general theme, that share little with the original other than the title.

Kenneth Branagh has a long history with the RSC: Playing Hamlet there; not getting the Artistic Director job; starting a petition to ban anyone who didn't go to RADA from ever being employed there (probably.)

Jennifer Ashley Tepper's collection of lesser-known songs by Rent and tick, tick...

Twelve years after the film shone an overdue light on the relationship between the LGBTQ+ and mining communities that were equally targeted by Margaret Thatcher's Britain, director Matthew Warchus reunites with original screenwriter Stephen Beresford, who…

With music by Peter Matz and the comedy pedigree of Harry Shearer and Tom Leopold on book and lyrics, Here Comes J Full Stop Edgar Exclamation Mark is a broadly comic attempt to satirise one of the most influential figures in shaping 20th century America:…

If A Midsummer Night's Dream is the Open Air Theatre's signature Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing feels like it occupies a very similar place at the Globe.

The big price hikes to the cheapest seats since Timothy Sheader took over the Donald and Margot Warehouse mean I don't go as often, and when I do I'm usually alone as not everyone wants to spend £32 to look at the back of an actor's head.

I doubt too many people would be surprised to know that A Midsummer Night's Dream ranks as the most frequently-produced play in the Open Air Theatre's history, although in my personal experience (this is now my third) they've not yet managed a production…

Sophie Swithinbank's Sting draws parallels between the modern-day collusion of men and institutions against women experiencing abuse, and the historical persecution of women accused of witchcraft, through a pair of women conducting an academic study on ju…

I've had varied responses to American playwright Rajiv Joseph's work so far, a writer fond of surreal history plays focusing on people at the sidelines of great events.

It's not quite Paddington but Ben Ockrent's Relics also begins with a bear going on a journey: As the safety curtain goes up on Joanna Scotcher's set a teddy bear gets caught in it, before being dropped into a packing box.

So far Indhu Rubasingham's first year running the National has provided a run of hit shows for other directors, but the ones she's chosen for herself have met with a more muted response.

Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is one of those books considered unfilmable and unstageable, which inevitably means people have attempted both.