playwrights
Greenland, National TheatreTuesday, 01 February 2011
British theatre prides itself on being contemporary, up to date - in a word, hot. So it’s odd that, over the past decade, there have been so few plays about climate change. While everybody, and I mean everybody, has been talking about global warming... Read more... |
Little Platoons, Bush TheatreMonday, 24 January 2011
The second play in this venue’s ambitious Schools mini-season is the first drama to tackle the currently contentious subject of Free Schools. While the earlier play, John Donnelly’s The Knowledge, was a powerful account of how a young teacher is... Read more... |
Less Than Kind, Jermyn Street TheatreSunday, 23 January 2011
“There’s no situation in the world that can’t be passed off with small talk,” claims hostess extraordinaire Olivia Brown in Terence Rattigan’s Less Than Kind. It’s a maxim that could well serve as Rattigan’s theatrical epitaph, the philosophy that... Read more... |
Twelfth Night, National TheatreThursday, 20 January 2011
Set at a pivotal point in Shakespeare's canon, Twelfth Night is a glass-half-full kind of play. Is it a joyous, clear-eyed, compassionate comedy of human foibles by a writer reaching maturity, a wild and crazy ride through a season of carnival... Read more... |
Tiger Country, Hampstead TheatreWednesday, 19 January 2011
Playwright Nina Raine has a gift for evocative play titles. Her 2006 debut was called Rabbit, and her sellout success at the Royal Court last year was Tribes. This time, we seem to be on safari with Tiger Country, but appearances can be deceptive.... Read more... |
The Knowledge, Bush TheatreMonday, 17 January 2011
At a failing secondary school in Tilbury, Essex, Zoe arrives as an ambitious, newly qualified teacher who hopes to make a difference to her unruly pupils. But although she impresses her learning mentor, Maz, and Harry, the soon-to-retire acting head... Read more... |
The Boy James, Southwark PlayhouseFriday, 14 January 2011
We remember JM Barrie as the creator of Peter Pan, that quintessentially English fairy story which features Neverland, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, and where “to die would be an awfully big adventure”. Generations have embraced this mythical tale... Read more... |
Subs, Cock Tavern TheatreThursday, 06 January 2011
The world of the media offers plenty of opportunities for satire, but the idea of a comedy about sub-editors at first glance seems odd. After all, the sub-editors, or subs, are hardly journalism’s most glamorous beings: these office-bound nerds... Read more... |
Get Santa!, Royal CourtMonday, 13 December 2010
Incongruence is always interesting, so the news earlier this year that Anthony Neilson, bad-boy author of adult plays such as Penetrator, The Censor and The Wonderful World of Dissocia, was penning a Christmas play — suitable for kids — at the Royal... Read more... |
Kin, Royal Court TheatreWednesday, 24 November 2010
Middle-class family angst continues to be this season’s theme at the Royal Court Theatre, but this time it is seen through the eyes of 10-year-old girls at a 1990s boarding school. But don’t expect this to be an episode of Malory Towers or even the... Read more... |
Bush Theatre to move from pub to libraryFriday, 12 November 2010
London’s world-famous experimental pub-theatre has secured its future with a move into Shepherd’s Bush old library. Church and council permission were given yesterday for conversion of the library (owned by the Church of England) to be ready for... Read more... |
The Train Driver, Hampstead TheatreTuesday, 09 November 2010
Few playwrights have been so successful at moulding our view of a nation as Athol Fugard. It’s impossible to think of South Africa, especially during the apartheid years, without thinking of his Sizwe Bansi is Dead, The Island or Statements after an... Read more... |
