Theatre Features
Richard Griffiths, 1947-2013Friday, 29 March 2013
Richard Griffiths, who has died at the age of 65 from complications during heart surgery, will be remembered above all for three performances, two on screen and one onstage. In Withnail & I (1987), he embodied in Uncle Monty a predatory homosexual who, according to the film’s director Bruce Robinson, was based on Franco Zeffirelli. Many years later Griffiths found himself playing a character parked on the same spectrum in Alan Bennett’s The History Boys (2005). Read more...
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theartsdesk in Malta: After CensorshipSunday, 17 March 2013
Legendary English playwright Edward Bond doesn’t often come to Malta, but when he does, he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. After the first performance of his Olly’s Prison — a stage version of the 1993 BBC television series — Bond takes the stage for a Q&A. Dr Paul Xuereb, who is the Mediterranean island’s premiere theatre critic, asks him: “Why are your plays so violent?” “They’re not violent,” replies Bond quietly. “Read the play.” Read more... |
Manchester International Festival 2013 PreviewFriday, 01 March 2013
Yesterday Kenneth Branagh was thanking Manchester – saying that he felt he had “come of age” the previous time he had performed Shakespeare in the city 25 years ago, the audience being so “generous, quick-witted and lively". Read more... |
It's ladies' night on the London stage in 2013Thursday, 03 January 2013
The London theatre looks to be awash in great women of the English (and Irish) stage in a 2013 line-up of star roles that disproves the often-held assertion that the men get all the great stuff. Those who missed Hattie Morahan's award-winning Nora last summer in A Doll's House will have a second chance at the Young Vic in April, while Kim Cattrall brings her singular glamour to Tennessee Williams's Sweet Bird of Youth at the Old Vic come the summer. Read more... |
Interview: Martin Crimp in the Republic of SatireMonday, 10 December 2012
Playwright Martin Crimp defies labels. He has been called obscure and oblique, too difficult and, worst of all, too Continental. But although he is feted on the European mainland — George Benjamin’s opera Written on Skin, with text by Crimp, comes to the Royal Opera House next spring but it began its much-lauded European tour in Aix-en-Provence — he is also a quintessentially British playwright: his style is colloquial, socially aware and politically acute. Read more... |
Extract: In Two Minds - Jonathan MillerThursday, 06 December 2012
When I first mentioned to a colleague that I was embarking on a biography of the doctor/director Jonathan Miller, he instantly yelped, “My God, your work’s cut out! The man must have met half the famous names in the twentieth century!" Read more... |
At Your Service: The Birth of Privates on ParadeSaturday, 01 December 2012
It was in Singapore in 1947 that my real education began. For the first time I read Lawrence, Forster, Virginia Woolf, Melville, Graham Greene and Bernard Shaw’s political works, becoming a lifelong Leftie. When Stanley Baxter explained Existentialism in our billet block, we nodded intelligently. When Kenneth Williams spoke Parlyaree, we were in advance of the rest of the nation who wouldn’t hear of it till Beyond Our Ken. Read more... |
The Mouse and His Child: Redemption, salvation and transformationFriday, 23 November 2012
I read and loved The Mouse and His Child as a child. Apparently. I was reminded of this by the inscription in the copy I gave to my god-daughter 15 years ago. And again, when I read it to my own daughter 10 years later. It’s such an extraordinarily original, moving, funny, story, I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten it. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Dublin: Your City, Your StoriesSunday, 21 October 2012
Irish theatre generates high expectations. So much so, that if there isn’t a premiere of a play by one of Ireland’s leading playwrights – Sebastian Barry, Enda Walsh, Marina Carr, Frank McGuinness, Martin McDonagh, Conor McPherson or Mark O’Rowe – the annual Dublin Theatre Festival tends to be viewed by regular Dublin theatregoers as somehow deficient. Read more... |
Our Country's Good: Director Max Stafford-Clark opens upWednesday, 22 August 2012
“Our Country’s Good, a play that proclaimed the power and enduring worth of theatre and that celebrated its centrality to our lives, was of importance in the third term of a government which deemed 'subsidy' a dirty word.” So wrote Max Stafford-Clark of the play he directed at the Royal Court in 1988. Read more... |
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★★★★★
‘A compulsive, involving, emotionally stirring evening – theatre’s answer to a page-turner.’
The Observer, Kate Kellaway
Direct from a sold-out season at Kiln Theatre the five star, hit play, The Son, is now playing at the Duke of York’s Theatre for a strictly limited season.
★★★★★
‘This final part of Florian Zeller’s trilogy is the most powerful of all.’
The Times, Ann Treneman
Written by the internationally acclaimed Florian Zeller (The Father, The Mother), lauded by The Guardian as ‘the most exciting playwright of our time’, The Son is directed by the award-winning Michael Longhurst.
Book by 30 September and get tickets from £15*
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