Monthly Archives: July 2011

John Gay’s ballad opera was hugely successful at its premiere in 1728, running for an unprecedented 62 nights and went on to become one of the most enduring plays of the 18th century. It made John Rich, the producer, so … Continue reading →

Simon Callow’s latest one man show is a mixture of lecture and recital. Anthony Bate’s script informs and speculates on Shakespeare’s life with judicious quotes from the plays, the poems and the sonnets. Callow, intelligent, silver-tongued, passionate, and always engaging, … Continue reading →

Ed Hall’s all-male Propeller Company is appearing in both plays. The best farces are always rooted in reality; but, unfortunately, Hall’s production of The Comedy of Errors (a classic case of mistaken identity in which there are not one but … Continue reading →

Tom Stoppard’s first play, a modern classic, first seen in London at the National Theatre at the Old Vic in 1967, is an undergraduate jeu d’esprit, a meditation on death, comical and sad. Trevor Nunn’s production opens with the two … Continue reading →

Christopher Marlowe, playwright, atheist, blasphemer, spy, lover of boys and tobacco, died in mysterious circumstances, stabbed in a pub brawl in a Deptford alehouse in 1593 when he was 29. Five years earlier he had written a devilish exercise in … Continue reading →

Ibsen thought it his most important play, his masterpiece. Published in 1873 it was meant to be read not staged; but few have read it and even fewer have seen it. It has had one performance in Oslo. Now modernised … Continue reading →