Monthly Archives: November 2011

James Goldman’s cod-history play, which premiered in New York in 1966 and has never been seen on the London stage until now, is best known as a film with Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn in which they and the rest … Continue reading →

Reasons To Be Pretty is the third in a trilogy of plays Neil LaBute has written about obsession with physical appearance. The first was The Shape of Things to Come in which an art student vandalised her boy friend and … Continue reading →

Adam Meggido and Roy Smiles set their musical in 1952 when American burlesque (a showbiz mixture of striptease and comic turns) was in its final death-throes. It was also the era when thousands of people’s lives were being destroyed by … Continue reading →

All is not well. I doubt some foul play. Ian Rickson’s lunatic staging is the worst production of Hamlet I have seen. Unless you have some prior knowledge of Shakespeare’s text, it is quite impossible to follow; plus there are … Continue reading →

The Brit is 18-year-old Mirza Tahir Hussain, who was visiting Pakistan when he killed a cab-driver in self-defence. He was tried, found guilty of murder, and sentenced to be hanged. He spent 18 years on death row. He was finally … Continue reading →

It is somewhat disconcerting to find that James Saunders’ critically-admired Absurdist play, which I had once enjoyed so much that I saw it twice, should now seem to be so tiresome and not worth reviving. Saunders, drawing freely on Luigi … Continue reading →

The Collaborators, in John Lodge’s black comedy, are Joseph Stalin and Mikhail Bulgakov, author of The White Guard, Stalin’s favourite play and one which it was said he saw 15 times. The National staged it with great success last year. … Continue reading →

In May 1940 Britain faced its worst crisis in 1,000 years: the very real possibility of defeat by Nazi Germany. Nobody knew, until long after the war was over, that there had ever been a moment when surrendering had been … Continue reading →