Monthly Archives: April 2012

Jung Chang’s family history of three traumatised generations has sold over 13 million copies worldwide. 20 years after its publication, it is still banned in China. Adapted by Alexandra Wood, directed by Sacha Wares and designed by Miriam Buether, the … Continue reading →

Edna Walsh and Cillian Murphy are working together for the first time since Disco Dogs launched their careers 15 years ago. The play is a dark, fragmentary yet dense 90-minute monologue, which makes a passing nod in the direction of … Continue reading →

A middle-aged atheist, who is rotting away in a wheelchair, terminally ill, wants to die and he puts pressure on his wife to assist him in his suicide. He knows it’s a crime; he’s a lawyer. Will she do it? … Continue reading →

Charles Dickens’s serialized novels were instantly turned into plays; sometimes, pirated even before he had finished writing them. The Victorians loved melodramas. We do, too. Today, they are regularly serialized on television. Ten of them have been turned into musicals; … Continue reading →

Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) is considered the first great American playwright. Is Long Day’s Journey Into Night his greatest play? Watching Anthony Page’s superb revival, many theatregoers could easily be persuaded it is. Written, as he confessed, in blood and tears … Continue reading →

The plays of Bernard-Marie Kortès (1948-1989) are rarely performed in Britain. Alexander Zeldin’s revival makes you wonder why. The setting is a French construction site in West Africa. A black worker has died. His friend comes to collect his body. … Continue reading →

A middle-class community, dissatisfied with the way the police are dealing with the anti-social behaviour on a sink estate, takes the law into its own hands and turns vigilante and fascist. Alan Ayckbourn’s portrait of the Big Society is potentially … Continue reading →

Cate Blanchett is giving a virtuoso performance but, sadly, it is not in a great classic role, but in Botho Strauss’s very boring and over-long odyssey. Many audiences will find this German expressionistic and surreal drama uphill work. Blanchett plays … Continue reading →