Monthly Archives: May 2012

Simon Stephens’s detective story, a joint effort by three theatre companies from London, Munich and Tallinn, is acted in three languages and directed with excessive and self-gratifying relish by the German director, Sebastian Nübling. Much of the vulgar and bizarre … Continue reading →

Robert Wilson wrote a book of drawings and Philip Glass wrote the music to it. The result was one of the most famous innovative operas of the 20th century. The authors said they were the children of Marcel Duchamp and … Continue reading →

Blake Harrison, who made his name on television in The Inbetweeners, makes his stage debut in Rob Hayes’s awkward and unconvincing mix of comedy and violence which never gel. Harrison plays an alcoholic, drug-addict, rapist and murderer, who has just … Continue reading →

The Beatles’ anthem got it all wrong: you definitely need a lot more than love. Bernard Shaw said parents were the last people to be entrusted with the bringing up of children. Oscar Wilde said that children began by loving … Continue reading →

Peter Gill is the perfect director for Robert Holman’s three miniature dramas, gentle mood pieces, which share a common theme of lives shattered by war. Being Friends, set in a meadow during World War 2, is the best and describes … Continue reading →

In 1980 the then no-longer great American playwright Tennessee Williams came to Vancouver to see one of his plays. A year later he was dead at 71. Canadian playwright Daniel MacIvor insists he is writing fiction; but the fiction feels … Continue reading →

This double-bill is strongly recommended. A failed classics teacher is given a copy of Robert Browning’s translation of Aeschylus’s The Agamemnon by one of his pupils as a farewell present. It is a kindly action, which is deliberately and cruelly … Continue reading →

Allan Monkhouse’s long-forgotten play is set during August 1914 when everybody thought the war would be over by Christmas. When the play was premiered in 1924, eight million soldiers were dead and audiences were wiser. The garrulous titular hero is … Continue reading →