Monthly Archives: February 2013

The novels of Charles Dickens, with their melodramatic plots, were so popular that they were instantly staged in pirated versions, often even before Dickens had finished writing them. Graham McLaren’s impressionistic production is chiefly notable for its atmospheric cobwebbed rococo … Continue reading →

When I saw Simon Gray’s play in 1981 in a production by Harold Pinter with Edward Fox in the leading role, I thought it was his best play. Seeing it again after all these years, in a much broader production … Continue reading →

40 years after its premiere Harold Pinter’s elusive mixture of dreams, reality and gamesmanship doesn’t get any easier and the audience has to work as hard as the actors do. The clue as to how we are to take the … Continue reading →

Simon Stephens’s slice of working-class life, which is set in Stockport and follows the misfortunes of an abandoned child from the age of 11 to 24, has, presumably, been revived in order to attract a teenage audience to the National … Continue reading →

Five writers and a choreographer explore the impact of Yoruba culture on Black lives over four centuries in five countries (Nigeria, Cuba, Brazil, US, UK). The result – a collaboration between the Young Vic and the Royal Court, directed by … Continue reading →

Why did Oscar Wilde not take the boat train to Paris and thus escape arrest and imprisonment for two years? David Hare’s play, with Rupert Everett’s superb performance, has got its well deserved transfer to the West End. There have … Continue reading →

Peter Quint, a former valet, and Miss Jessel, a former governess, return from the dead, to haunt the house in which they were once employed. They frighten the life out of the new and young governess, who senses their evil … Continue reading →

All-female plays are rarely box-office. Three young women share digs at university. Di (Tamzin Outhwaite) is a working-class, down-to-earth lesbian. Vic (Gina McKee) is an academic doing a dissertation on the corset. Rose (Anna Maxwell Martin) is upper-class, adorable and … Continue reading →