Monthly Archives: August 2015

No other ballet is staged so often. No other ballet has had so many interpretations. Every great ballerina wants to dance the dual role of the white swan (Odette, pure and innocent) and the black swan (Odile, evil and erotic). … Continue reading →

Linnie Reedman sets Shakespeare’s comedy in New Orleans in an era long ago; and there is nothing wrong with that. Still, it would have been highly improbable for an upper-crust young lady from aristocratic Athens, Georgia, to be openly in … Continue reading →

Donald Macdonald’s 70-minute monologue, acted without interval, is a portrait of Vivien at the very moment when her relationship with Larry has become untenable and he is telling her that he wants a divorce so that he can marry Joan … Continue reading →

Vicki Baum worked as a parlour maid for six months in a Berlin hotel so she could do her research. Her best-selling novel has been a play, an all-star film (with Greta Garbo) and a musical by Robert Wright, George … Continue reading →

It is a commonplace to say that Ivan Turgenev’s A Month in the Country is the best play Chekhov did not write; but though Turgenev does anticipate Chekhov, it is still very much a romantic drama of its own times, … Continue reading →

A brutal dictatorship in Eastern Europe is on the point of collapse. The complex structure of Abi Morgan’s drama does not make it easy to follow. It cannot have been easy to learn and audiences will find they have to … Continue reading →

Athol Fugard’s play, which premiered in Johannesburg in 1989, is a passionate debate on whether the violence meted out to black South Africans should be met with violence, is passionately acted by Anthony Ofoegbu, Nathan Ives-Moiba and Rose Reynolds.

The last of the great Greek tragedies was written by Euripides when he was over 70 and living in voluntary exile in the wilds of Macedonia, far from civilisation. The play, a psychological struggle between restraint and excess, was first … Continue reading →