Monthly Archives: March 2017

50 years ago the then 29-year-old Tom Stoppard had a brilliant success with his clever undergraduate lark, which has now returned to its original home in an excellent production by David Leveaux. Stoppard’s engaging existential tragicomedy is full of puns … Continue reading →

Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, excellently revived by James Macdonald, is one of the great American plays of the 20th century. George and Martha have been married for 23 years. He is an unsuccessful history lecturer at a … Continue reading →

Andrew Scott’s brilliant take on Moriatry in the Sherlock Holmes series on TV has made lots of people, who would not normally go to Shakespeare, eager to see his Hamlet. Scott’s softly-spoken conversational Prince immediately has a rapport with the … Continue reading →

Steve Waters’ Limehouse is a fictionalised account of a meeting by.”The Gang of Four” at David Owen’s home in Limehouse, East London in 1981 to discuss the setting up of the Social Democratic Party. The actors, directed by Polly Findlay, … Continue reading →

Ugly Lies the Bone is not exactly the sort of title to get the public rushing to buy seats. It sounds more suitable for a horror movie. .A soldier (Kate Fleetwood) returns home after her third tour of duty in … Continue reading →

Shakespeare’s comedy is already famous for its gender and sex confusion without Malvolio having a sex change. On the National Theatre’s poster there is a photograph of an elegant Tamsin Greig standing on a staircase in a smart suit, white … Continue reading →

Tom Stoppard has described the chaotic, anarchic and sometimes bewildering Travesties as “a bit of singing and dancing mixed up with philosophical debate.” The setting is Zurich in 1917. To enjoy his travesties of history and literature it is not … Continue reading →

Middle-aged audiences and especially middle-aged women are going to love Girls, a musical version of The Calendar Girls by Tim Firth and Gary Barlow. In 1999 eleven middle-aged women posed in the nude and made history. The women, members of … Continue reading →