Masha Gessen, Shostakovich and Shakespeare's Prospero wrestle order from chaos Essay-writing can be a great art, at least when executed by Hubert Butler of Kilkenny, on a par - whether you k…
Completion of the city's big Dante project with 'Paradiso' is only one of three wonders For once, a festival theme has meaning. "Tra la carne e il cielo", "Between flesh and heaven", is how …
Barry McGovern is odyssey master, while fine performers sag under awful script A pot plant on a stand, two tables with glasses of water, two chairs " one plush, one high " are all the props …
Happiest in home-territory epics, Ivo van Hove pulls off a Greek-tragedy stunner Hunger for the gruesome horrors and euphoric highs of Greek tragedy seems to be stronger than ever. Yet when …
Good in parts, but Kit Harington's king isn't the best thing about this hard-working show Sharp suits swapped for combat fatigues, a people's commander: you'd think that Max Webster's produc…
Ibsen anticipates Beckett in his strange final play, austerely staged with dashes of wit In Ibsen's last and shortest play, further cut here, four people nominally climb a mountain, but actu…
Skiing-resort trauma is played too much for easy laughs It sounds like the title of a play by Rattigan. No such luck: "Force Majeure" " a legal term with which all too few will be familiar, …
Jessie Buckley and Eddie Redmayne constantly surprise in multilayered production Turning a theatre into the Kit Kat Club, Berlin, early 1930s, is nothing new: the Edinburgh University Theatr…
Near the end of her long journey, our refugee gets a welcome her real-life kin are denied "I want to tell her that people will be good," Tewodros Aregawe of Phosphoros Theatre confided to us…
Band and singers energise the brilliant entertainment of Bernstein, Comden and Green It's a wonderful thing to hear a nine-piece Broadway-style band at full pelt, and to see real show dancin…
Lisa Dwan's infinite variety guides us through Beckett's timeless masterpiece Just when you thought you couldn't take any more one- or two-handers, online or in the theatre, along comes the …
Monica Dolan and Lesley Manville are peerless in this Alan Bennett double bill Monologues and duets rule the stage right now. We can only dream of the day when theatre steps up to the classi…
Ivo van Hove engages British and Dutch actors to debate the urgent question of 2019 Are we really past all this? From Ivo van Hove's 2019 polyphony of opinions and reflections down the centu…
A host of Broadway stars varies the strain in classily done from-home gala Maybe you can't compare incomparables, but it was instructive to watch this Broadway lockdown gala feting nonagenar…
Is there a better climax to a musical first act than the terror-plus-wit in 'Sweeney Todd'? Two numbers, one hair-raising slice of music-theatre. When Sondheim's paying homage to the older, …
Middleton's decimation of an Italian court needs more satirical thrust Vendetta, morte: what a lark to find those tools of 19th century Italian opera taken back to their mother tongue in a M…
Embarrassing period piece needs a lift from better comic timing than this Not the musical then, worst luck. How timely it would have been to mark Jerry Herman's passing with a celebration of…
One woman barely speaks, the other can't be heard and two men interfere A work of genius isn't sacred, copyrighted territory. A great film may become a play, a novel a film; the adaptation s…
An immortal lyricist and composer leaves us plenty to be joyful about How is it that, in the nearly 900 pages of Sondheim's collected lyrics with extensive comments Finishing the Hat and Loo…
Four complex novels squeezed into a big, bold show with strong performances It took no time for Elena Ferrante's two Neapolitan friends to join the ranks of great literary creations: Lenù…
Close-knit company keeps the York and Lancaster clashes as clear and lively as it can No Joan of Arc means no Henry VI Part One. France, where we left the victorious Henry V - the superb Sar…
Multimedia haunting from Norwegian company De Utvalgte in Jon Fosse's theatre-poem In a flowering branch of London theatre, Norway comes to Notting Hill with what's becoming revelatory regul…
A young carer and her mother movingly portrayed in Sean Mathias's 1985 drama When Sean Mathias wrote A Prayer for Wings 35 years ago, the subject of young carers devoting their lives to pare…
A dramatic tour from the tomb of Italy's greatest poet and music among the mosaics Two years ago Ermanno Montanari and Marco Martinelli, the visionary partners who have powered Ravenna's rev…
James McArdle's lead, strong ensemble and David Hare's Ibsen adaptation compel Like Hamlet and both parts of Goethe's Faust, with which it shares the highest peak of poetic drama, Ibsen's Pe…