846 stories by "Friends"
AT THE SUMMIT OF RAGE AND HOPE     Fear not, this isn't a Greta-gloom lecture but a lively, imaginative, borderline wild reconstruction of the years culminatin…
NO SINKING FEELINGS HERE, GIRLFRIEND Call it a jukebox musical if you like, but only if the jukebox came alive, went rogue and started tottering around the stage on rubber feet hurling insul…
SACRED MONSTERS IN THE UNDERWORLD Deep darkness within the U-shaped seating,:  into it on wheels glides the dark gondola: Charon the ferryman, after millennia punting to and fro acro…
A HIGH-KICKING WOODEN WONDER     Serious fun, this. Never liked the Disney Pinocchio, or even in childhood the over-preachy Carlo Collodi book about the defiant wooden…
PRESENT MIRTH HATH PRESENT LAUGHTER. AND MELANCHOLY. AND FALSE NOSES   In a play as familiar as this it is small touches that spring fresh life. Like the moment when the fool Fes…
SPRINGTIME FOR…EVERYONE    Joyful, headlong and full-hearted, here comes sacred outrage. If director Patrick Marber and the Menier had been minded to issue wet 'trigger…
MAZELTOV! JEWISH PANTO STRIKES AGAIN    Goldie Frocks, rightful heiress to an East End schmutter workshop, has been enslaved by the evil Calvin Brine, whose behemoth of t…
FEARED IT MIGHT BE TUTU MUCH, BUT NO…   I immediately fell for Frankie Bradshaw's set: a two- storey house lined with fossil skeletons in cases, and a spirited opening in whi…
LOOK BEYOND THE LETTUCE    It is a tribute to Greg Wilkinson's monologue play that I had not previously seen the rise and fall of Liz Truss as having a gripping dramatic line.…
HIGH SPIRITS, HIGH COMEDY, EVEN HIGHER HEELS    Elton John, who jumped at the idea of writing the music, calls the 2006 film a favourite; many of us nod in blissful agreement…
C'EST MAGNIFIQUE !     Napoleon, defeated at Trafalgar, vows revenge on Britain and its "bootlicking monoglot monarchists". Stalking around in breeches and bicorn h…
TA-RAN-TA-RA !  Mike Leigh, a veteran better known for films, Abigail's Party and theatrical experiments with scriptless rehearsal, is also a dedicated devotee of the utterly scr…
THE COOLEST CAT IN LONDON. AND SOME RATS.      Here's your traditional Christmas outing, proper panto. No rackety popstar hype or tedious suggestive jokes from wor…
GALSWORTHY ? WELL WORTH SEEING   With late Victorians, there's plenty to bite on: a rising bourgeoisie aflame with parvenu ambition, piety , pannier skirts ,patriarch…
WISDOM IN A LIFE BACKWARDS    Forget the awful fim made from Scott Fitzgerald's story about a life lived backwards " a man born in old age, working towards youth and infancy in re…
 A JOURNEY OF JOURNEYS    A map is a lovely thing, but sometimes practically speaking a diagram is better. And can also be lovely: especially when its useful elegance has beco…
THE BIG RATHER UNFRIENDLY GIANT    Tom Maschler, legendary publisher and once a Kindertransport child, summed up the appeal of Roald Dahl: his stories offerÂ…
1648, Agra: marble and murder, a terrible beauty   One of the worst photo-ops of Princess Diana's collapsing marriage was that shot at the Taj Mahal, billed by romantics as "eternal …
LOOK BACK IN COMPASSION      The Rattigan renaissance of the last few years is more than welcome: ever since Flare Path hit the West End fourteen years ago there seems…
THE GRANDEST OF GRIEFS Not Renaissance Mantua but New York a century past: smart bars and low dives, gangsters in fedoras. Why not ? In any world might be a lonely jokester, missing …
A short catch-up on one of the season's greats (was away..) Mark Strong is made to play great tragedy: a long powerful body,  controlled bleak intelligent  features.A figure from any a…
"…HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB"     That was the subtitle, when exactly sixty years ago a shower of Oscars fell on Stanley Kubrick's brilliantly tasteles…
A HARD AND ICY WORLD   A 1970's Hull folksong chorus: "Next time you see a trawlerman on Hessle Road half tight " remember, o remember, the perils of that night". It was a tribut…
BROTHER, CHRISTIAN, WITCHFINDER  I reviewed this play about the Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins last year, in Ipswich: I write only to add thoughts, now that it ha…
LEHMANS REVISITED The first time I saw Sam Mendes' production at the NT, I exclaimed that the evening had no right to be so much fun: three hours, three chaps in black frock coats, no so…
