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THEATRE Hamlet Crucible Theatre, Sheffield A year or so after the last big Battle of the Hamlets, which saw Jude Law pitted against David Tennant in their respective portrayals of [...]

THEATRE National Theatre (Lyttelton), London When The Tricycle's mammoth programme The Great Game: Afghanistan returned this summer (prior to an American tour that has just begun in Washington) it was [...]

THEATRE The Rivals Theatre Royal, Bath A wash and a lick of paint ([pounds sterling]3.65m-worth thereof) have done the Theatre Royal in Bath no end of good and, to judge [...]

THEATRE Bedlam Shakespeare's Globe, London The first play written by a woman to be staged at the Globe in either its modern or original incarnations is about the big picture [...]

Arcola, London There is no inherent reason for much theatre to be staged more or less end-on to the audience but, by the same token, there is often not quite [...]

THEATRE Noel Coward Theatre, London The Mousetrap has never been made into a film; consequently, even after half a century, it still makes sense to ask the audience not to [...]

EARLY MUSIC De Jerusalem a Cordoue Theatre de L'Ile Saint-Louis Paul Rey, Paris THEATRE The Thunderbolt Orange Tree, Richmond THEATRE Tiny Kushner Tricycle Theatre, London The title is not just [...]

In the frenzy of the Edinburgh Fringe you can encounter a whole range of theatrical moods and genres, and even a variety of ideas about what constitutes theatre and how [...]

THEATRE Edinburgh Playhouse We live in a debased age, when melisma is a pointless vocal exercise in every other pop or R'n'B song, when stage musicals not only pre-plan their [...]

Fringe solo shows Various venues Since there are some 2,500 shows on at this year's Edinburgh Fringe, it may seem plain wrong to refer to the cost of bringing a [...]

THEATRE The Sun Also Rises Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh If there really were no second acts in American lives, as F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed, we would have been out of [...]

Regular visitors to the Edinburgh Fringe sometimes feel the impression of the one-trickiness of certain ponies. Cork-born Enda Walsh, for instance, is a terrific playwright, but for a few years [...]

EDINBURGH FRINGE Udderbelly's Pasture, Edinburgh Music theatre has in recent years established a major presence on the Edinburgh Fringe (although this year its dedicated venue in George Square has vanished). [...]

In some Edinburgh Fringe seasons the Traverse Theatre's programme is more overtly themed than in others. This year, no overall label is being flaunted, but as I spent my first [...]

THEATRE Earthquakes in London National Theatre (Cottesloe), London In some ways this show is quite uncharacteristic of playwright Mike Bartlett's work hitherto. His Royal Court productions - Contractions , My [...]

THEATRE Donmar Warehouse, London Is there a finer 'king' actor living than Ian McDiarmid? He is not cut from the traditional cloth, being slight of figure, but he has something [...]

THEATRE Anne Boleyn Shakespeare's Globe, London It is surprising how much of venerable leftwing playwright Howard Brenton's better work in the last few years has been on religious subjects. There [...]

THEATRE Hampstead Theatre, London Last year, when British-Asian theatre company Tamasha staged their Rajasthani-set musical adaptation of Wuthering Heights , the company stood at the forefront of a vibrant multicultural [...]

THEATRE National Theatre (Olivier), London This is the summer of Howard Brenton. His socialist convictions may be less on view in his play about Anne Boleyn about to open at [...]

THEATRE The Beauty Queen of Leenane Young Vic Theatre, London This, Martin McDonagh's first play, announced him in 1996 as a theatrical equivalent to The Pogues: English-raised but of Irish [...]

THEATRE Chichester Artistic director Jonathan Church follows his puckish double-bill about theatre critics in the Minerva by programming a diptych spread across both Chichester spaces. In the main house, Bernard [...]

THEATRE Arcola Theatre, London Caryl Churchill's 1976 dramatic collage-portrait of the Levellers, Diggers, Ranters and other millenarian radicals of the English Civil war period implicitly suggests parallels with its own [...]

Waterloo Eurostar Terminal, London SE1 After two summers at the National Railway Museum in York, the production by that city's Theatre Royal comes to London, and to a venue with [...]

The Real Inspector Hound/The Critic Minerva Studio, Chichester Faced with a double bill of plays about theatre critics, my colleagues and I are almost certain to be seen as sour [...]

Chichester Festival Theatre This 1933 musical was originally intended as brash escapism from the Great Depression. In the wake of Britain's austerity budget, lines such as 'if anyone doesn't want [...]

Hampstead Theatre, London Jamie Lloyd's version of Oscar Wilde's biblical drama, which arrives at Hampstead after a tour, bears what has become the hallmark of co-producer Headlong Theatre: an extreme [...]

Moira Buffini's reworking of Greek myths sits well in the Olivier Theatre's Travelex [pounds sterling]10 season alongside Women Beware Women . Buffini shows a world as amoral as that of [...]

As You Like It/ The Tempest Old Vic, London SE1 Stephen Dillane is an unshowy, deliberative actor. He makes every word count. It's a pity, then, when you can't hear [...]

Royal Court Theatre, London The Royal Court auditorium has been remade by designer Miriam Buether into a boxing gym-cum-arena. Most of us sit above the action, peering down as Leon [...]

THEATRE Morte D'Arthur Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon A flotilla of wimples sails on to the Courtyard stage and sets the tone for the next three and three-quarter hours. (This is not [...]

Almeida Theatre, London Jenny Worton's new adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's 1961 film contains, I would guess, about twice as much dialogue as the original, yet it lasts only a few [...]

Minerva Studio, Chichester The 1970 film of Love Story was nominated for seven Oscars, but won only one, for Francis Lai's score. Obviously any musical version is going to be [...]

THEATRE Young Vic Theatre, London Before he was a director, before even he was a playwright, David Lan was an anthropologist; his book about Zimbabwean spirit mediums is still available. [...]

Tricycle Theatre, London NW6 The Tricycle often offers the most politically audacious programming of any theatre in London. Its transcript-based 'tribunal' plays are justly renowned, and last year it staged [...]

The Crucible Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park, London Arthur Miller's classic parable seems perhaps too odd a choice for this al fresco theatrical bower in the middle of Regent's Park. [...]

THEATRE Chichester Festival Theatre On one level, Sir Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn's stage version of their classic 1980s BBC television comedy series has bridged the quarter-century gap well. The [...]

THEATRE Lyric Hammersmith, London Unlike Messrs Cameron & Clegg, playwrights David Eldridge, Robert Holman and Simon Stephens have been involved in their own coalition and negotiation process since 2002. The [...]

New Theatre, Cardiff It is generally but mistakenly assumed that Look Back In Anger was John Osborne's first play. In fact, his overnight success in 1956 came after several years [...]

Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon The press night of Michael Boyd's production was postponed for three weeks because of injury. Its rescheduling provided fortuitous parallels between the modern-dress action on stage and [...]

New Players Theatre, London The music playing as we entered the theatre was a perfect summation of the situation: Marvin Gaye wondering 'What's Going On'. It must have seemed a [...]

Old CoOp Building, Brighton, UK Arguing about what does and does not count as otheatreo is an angels-on-pinheads kind of topic; nevertheless, some immersive, siteresponsive works seem to take such [...]

Barbican, London A few years ago the Coming Thing was verbatim theatre, a style that culminated in a company whose performers wear headphones and repeat not just the words of [...]

Watford Palace Theatre, Watford, UK Playwright Gary Owen's programme note acknowledges inspirations ranging from To Kill A Mockingbird to programmes of restorative justice, but at the core of this play [...]

Old Vic, London On the last major London revival of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing , in 1999, the consensus was that it had aged well since it was written [...]

THEATRE Royal Court Theatre, London Seldom can a show's opening night have been so topical in so many ways. The fictitious Riot Club in Laura Wade's play is loosely inspired [...]

Abu Dhabi Womad The Womad world music festival - held in Abu Dhabi for the first time last year - comes to the Corniche from Thursday to Saturday, and the [...]

Hair Geilgud Theater, Lon Diane Paulus's production - which has transferred lock, stock and barrel to the West End from Broadway - is an evening of high-octane exuberance that does [...]

OPERETTA Wilton's Music Hall, London There is obviously going to be a fair amount of campery to an all-male production of this Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, but I honestly don't [...]

Andersen's English Hampstead Theatre, London The title is a deliberate pun, referring superficially to the atrocious command of English displayed by Hans Christian Andersen when he stayed for five weeks [...]

THEATRE Educating Rita/ Shirley Valentine Menier Chocolate Factory, London Willy Russell's Educating Rita reviews itself, really. Not in the sense of being critic-proof, nor yet manipulative. Rather, many a reviewer's [...]