ColumnsI (in)famously engaged in a bit of post-performance rage last year against a theatregoer for taking flash photography from her seat regularly during the five-hour, and now Olivier Award winning, Einstein on the Beach at…
ATG plants a flag on Broadway
ATG’s Howard Panter and Rosemary Squire have topped The Stage 100 list of theatreland’s most influential people for four years running now (though this year they shared the top spot with the National Theatre). And…
More notes from New York: from a musical about Imelda Marcos to a one-man Macbeth from Scotland
I’ve already reported on part of my New York week last week, when I wrote about seeing Once yet again there and Orphans (which shut on Sunday) and Old Hats (which on Sunday won this…
The week ahead in London, May 20-26
No sooner have I returned from New York late last night, after a madcap whirl of 8 shows in five days, there’s a crazy week ahead in London with multiple openings on the same nights,…
Short Shorts 85: An actor bites back and clowning around
I’m in New York this week, and though I wasn’t here in time to see The Testament of Mary that closed the weekend before last with Fiona Shaw, I just made it into town in…
Once is definitely not enough
I try not to be what a friend of mine in New York calls a “quotes whore” – someone who writes reviews so that they get emblazoned on the marquees outside theatres. But I also…
When the drearies do attack/ and a siege of the sads begins…
I guess we just have to get used to it: life can frequently be depressing. But I never get used to suffering from depression, which is a different (though sometimes related) thing entirely. Just the…
The (mis)information highway and the online haters
It’s a fact of life that there’s now an unstoppable tide of information (and in turn misinformation) about, thanks to Twitter and the speed at which it can disseminate information. I am implicated and complicit…
The week ahead in London, May 13-19
Theatre is usually more feast than famine, as regular readers of this weekly column will know from the variety and choice of what’s routinely on offer to see in London and beyond. But this week,…
Short Shorts 84: Twitter connections and Let It Be
I’m sad that no sooner did I highlight the wonderful Twitter account of Sir Little David Hare (@LittleDavidH) yesterday than I’ve found the profile ‘suspended’. I hope that this important “gift to the nation”, as it…
(Little) Sir David Hare tweets, and other quotes of the week
(Little) Sir David Hare on Twitter Twitter is a place, of course, for instant opinion and gratification – and also sometimes instant fame, too. Now that @WestEndProducer has virtually become a West End institution in…
A storm in a classified ad, (non) audience behaviour, and a critic retires after 50 years
A storm in a classified ad A storm in a teacup, or at least a classified ad, erupted in New York last week when Scott Rudin lit the touchpaper of a feud with the New…
The week ahead in London and beyond, May 7-12
With the bank holiday yesterday, the week ahead is of course slightly curtailed; but that means there’s even more to see in the remaining days, with multiple clashes every night. The result, as I’ve often…
Short Shorts 83: A quick exit for Viva Forever, A flurry of musicals, and ticket (and ice cream) pricing
Viva Forever for not much longer Back in February I wrote that Judy Craymer, producer of Viva Forever!, had told the Evening Standard, “The critics were always going to give us a hard time but the…
The Tony Race
Now that we’ve just despatched our own Olivier Awards for the year, it’s time to turn our attentions across the Atlantic and the Tony Awards, the nominations for which were announced on Tuesday. And unlike…
Some quotable quotes, and the strangest review of the week
Writing this blog every day, week in and week out, I have a valuable platform for my own views. But sometimes its worth repeating the views of others entirely. Today is one of those days! Arts…
My Oliviers groundhog day
I experienced the Olivier Awards on Sunday twice over, for a dose of groundhog day – once live in person, then again when I got home on live television. I began my Oliviers day with…
The week ahead in London and beyond, April 29 to May 5
It’s a heavily musical week ahead, from the launch of the new Chichester summer season tonight with a new production of The Pajama Game to the UK premiere of Off-Broadway’s Bare, the return of Ghost…
Short Shorts 82: Placing an economic value on the arts, previews and photography
The economic value of the arts and its cabinet minister On Wednesday, the government’s culture secretary Maria Miller, a former marketing and advertising executive appointed to the cabinet last September, made her first public speech…
The critical and Shakespearean conundrum
“To call this production eagerly awaited would be an understatement,” wrote Michael Billington yesterday in his Guardian review of Nick Hytner’s new production of Othello that had opened the night before at the National. In…
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