Thom Yorke’s Hamlet is brilliantly rendered sacrilege
In an inventive theatrical mash-up, Radiohead’s album Hail to the Thief perfectly articulates the prince’s torment.
ByTheatre review
It’s the Economy, Stupid is a polemic about the perils of capitalism
This show is both a whistlestop tour of modern economics and Joe Sellman-Leava’s attempt to understand why he’s always broke.
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London’s season of sexed-up Shakespeare
New productions of Richard II and Much Ado About Nothing both burnish their texts with hot celebrity appeal – but…
Kyoto gives voice to the urgency of the climate crisis
Soho Place’s perceptive and absorbing production shrewdly reminds its audience that there is nothing more exciting than saving the world.
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Elton John’s The Devil Wears Prada musical can’t improve on the film
The songs don’t stick, and the fashion is more The Only Way Is Essex than made in Milan.
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Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy makes for an inventive, genre-expanding ballet
This futuristic cocktail from the Royal Opera House is true to the spirit of Atwood’s novels.
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Why the Tortoise sale may be good for the Observer
Also this week: reminiscing about print’s heyday and leaving technology at the theatre door.
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Robert Icke’s Oedipus is a devastating, seamless update of Sophocles
This production imagines Oedipus (Mark Strong) as a contemporary politician – and achieves a level of catharsis rare for any…
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The National’s modern Coriolanus
David Oyelowo is best as Rome’s greatest soldier when he loses his temper.
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Michael Sheen is remarkable in the National Theatre’s Nye
There could not be a better time for this story of Aneurin “Nye” Bevan, the Welsh Labour MP and arch-creator…
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Thomas Ostermeier’s An Enemy of the People: Ibsen for the Amazon age
The director’s world-famous adaptation, now premiering in English in the West End, is a scorching, punk-inflected take on the 1882…
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Sarah Snook’s one-woman The Picture of Dorian Gray is gimmicky and shallow
Technical bravura, camera trickery and a high-wire, high-energy performance are not enough to make this show enjoyable or meaningful.
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Live Aid musical Just For One Day: sanctimony and second-rate songs
Here are pop stars as cherubim and seraphim. Here is Ultravox belted out as if it was the Hallelulah chorus.
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50 years of Manon
In this Royal Opera House revival, Kenneth MacMillan’s masterful ballet still has the power to bring audiences to their feet.
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David Tennant is refreshingly vile in the Donmar’s Macbeth
The actor has a manic, eye-rolling energy and a real bitchiness in this production. But do we need the headphones?
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A nonconforming take on The Nutcracker
The Southbank Centre puts a refreshing new twist on the most established of theatrical traditions.
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Kenneth Branagh’s King Lear is camp, callow and utterly unmoving
Rarely have I been less touched by a production than this one – when Gloucester was blinded, the audience laughed.
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Don Quixote brought to life
Carlos Acosta’s playful and fiery take on the 1869 ballet is a joyful marriage of movement and music.
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Can Danny Boyle pull off a hip-hop dance version of The Matrix?
Free Your Mind is a spectacle – but for a show about man and machine, it lacks the human touch.
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Andrew Scott is superhuman in Vanya
Playing eight roles in this one-man Chekhov adaptation, the actor is utterly convincing.
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