At first glance, readers of The Hamletmachine could be forgiven for wondering whether it is actually a play at all: it opens with a montage of texts that are not ascribed to a character, there is no v
On the first night of J. M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World the audience began rioting in the theatre; by the third night the riots had spilled onto the streets of Dublin. How did one play pr
Thornton Wilder’s Skin of Our Teeth telescopes an audacious stretch of western history and mythology into a family drama, showing how the course of human events operates like theatre itself: constantl
"Everything passes/Everything perishes/Everything palls" – 4.48 PsychosisHow on earth do you award aesthetic points to a 75-minute suicide note? The question comes from a review of 4.48 Psychosis
‘It’s all real. All of it. Everything bad is real’ - MoeAlistair McDowall’s Pomona was first staged in 2014 and won properly startling, and startled, acclaim. Its edgeland setting permits a surrealist
This book takes a new look at My Fair Lady as a romantic musical comedy. It presupposes that readers are familiar with the back story about George Bernard Shaw’s staunch refusal (after the 1908 musica
Samuel Beckett's most accessible play is also one of the twentieth century's most moving dramas about aging, memory, and disappointment. Daniel Sack offers the first comprehensive survey of theKrapp’s
Harold Pinter’s Party Time (1991) is an extraordinary distillation of the playwright’s key concerns. Pulsing with political anger, it marks a stepping stone on Pinter’s path from iconic dramatist of e
Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? shocked audiences and critics alike with its assault on decorum. At base though, the play is simply a love story: an examination of a long-wedded life, f
Sweeney Todd, the gruesome tale of a murderous barber and his pastry chef accomplice, is unquestionably strange subject matter for the musical theatre – but eight Tony awards and enormous success
Often dismissed as kitsch sentimentalism, The Sound of Music (1959) has proven enduringly popular and surprisingly influential, both within the field of musical theatre and the wider world. The B
'Everyone's an abyss. You get dizzy if you look down.' -- WoyzeckGeorg Büchner’s Woyzeck was left unfinished at the time of its author’s death in 1837, but the play is now widely recognised as the fir
‘Do you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe!’ – Peter PanPeter Pan is a narrative many of us believe we know well, and yet the J.M. Barrie play that premiered on a West End stage in Decembe
"One more dawn! One more day! One day more!"Did Les Misérables make you miserable? Or did it inspire you? When Sarah Whitfield was a teenager, her Dad frequently embarrassed her with his love of this
‘You will see no false nothing false tonight’ – the HypnotistTim Crouch’s second play collapses a tale of loss and grief into an exploration of theatrical representation, in a piece of theatre that is
‘The Woods are just Trees. The Trees are just Wood.’ – All together Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine combined fairy tales including Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Jack and the Beanstalk to c
August Wilson’s considered Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1984) to be his favourite play of the ten in his award-winning Pittsburgh Cycle. It is a drama that truly examines the roots, crossroads and
When "You Really Got Me" exploded on Swinging London in 1964, The Kinks forever changed the course of rock ‘n’ roll. Ray Davies and Joe Penhall’s Olivier Award-winning Sunny Afternoon (2014) covers th
