Culture

The Old Vic refuses to reopen. Director Matthew Warchus says the social distancing rules make it impossible for him to reach the 70 per cent capacity he needs to break even. That was true in the old days when the Vic had to put on lavish fare and tempt audiences away from the opulent variety

Covid marshals have invaded theatreland. Arriving for a weekday matinee at the Bridge, I was greeted by stewards holding up illuminated boards. ‘PLEASE WEAR A FACE COVERING.’ Inside, the seating had been rearranged into clumps of twos and threes with the odd single perch sticking out like a toadstool. Nicholas Hytner offered us a pair

It has roughly the same proportions as Shakespeare’s Globe. The Roman Theatre in Verulamium (St Albans) is an atmospheric ruin with low flint walls, a banked rampart and a single stone column. Historians estimate that the circular space, measuring about 40 yards in diameter, would have enabled 7,000 spectators to watch plays, gladiatorial contests and

For nearly six months our subsidised playhouses, notably the National Theatre, have been dark. What have we missed? Not much. Some would say nothing at all. And this has come as a surprise to those of us who were led to believe that the subsidised theatre is critical to ‘the national conversation’. It turns out

The virus has broken Edinburgh. The shattered remnants of the festival are visible on the internet. Here’s what happened. The international festival has been reduced to one filmed theatre commission and a handful of videoed musical offerings. The Fringe has survived but in a horribly mutilated form. Two of its most prestigious brands, the Pleasance

Okay, I admit it. I have a girl crush on Juliet Stevenson. Ever since I first saw her in the 1990 film Truly, Madly, Deeply with Alan Rickman, I have loved her sexy, round and intelligent tones. Imagine how excited I was to discover, therefore, that you can have Juliet in your ear for a

So the madness continues. Planes full of passengers are going everywhere. Theatres full of ghosts are going bust. My first press night since March took place at a monumental Victorian building in Wandsworth where concerts are staged in an open-air courtyard. The entry process was less fussy than I’d expected. I didn’t need my phone

Back to the West End at last. After a four- month lay-off, I grabbed the first available chance to catch a show in central London. I joined 20 enthusiasts at the ‘West End Musical — Silent Disco Walking Tour’, which convened outside a Fitzrovia pub. We were given a pink bracelet and a set of

‘Give us a date, mate!’ That was the sound of Andrew Lloyd Webber begging Boris Johnson to announce when the West End can return to normal. He made his plea at the London Palladium on 23 July, where he was testing a new set of Covid-compliant measures during a one-hour solo show by Beverley Knight.

The BBC announces Merchant of Venice as if it were a Hollywood blockbuster. ‘In the melting pot of Venice, trade is God.’ The RSC, which staged the show in 2015, calls it ‘a thrilling, contemporary interpretation’. Each element in Polly Findlay’s production looks fine. Jacob Fortune-Lloyd and Patsy Ferran (Bassanio and Portia) are as cute

Let’s face it. Theatre via the internet is barely theatre. It takes a huge amount of creativity and inventiveness to make anything remotely like a theatrical drama in the digital sphere. The BBC’s Culture in Quarantine team have invited some talented writers and actors to try and crack it. Unprecedented begins with ‘Viral’, by James

The RSC’s 2014 version of Much Ado is breathtaking to look at. Sets, lighting and costumes are exquisitely done, even if the location is not established with absolute clarity. The date is Christmas 1918 and we’re in a stately home that has been converted into a billet, or a hospital, for returning soldiers. The prickly

Nicholas Hytner’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream opens in a world of puritanical austerity. The cast wear sombre black costumes and Oliver Chris, with menacing swagger, brings a note of palpable sadism to the role of Theseus. Then things relax as the ‘mechanicals’ in modern boiler suits prepare to rehearse the play. Hammed Animashaun (Bottom) dominates

The Beeb has released Simon Godwin’s Hamlet staged by the RSC in 2016. The director makes one major change and leaves it at that. Elsinore is transposed to a present-day African republic where members of the ruling clan are jockeying for power after the dictator’s death. This chimes with our understanding of geopolitics and lends

The National Theatre’s programme of livestreamed shows continues with the Donmar’s 2014 production of Coriolanus starring Tom Hiddleston. The play is not a favourite. The story concerns a victorious Roman general who accepts the role of consul but when his political career falters he takes revenge by befriending his defeated enemy, Aufidius, and marching on

Sea Wall, by Simon Stephens, is a half-hour monologue about grief performed by Andrew Scott. The YouTube clip has been viewed more than 250,000 times. The habitual quirks and irritants of Stephens’s writing are all here: the inept jokes, the laddish swearing, the fascination with 1970s pop, the preference for males over females and the

Hats off to the Lawrence Batley Theatre for producing a brand-new full-length show on-line. Stephen Fry, with avuncular fruitiness, narrates a dramatisation of David Nicholls’s novel The Understudy, published in 2005. It’s a back-stage comedy about a newly written sex romp inspired by the life of Lord Byron. The show, predictably enough, is entitled, Mad,

The world’s greatest playwright ought to be dynamite at the movies. But it’s notoriously hard to turn a profit from a Shakespearean adaptation because film-goers want to be entertained, not anointed with the chrism of high art. Macbeth is one of the texts that frequently attracts directors. Justin Kurzel’s 2015 version (Amazon Prime) didn’t triumph

The National’s bizarre livestreaming service continues. On 7 May, for one week only, it released a modern-dress version of Antony and Cleopatra set in a series of strategy rooms, conference centres and five-star hotel suites. The lovestruck Roman was played by a louche, gruff, brooding Ralph Fiennes. Why is this man so watchable? He lacks

A TV play by Tom Stoppard, A Separate Peace, was broadcast live on Zoom last Saturday. I watched as my screen divided itself into four cubes in which appeared the actors, performing from home. The play was written in 1964 and it’s well suited to the split-split screen format because no physical contact occurs between

‘Enjoy world-class theatre online for free,’ announces the National Theatre. Every Thursday at 7 p.m. a play from the archive is livestreamed. I watched Twelfth Night, from 2017, starring Tamsin Greig as a female Malvolio. What a handsome, absorbing and brilliantly staged production this is. Greig’s comically petulant Malvolia won the plaudits, rightly, while the

Not looking great, is it? Until we all get jabbed, theatres may have to stay closed. And even the optimists say a reliable vaccine is unlikely to arrive before Christmas. As the darkness persists, here’s a round-up of my leading experiences over nearly two decades as a reviewer. There’s been a surge of output. More

High Tide got there first. The East Anglian theatre company has produced a series of lockdown mini-dramas, Love in the Time of Corona, made up of five filmed reflections on self-isolation. ‘Rainbows’ by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm is narrated by a woman on the edge teaching her kids to decorate the windows with coloured paints. ‘Child

Theatres have taken to the internet like never before. Recorded performances are being made available over the web, many for free. Getting Better Slowly is about a dancer, Adam Pownall, who spent two years fighting Guillain-Barré syndrome. This lucid and enjoyable show (recorded at Lincoln Drill Hall) now looks horribly topical. A young artist, paralysed

On Blueberry Hill sounds like a musical but it’s a sombre prison drama set in Ireland. Two bunkbeds. Above, an older man, Christy. Below, his younger companion, PJ. They take turns to talk, and gradually they reveal how their lives are interwoven. These are men of unusual intelligence and articulacy, and both are so profoundly

Here’s the problem. Much communication is done online, especially by youngsters, and much drama focuses on communication. So how do theatre-makers represent emails and telephonic chitchat in ways that are stimulating and realistic? The usual solution is to mount blank screens around the stage and to beam the comms on to the boards while the

The Prince of Egypt is a musical adapted from a 1998 Dreamworks cartoon based on the Book of Exodus. So the original writer is God. The show opens with a troupe of fit young athletes working on Pharaoh’s latest tomb. And they look like the best-fed slaves in history. A meat-rich diet and round-the-clock access

A Moorish princess shipwrecked on the English coast disguises herself as a boy to protect her virtue. Arriving in London, she’s hired by William Shakespeare as an assistant to his maidservant Kate, who instantly falls in love with the exotic cross-dressing newcomer. This absurdity, familiar to fans of Twelfth Night, is the opening move in