‘We still haven’t cracked it!’ How much does a play change during previews?
It is a fraught time of cuts, rewrites – and alcohol. Our writer goes behind the scenes at The Divine Mrs S just as the official opening night looms and not everyone’s ready to face the music
February 2024
Two new plays in London up for $25,000 Susan Smith Blackburn prize
Dramas by April De Angelis and Rhianna Ilube have been nominated for the prestigious award honouring female, transgender and non-binary playwrights
September 2023
The week in theatre: Great Expectations; Infamous; That Face – review
Infamous review – Caroline and Rose Quentin share Emma Hamilton’s scandal
December 2022
The week in theatre: As You Like It; Mandela; Kerry Jackson – review
Kerry Jackson review – Fay Ripley’s lively striver is riddled with working-class cliches
July 2021
Gin Craze! review – raucous fun with a dark chaser
Gin Craze! review – a bawdy feminist history lesson with anarchic spirit
The week in theatre: Constellations; Extinct review – the stars are aligned
Extinct review – firenadoes, melting ice and one hour to halt apocalypse
May 2021
Reopening culture
From McKellen’s Hamlet to a comic Hullabaloo: what to see as theatres and comedy clubs reopen
As stage shows return, we pick the best post-lockdown offerings – featuring Egyptian gods, rebelling vicars, dancing youths ... and Ian McKellen playing the Dane at 82
December 2020
Future plays
Gin Craze: the moral panic about 'mother's ruin' still demonises women
Our series of extracts from unstaged scripts continues with a musical giving voice to the working-class women whose lives were changed by alcohol
November 2020
Lockdown culture
Hoard: Rediscovered review – treasure tales from Sara Pascoe, Isy Suttie and more
Staffordshire’s Anglo-Saxon booty inspires a host of short plays by writers including April De Angelis and Darren Sharp
May 2020
Lockdown culture
Unprecedented review – making gripping drama out of corona crisis
'The audience booed, the cast fled' – playwrights relive their worst flops
December 2019
Sister act: from Killing Eve to Little Women, female friendships finally get top billing
After years of men in the spotlight, now stories about women– and created by women – are taking centre stage at last
November 2019
My Brilliant Friend review – Elena Ferrante's twisting tale of heroines for our age
Niamh Cusack and Catherine McCormack perform the central roles with magnetic force in this frenetically comic adaptation of Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet
April 2019
Mrs Noah fights back: 'It's about extinction. There is no bigger story'
Among the protesters heading for parliament are Noah’s family and Ade Adepitan as God in a suit. April De Angelis talks about turning the biblical flood into riotous drama
December 2018
Dames, dressers and backstage dramas: plays about actors – in pictures
Peter Duncan plays a washed-up panto dame in Park theatre’s new production. Here’s a reminder of the many farces, musicals and tragedies about an actor’s life
September 2018
The Village review – teenage firebrand leads resistance against patriarchy
Anya Chalotra is compelling as a 16-year-old who leads the women in her Indian village to stand up to Art Malik’s sadistic, tyrannical cop
