Glued to Hitler: what Brecht’s overlooked collages tell us about how fascism takes hold
Throughout his life, the great German playwright made punky montages that explored how fascism infested the country he had to flee. Why have they taken so long to come to light?
March 2024
The Threepenny Opera review – Barrie Kosky’s deliciously entertaining take on Brecht
The director brings great urgency and panache to this scathing critique of capitalism, with knockout performances in a bold and seductive show
January 2024
Front row at the wedding from hell: a toast to theatre’s marital ding-dongs
Party punch-ups, brides in disguise, simmering family rancour … playwrights have cordially invited audiences to some nightmarish nuptials
March 2023
The Good Person of Szechwan review – Brecht’s parable gets a bold revamp
The Decision review – didactic, two-dimensional and dramatically obvious
November 2022
Jean-Marie Straub obituary
French film-maker who challenged the primacy of narration and orthodox notions of realism
October 2022
The Caucasian Chalk Circle review – Carrie Hope Fletcher shines light in Brecht’s epic
A striking score and expressive singing carry Christopher Haydon’s production of the wartime classic
January 2022
Brief letters
Another brick in the wall for bees
The tragedy of our current political farce
November 2021
Writing the wrongs of the climate crisis
Letters: Meirion Bowen applauds Ben Okri’s stand, while Trevor Jones supports the wake-up call that less is more
March 2021
Top 10s
Top 10 matriarchs in fiction
These women, created by authors from Jane Austen to Colm Tóibín and Toni Morrison, share a compelling reluctance to leave their power at the kitchen door
November 2020
Lockdown culture
The Seven Deadly Sins review – Hollywood highs and Depression lows with uncanny resonances
The expressive force of singer Wallis Giunta and dancer Shelley Eva Haden evoked today’s US in a spirited production of Brecht and Weill’s sung ballet
September 2020
Eric Bentley obituary
Writer on drama and champion of Brecht who shared Shaw’s view that theatre should add to people’s lives
March 2020
Mrs Puntila and Her Man Matti review – socialist satire starved of humour
The comic talents of Elaine C Smith and Steven McNicoll can’t save Denise Mina’s stilted, gender-switching adaptation of a Bertolt Brecht comedy
Hail, Coriolanus! The greatness of Shakespeare's shape-shifting epic
From Olivier’s strangled fury to Ralph Fiennes’ Oedipal embraces, this complex political play is extraordinarily flexible
Mrs Puntila and Her Man Matti review – Denise Mina's Scottish Brecht falls flat
This update starring Elaine C Smith focuses on modern-day Scotland’s landowning class but struggles to make the satire funny
November 2019
Bans, defiance and death blows: how theatre tore down the Berlin Wall
They defied the Stasi and sparked a revolution. Our writer reveals the pivotal role East Germany’s dynamic theatre culture played in the fall of the GDR – and the collapse of European communism
October 2019
Top 10s
Top 10 books about Europe
From Homer to Camus by way of Brecht, French author Laurent Gaudé picks the books that tell us something important about the continent today
September 2019
The 10 best plays about politics
As Hansard opens at the National Theatre and drama heats up in Westminster, our critic picks his favourite political theatre
May 2019
Hedonism, sex and fear – why the Weimar republic is in vogue
From Fritz Lang to Brecht, 1920s German culture is being celebrated in print and on stage – perhaps because it has clear echoes today
