‘An irresistible mix of art and genitals’: Caligula finally comes to Cannes
The Motive and the Cue review – Gielgud and Burton battle it out
April 2023
‘What if Johnny has norovirus?’: Tuppence Middleton reveals how OCD affects her work
‘We get inside their shame, their ego, their destruction’: Jack Thorne brings Burton and Gielgud back to the stage
January 2023
Life on a plate
Mark Gatiss: ‘I’m genuinely terrified that we are losing the caff for ever’
Heavenly powers or something rotten? When Richard Burton played Hamlet
November 2022
Johnny Flynn and Mark Gatiss to play Richard Burton and John Gielgud in new play
Written by Jack Thorne and directed by Sam Mendes, The Motive and the Cue is about the famous 1964 production of Hamlet and will open at the National Theatre
July 2022
Peter Brook, influential theatre visionary, dies aged 97
The director’s landmark achievements include a nine-hour Mahabharata, putting Shakespeare on trapezes and directing Olivier, Gielgud and Scofield at the RSC
April 2020
My favourite film aged 12
My favourite film aged 12: The Charge of the Light Brigade
Tony Richardson’s epic was a razor-sharp skewering of Britishness that gave me a thrilling first taste of big-screen trauma
December 2019
The Michael Billington archive: highlights from five decades of reviews
Ken Dodd’s laugh riot, Dustin Hoffman as Willy Loman, Lucy Prebble’s dazzling debut and ‘off-with-your kit Harington’ … revisit the hits and flops assessed by our outgoing theatre critic
November 2019
Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington to step down
Editor-in-chief Katharine Viner hails the ‘extraordinary’ career of the celebrated critic who started at the newspaper in 1971
February 2019
Ranked
The best Shakespeare films – ranked!
Kenneth Branagh graduates from player to playwright this week for All is True, in which he plays an ailing Bard. But which big-screen Shakey is the greatest?
November 2017
How we made
How we made the original Murder on the Orient Express
‘I don’t think the cast of the new film have the same horsepower we had’
September 2017
Peter Hall: a life in pictures
The former director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre has died at the age of 86. Revisit some of his major productions, including Waiting for Godot, No Man’s Land and Amadeus, with stars such as John Gielgud, Judi Dench and Ralph Richardson
December 2016
The Observer at 225
‘Kenneth Tynan brilliantly achieved an intellectual slum-clearance of the stage’
In a decade as the Observer’s theatre critic, Kenneth Tynan helped transform the ailing British theatre and reinvent the part of the reviewer, says Susannah Clapp
November 2016
Simon Callow: my life, lived gaily
From the Lavender Scare to equal marriage, British attitudes to homosexuality have been transformed, says actor Simon Callow
September 2016
Letter: Edward Albee’s nine-minute soliloquy for John Gielgud
Jonathan Croall writes: During rehearsals of Tiny Alice on Broadway in 1964, Edward Albee had daily rows with John Gielgud
July 2016
Silent but deadly!
The best is silence: why Shakespeare in early film is worth celebrating
As a new DVD shows, in rare and innovative early adaptations of the Bard on film – even when condensed – you don’t need to hear the words to feel the quality
June 2016
Lend us your ears: how actors have handled key Shakespearean speeches
