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Byline: Kate Bassett A few sharp intakes of breath were heard on St Martin's Lane last week as the English National Opera added the Broadway musical, On the Town, to [...]

Byline: Kate Bassett B attling through the rain and dark, past deserted goods yards and railway arches, it didn't feel that safe on the streets of Southwark. And I certainly [...]

Byline: Kate Bassett Dreams within dreams dominated last week, with a whirl of bereavements and guilty regrets concerning lost mothers, children and lovers - eventually moving towards hopes of reconciliation. [...]

Byline: Kate Bassett Kevin Spacey is ringing the bell, knocking at the door and waving through the window at the start of National Anthems, desperate to get noticed. It's a [...]

Byline: Kate Bassett `The show went well tonight,' says John, in the opening scene of A Life in the Theatre. We are flies on the wall as this ambitious young [...]

Byline: Kate Bassett I feel I should begin with an unseasonal warning: I am not the Spirit of Christmas incarnate. Obviously, I'd love to be ludicrously generous throughout the silly [...]

Byline: Kate Bassett The Old Vic is back in business, with a media circus attached. You could hardly squeeze into the foyer past the cameras on Cloaca's press night because, [...]

Byline: Kate Bassett It's like trying to grapple with ghosts. Harold Pinter's Old Times, written in 1970, is an enthralling and disturbingly elusive play. The domestic situation seems mundane at [...]

Byline: Kate Bassett The Black Rider Barbican LONDON Fuddy Meers Arts LONDON Lucky Dog Royal Court Upstairs LONDON Yellowman Hampstead LONDON There's the devil to pay in The Black Rider [...]

Byline: Kate Bassett It's over 10 years since Oleanna first drove couples to have shouting matches in theatre foyers. And David Mamet's nightmarish college campus tragedy - about a male [...]

Byline: Kate Bassett You may well be familiar with Lesbia's Sparrow. In one erotic poem, Catullus talked of his lover's cosseted bird as a metaphor for heavy petting. But repeated [...]

Byline: Kate Bassett Mourning Becomes Electra NT Lyttelton LONDON After Miss Julie Donmar Warehouse LONDON The God Botherers Bush LONDON A huge US flag forms the ceiling of the Mannon [...]

Byline: Kate Bassett Told By An Idiot are about to celebrate their tenth birthday. If you love quirkily inventive physical theatre, your champagne corks should be flying. I was lucky [...]

Is London's Theatreland bidding for an honorary PhD? Not usually celebrated for its academic prowess, British showbiz is currently offering a crash course in continental philosophy. We've got a dramatised [...]

It's been over two years since the bulldozers rolled up at the Almeida in Islington, and last week's reopening unveiled an impressive rebuild that's chic and subtly industrial, new and [...]

`Pleasure? The word sounds familiar. What does it mean?' says Frances de la Tour. From her faded chaise longue, she cocks an eyebrow at Ian McKellen who's hunched at his [...]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WHERE AM I? This is the latest quirky comedy from physical troupe Cartoon De Salvo. The queuing audience, asked to imagine they're off to an illegal Victorian [...]

Governmental tough talk about immigration hasn't stopped London theatres welcoming select artists from around the world this week. The Royal Court's talent-fostering season, Focus Russia, kicks off with Black Milk [...]

A vast weather front is, surely, hanging midway across the Atlantic. I've never seen a show warm up so dazzlingly in its second half as Trevor Nunn's new production of [...]

Adam Penzius pours himself another flute of champagne. Then he softly tops up Melinda Metz's glass while she fields a phone call from her suspicious husband. What The Night Is [...]

Sam Mendes is in a valedictory humour. For his finale as the Donmar's artistic director, he's staging Twelfth Night in rep with Uncle Vanya, Chekhov's autumnal 'farewell to love'. Twelfth [...]

The temperature is rising in A Streetcar Named Desire. That's clear as soon as Blanche DuBois materialises at the dilapidated New Orleans tenement where her younger sister, Stella, lives with [...]

The Malcontent Swan STRATFORD- UPON-AVON The Golden Ass Shakespeare's Globe LONDON The Associate NT Loft LONDON Antony Sher is giving the high and mighty an earful. It's his new vocation [...]

Imagine you're face to face with a theatre ghost or are watching a whole host of them drift across a shadowy auditorium. This is on the night before the old [...]

Small, wrinkly and internationally venerated, the theatre guru Peter Brook unexpectedly materialised on stage at the Young Vic this week. The septuagenarian Paris-based director was acting as a prologue to [...]

Presence Royal Court Upstairs, London Richard III Young Vic, London The Swing at Night Barge Theatre, London The Beatles chorused the maxim 'Let it be', yet their songs and life [...]

It'll be 10 years this spring since Adrian Noble took the helm at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Britain's most complex subsidised theatrical empire is celebrating its 40th anniversary this [...]

Two eagerly awaited new plays have opened in the West End this week and, though neither has fully lived up to expectations, both are strikingly worried about repressed British emotions [...]

We begin with the tinkling of silver cutlery on bone china. Marital life looks frightfully well-bred and orderly at the start of Noel Coward's euphorically funny, Champagne-fuelled comedy, Fallen Angels [...]