Second in the Trevor Nunn Season at TRH is a transfer for his Chichester production of the existential comedy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. I went with Jan, who'd seen the play before and liked it, and vanessaw, who hadn't seen this particular one before but is a big Stoppard fan - my own feelings on the playwright have tended to be more mixed. ( Read more... )

It only had its press night last night and has had rave reviews today, but I'm afraid I won't be adding to them myself. If the programme notes are to be believed, The Real Thing is Tom Stoppard's response to accusations that his plays are too clever by half, an attempt to prove that he could write about love in a way that was emotionally engaging. ( Read more... )

In Soviet Russsia, the image they presented to the West mattered, and so sending political dissidents to prison was avoided; instead the KGB had a tendency to classify anyone who spoke out against the regime as mentally ill, and imprison them in mental asylums. This forms the basis for Tom Stoppard's 1977 play Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, as we ( Read more... )

Back in June I was a bit underwhelmed by The Winter's Tale but the other half of Sam Mendes' inaugural year of The Bridge Project is Chekhov's final play, and The Cherry Orchard worked a lot better for me, largely helped by a witty new version of the text by Tom Stoppard. Anthony Ward's fairly bare set also seems more suited to this story, ( Read more... )

It’s hard to describe what happens in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia and put across how much fun it is - mainly because the subject-matter sounds so esoteric. Two linked stories take place in the same room of a large country house: In 1809 Thomasina, an aristocratic young girl, is trying to solve Fermat’s Last Theorem as part of her studies, but ends up ( Read more... )

The Donmar Warehouse opens its year-long residency at Wyndham's with Kenneth Branagh as Chekhov's Hamlet-inspired Ivanov (and will come full circle at the end of the season with Branagh directing Jude Law in Hamlet.) Of course, this being early Chekhov, it's less "To be or not to be" and more "Ah, fuck it, Not To Be ( Read more... )