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West End | The Guardian

Opening Night review – Sheridan Smith’s boozy meltdown shakes up musical theatre

Gielgud Theatre, LondonSmith plays a Broadway star in the midst of a mental crisis in Ivo van Hove and Rufus Wainwright’s glittering and extravagantly original musical adaptation of the Cassavetes filmJohn Cassavetes’ 1977 film about a Broadway star in crisis might seem a natural fit for a stage...

West End | The Guardian

Priscilla the Party! review – jukebox musical dances back to a desert of divas

Here at Outernet, LondonThe 90s movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is celebrated in a chaotic night that’s played for fun I look forward to the day when jukebox musicals have lost their grip on our stages, but if other people’s songs must be used to do the emotional lifting f...

West End | The Guardian

Andrew Scott wins best actor at Critics’ Circle theatre awards

Irish actor awarded prize for playing every role in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, following his win at Critics’ Circle film awardsAndrew Scott has been named best actor at the Critics’ Circle theatre awards for playing every role in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, adapted by Simon Stephens. In February, the...

West End | The Guardian

Don Shearman obituary

My grandfather Don Shearman, who has died aged 92, spent many years in show business as a pianist and worked with a number of top artists, including Norman Wisdom, Russ Conway and Roy Hudd as their personal musical director.After giving up his initial career in engineering, Don started at Butlin’s...

West End | The Guardian

Ian McKellen’s Player Kings to tour England

The play, adapted by Robert Icke from both parts of Henry IV, stars McKellen as John Falstaff for the first time in his career and will take in Bristol, Birmingham and Newcastle after its West End runA tour of four English theatres has been announced for Player Kings, in which Sir Ian McKellen is st...

West End | The Guardian

‘Am I playing Dolly Parton? I’m flattered!’ Imelda Staunton launches Hello, Dolly! in London

Staunton reunites with Follies director Dominic Cooke to bring ‘old musical to a new audience’ at the Palladium in JulyAfter a four-year delay caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, Imelda Staunton is finally taking on the lead role in the first West End staging of Hello, Dolly! since 1984.The product...

West End | The Guardian

James Corden to return to London stage in political drama The Constituent

Joe Penhall’s new play marks the talkshow host’s first theatre role since One Man, Two Guvnors and will see him star opposite Anna Maxwell Martin at the Old VicJames Corden is to return to the London stage for his first role since the National Theatre’s blockbuster farce One Man, Two Guvnors.T...

West End | The Guardian

‘Black men are conditioned not to articulate our emotions’: Ryan Calais Cameron on his hit play bringing new audiences to the West End

The playwright and actor’s For Black Boys... confounded the critics to become a smash. As it starts a fourth run, he discusses money, creativity and being the world’s worst electricianBorn in Tooting, London in 1988, Ryan Calais Cameron is a playwright, actor, director and producer. His breakout...

West End | The Guardian

Harry Clarke review – Billy Crudup dives into ‘the deep end of sexy’ in tricksy tale

Ambassadors theatre, LondonA timid midwesterner adopts a geezerish British persona in David Cale’s often shrewdly observed yet meandering monologueHarry Clark is the former lance corporal from Slough who lied, cheated and betrayed his way to victory on The Traitors. His near namesake goes several ...

West End | The Guardian

Sarah Jessica Parker and David Tennant among 2024 Olivier nominees

Football drama Dear England receives nine nominations in a year that featured a string of celebrity castings• Complete list of nominationsJames Norton, Andrew Scott, Sarah Jessica Parker, Sarah Snook and David Tennant are among the stars to have received Olivier nominations in a year when British ...

West End | The Guardian

Olivier awards 2024: complete list of nominations

Sunset Boulevard and Dear England have the most nominations at this year’s awards – see who else is in the running• Sarah Jessica Parker and David Tennant among nomineesNoël Coward award for best new entertainment or comedy playAccidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo and Franca Rame, ada...

West End | The Guardian

Top stars must help protect cast and crew from bad behaviour, says Denise Gough

Gough, who is resuming her Olivier award-winning role in People, Places and Things, calls on those in positions of power to become allies for colleaguesThe stage and screen star Denise Gough has called upon prominent actors to be vigilant for fellow cast and crew members in an industry where miscond...

Evening Standard West End

Two teenagers sentenced for killing 14-year-old boy in street violence

Gordon Gault was stabbed as part of tit-for-tat violence between rival groups in Newcastle’s West End.

West End | The Guardian

‘I have big ambitions’: Bridgerton’s Charithra Chandran on her West End shocker – and building solar-powered factories

One minute, she decided to try acting. The next, she had a plum role in Netflix’s Regency hit. And now she’s blazing into the West End. But that’s not nearly enough for this unstoppable star with a first class degree in PPEFor a select group of actors, the pandemic was not the worst but the be...

West End | The Guardian

Sunak’s sabre-rattling is pure cynicism – Black Out nights are a small, vital corrective to theatre’s lack of diversity | Arifa Akbar

No one is banned from these shows – and for Slave Play’s run on the West End, they take up only two nights out of almost 100Downing Street made a surprise announcement last week. No, not the one about our streets being overrun with the scourge of peaceful protest, but a strongly worded statement...

West End | The Guardian

No 10 condemns London theatre for hosting Black Out nights

Rishi Sunak’s spokesperson says it would be ‘concerning and divisive’ to restrict audiences based on race at Noël CowardDowning Street has condemned a London theatre’s decision to stage two performances of a play about slavery for “all-black-identifying audiences”.Rishi Sunak’s offici...

West End | The Guardian

Slave Play writer criticises star casting but Kit Harington to feature in West End run

Exclusive: Jeremy O Harris says Game of Thrones star will not ‘make it the Jon Snow Experience’The writer of Slave Play, the controversial Broadway production about race and sexuality that caused protests and broke Tony nomination records, has criticised commercial theatre’s dependency on cast...

West End | The Guardian

Eleanor Fazan obituary

Theatre director who took Beyond the Fringe to the West End and worked on hit productions throughout the 1960s and 70sIn early 1961, four young men – a doctor, a history lecturer, a jazz pianist and a writer of comedy sketches – gathered at the flat of the director Eleanor Fazan, known as Fiz. S...

West End | The Guardian

Hadestown review – thrilling songs from an American underworld

Lyric theatre, LondonAnaïs Mitchell’s musical melds two classical myths, folk and jazz with tremendous soul and offbeat spiritThis odyssey through the underworld, told with deep-voiced folk and jazz songs, was staged in Britain in 2018 and since then has had a storming run on Broadway. But the s...

West End | The Guardian

‘It’s so close to the bone’: Sheridan Smith on her very public meltdown – and reliving it on stage

Eight years after self-doubt, anxiety, alcohol and grief caused her to unravel, the Olivier-winner is now playing an actress trapped in a similar nightmare. She explains how she is taking back control of her ordealIt is late morning and a major star is kicking off. “Turn the lights on, for fuck’...