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Samuel Beckett

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It is not London's posties who are failing to deliver

19.10.09

Lord Mandelson has let it be known he is "beyond anger" (one imagines his condition with a thrill) about the striking postal workers. Royal Mail's managing director says their attitude "beggars belief". The chief executive, Adam Crozier, says industrial action is an "appalling and unjustified attack on customers". Huff, puff.... more

Mark Rylance is a masterclass in Hamm acting in Endgame

16.10.09

Amid Endgame's remorseless asperity there�s poetry � given brilliant expression by director Simon McBurney.... more

The reinvention of Mark Rylance

14.10.09

Following his mighty performance in Jerusalem, Mark Rylance tries playing Beckett in the West End.... more

Tate�s total eclipse of the art

12.10.09

Within seconds of entering, you can see nothing but the blackness, a dark hole of indeterminable scale... more

The play's the thing, as theatres rediscover drama this autumn

16.09.09

Londoners are being invited to make the play the thing this autumn as a cavalcade of stars prepares to tread the boards... more

Healthier banks - but this bonus is too big

07.08.09

Banks make the City look increasingly out of step with the real economy � not least in the bonuses paid to banks' senior executives... more

Let�s go. We can�t. Why not? ... We�re still waiting to perform Godot in a public loo

23.07.09

When Harry Michell was refused permission to stage Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot in a public lavatory by the playwright's estate he wanted revenge... more

Waiting for Godot was worth it

07.05.09

Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart have made Waiting for Godot, a difficult play written in 1952, a hotter ticket than any musical.... more

My sneaking respect for men who fit so much into life

28.11.08

The revelation that the late Chief Constable of Greater Manchester conducted affairs with at least 38 women in six years may, I suspect, be received rather differently by men than by women... more

McKellen to make Beckett debut at 70

31.10.08

Sir Ian McKellen will celebrate his 70th birthday by partnering Patrick Stewart in Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot... more

Riding the rough in Kicking a Dead Horse

11.09.08

It should come as no great surprise that Sam Shepard should now be moving into Samuel Beckett territory with Kicking a Dead Horse.... more

Innovators Box themselves in for Helium

09.09.08

For Helium the Barbican Pit has been transformed into a series of large boxes that we enter singly to encounter performers or recorded voices.... more

Beckett short-changed

29.08.08

Beckett's uncompromising stage poetry is almost entirely wasted, replaced instead by a lot of offputtingly mannered acting in Fragments.... more

Seasonal story leaves us cold

04.01.08

Phil Willmott's The Winter's Tale makes an already difficult piece considerably harder and will not defrost wintry audience hearts.... more

Back into dragon's den for Felicity

10.12.07

Former Good Life star Felicity Kendal is to play a glamorous socialite and man-eating mother in Noel Coward's play The Vortex.... more

Beckett's morsels of misery

21.09.07

A quintet of short works from Samuel Beckett, Fragments is black and bleak - probably one for the melancholics to avoid.... more

Neither electric nor terrific

07.09.07

Performers dance with vacuum cleaners and wrestle with lamps in The Terrific Electric, an experimental show investigating the change brought about by the advent of electricity.... more

Booze behind the success of re-born theatre

16.07.07

The Arts Theatre near Leicester Square, which was forced to close two years ago in a row over its lease, is thriving again - and bosses say cheap drinks are the secret of its success.... more

Rough by name, rough by nature

12.07.07

Gari Jones's new staging of two rarely performed Beckett short sketches fails to bring out the humour and pathos in the scripts, flirting instead with parody, says Robert Shore.... more

Brook heads Young Vic line-up

23.05.07

Five Beckett plays by veteran director Peter Brook and a Rwandan take on the Holocaust are two of the highlights in the Young Vic's new season.... more

Critic's choice: Best comedy shows

01.03.07

Josie Long brings her wit and exuberance to the Soho Theatre, it's the last chance to see nimble Irishman Jimeoin and the Hackney Empire search for the New Act of the Year.... more

Too crudely comic for Beckett's wasteland

25.01.07

Nicholas de Jongh thought Fiona Shaw would be perfect for the role of Winnie in Beckett's Happy Days but her performance at the Lyttelton has sadly proved him wrong.... more

Fasting gives food for thought

03.11.06

Too Close To Home focuses on what appears to be a perfectly average British Muslim family fasting for Ramadan while the BAC's Project E is definitely one to be avoided.... more

Brad strips for art...but keeps his socks on

31.10.06

Actor Brad Pitt has shown he is socks on legs after stripping down to his underwear for avant-garde New York impresario Robert Wilson.... more

Riveting five-star performance

16.10.06

Harold Pinter winds down his amazing dramatic career with a swansong performance in Krapp's Last Tape that will be written up in theatrical history.... more

Critics' choice: top 5 plays

13.10.06

We pick the best productions in town including Tobias and the Angel, the new Godot, Wicked, Cabaret and The Madras House.... more

Godot tramps lose their pathos

10.10.06

Fifty-one years after directing the avant-garde play that revolutionised the post-war British stage, Sir Peter Hall returns with a new production of Waiting For Godot. ... more

50-year wait for Godot is over

03.10.06

Sir Peter Hall is bringing Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot back to the West End - half a century after directing the first English version.... more

Kitchen sinking feeling

23.08.06

Peter Gill usually has a flair for illuminating classic texts, but not here. His 50th anniversary production of Look Back in Anger is nicely acted but lacks in other areas, says Nicholas de Jongh.... more

A return to Exiles

01.08.06

Theatre interview: James Macdonald is best known for directing new plays by playwrights at the more radical, experimental end of the spectrum. He explains to Claire Allfree why he's tackling a rare James Joyce play about infidelity.... more