Samuel Beckett RSS feed

Gandalf�s got a bad hobbit...watching the X Factor, says McKellen

2009-11-24T09:07:54Z

Sir Ian McKellen has revealed he has been at home watching the X Factor.

The best books of the year

2009-11-19T12:55:23Z

Our reviewers name the titles that have meant the most to them over the past 12 months

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

2009-10-19T07:38:13Z

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.

Mark Rylance is a masterclass in Hamm acting in Endgame

2009-10-15T23:00:00Z

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

The reinvention of Mark Rylance

2009-10-14T08:43:01Z

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

Tate�s total eclipse of the art

2009-10-12T08:50:59Z

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

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

2009-09-16T08:32:08Z

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

Healthier banks - but this bonus is too big

2009-08-07T07:53:27Z

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

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

2009-07-23T11:26:54Z

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

Waiting for Godot was worth it

2009-05-06T23:00:00Z

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

My sneaking respect for men who fit so much into life

2008-11-28T11:06:52Z

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

McKellen to make Beckett debut at 70

2008-10-31T10:21:39Z

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

Riding the rough in Kicking a Dead Horse

2008-09-10T23:00:00Z

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

Innovators Box themselves in for Helium

2008-09-08T23:00:00Z

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

Beckett short-changed

2008-08-28T23:00:00Z

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

Seasonal story leaves us cold

2008-01-04T00:00:00Z

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

Back into dragon's den for Felicity

2007-12-10T14:59:09Z

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

Beckett's morsels of misery

2007-09-20T23:00:00Z

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

Neither electric nor terrific

2007-09-06T23:00:00Z

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.

Booze behind the success of re-born theatre

2007-07-16T12:09:51Z

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.

Rough by name, rough by nature

2007-07-11T23:00:00Z

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.

Brook heads Young Vic line-up

2007-05-23T10:05:53Z

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.

Too crudely comic for Beckett's wasteland

2007-01-25T00:00:00Z

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.

Fasting gives food for thought

2006-11-03T00:00:00Z

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.

Riveting five-star performance

2006-10-15T23:00:00Z

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.

Critics' choice: top 5 plays

2006-10-13T15:32:37Z

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

Godot tramps lose their pathos

2006-10-09T23:00:00Z

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.

50-year wait for Godot is over

2006-10-03T11:38:50Z

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.

Kitchen sinking feeling

2006-08-22T23:00:00Z

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.

A return to Exiles

2006-07-31T23:00:00Z

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.