65 h. ago Stephen Fry was born to play Lady Bracknell: PATRICK MARMION reviews The Importance of Being Earnest at the Noel Coward Theatre

PATRICK MARMION: It was surely only a matter of time before Stephen Fry should take to the stage as one of Oscar Wilde's most colourful characters, Lady Bracknell.

Events

3 d. ago Lady Gaga review – from skeletons to sexy plague doctors, this is a glorious, ridiculous spectacle

O2 Arena, LondonMove over Chappell Roan – Gaga’s eighth world tour is a full-blooded return to OTT camp, with a Nietzschean nemesis and a zombified crowd of fans driven berserk with gleeLady Gaga’s eighth world tour, The Mayhem Ball, does not lack ambition. It lasts two hours and features 30 songs. It comes divided into five acts, each with a deeply portentous title that glows from the big screens in blood-red gothic script: Of Velvet and Vice; The Beautiful Nightmare That Knows Her Name; Every Chessboard Has Two Queens. It arrives preceded by a lengthy film in which next to nothing happens: resplendent in a ruff and leg of mutton sleeves, Lady Gaga looks pensive and occasionally writes on a scroll with an absolutely enormous feathered quill, while opera booms in the background.Perhaps she’s paying tribute once more to her avowed influence Andy Warhol, in this case his notorious always-leave-them-wanting-less approach to cinema. When it becomes apparent that looking pensive and writ...

Events

3 d. ago Lady Gaga: The Mayhem Ball at the O2 review — put your paws up for the stadium show of the century

If we could give this show six stars we would

Politics

3 d. ago Lady Gaga review, O2 Arena London: Pop star’s Mayhem Ball is the concert of the year

No set piece is too elaborate, no framing device too ludicrous, for this show of wall-to-wall bangers that suggests Gaga isn’t ready to give up her pop crown just yet

Politics

7 d. ago Melania: The Opera review: 'First Lady satire that is somehow moving'

This opera about Melania Trump manages to straddle both comedy and tragedy

Politics

2 w. ago The Lady from the Sea review: Alicia Vikander's powerful stage debut

Andrew Lincoln and Joe Alwyn also get wet in this often hilarious and water-drenched reworking of Henrik Ibsen

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2 w. ago The Lady from the Sea at the Bridge Theatre review: Alicia Vikander makes a splashy stage debut

Andrew Lincoln and Joe Alwyn also get wet in this often hilarious and water-drenched reworking of Henrik Ibsen

Politics

2 w. ago The Lady from the Sea review – Andrew Lincoln and Alicia Vikander make waves in magnificent rewrite

Bridge theatre, LondonIbsen’s mysticism and mermaids are thrown out as director Simon Stone amps up the 1888 play’s psychological intensity with his eco-focused updateWriter-director Simon Stone is known for his rock’n’roll takes on the classics. This is a characteristically high-octane version of Ibsen’s play: loud, modern and led by screen stars Alicia Vikander and Andrew Lincoln. Yet his script, again created in the rehearsal process, retains all of Ibsen’s layers and adds some of its own in the updating.All mystical talk of the sea and mermaids is excised. The production brings a sharply lit realism to the privileged yet complex family at its heart that seems to be slowly drowning: Ellida (Vikander), as the young, second wife of neurologist Edward (Lincoln), is caught between life with her husband and a long lost, formative ex-lover, Finn (Brendan Cowell), who makes a reappearance. Ellida’s stepdaughters, Hilda (Isobel Akuwudike) and Asa (Gracie Oddie-James), are trying to stay ...

Politics

2 w. ago Queen of the Ring review – diner waitress turned first lady of the all

Genial, entertaining indie movie about Mildred ‘Millie’ Burke, a single mother who became America’s first millionaire sportswoman, is a good yarnIn the coming months, there will be a lot of noise about it girl Sydney Sweeney’s transformation into boxer Christy Martin for David Michôd’s biopic Christy. A spoiler is proffered by this genial, roundly entertaining indie, which arrives with little fanfare yet goes on to demonstrate all any film requires is a good yarn and the right jobbing performers in place. It’s one of those stories you can’t believe hasn’t been filmed before: that of Mildred “Millie” Burke (played here by Emily Bett Rickards), a single mother and diner waitress who in the postwar era became America’s first millionaire sportswoman under the sobriquet of “the Kansas Cyclone”, first lady of the nascent all-girl wrestling scene.At a more confident moment, such material might have yielded a major studio vehicle perhaps for Demi Moore or Angelina Jolie. In this economy, a ...

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