ARTHUR Miller's greatest play 'Death of a Salesman' is about the way the American Dream turned into a nightmare affecting all subsequent generations of the American people. Of Polish-Jewish immigrant stock, Miller spent his first impressionable 14 years watching the dream develop only to see the Wall Street Crash turn it into a nightmare, destroying family confidence and giving him the underlying theme in his writing.

Willy Loman, played with superb judgment by Harris Yulin, is the best product of that writing. His morality is based on being 'well-liked', a corrupting objective that leads to the tragic heart of the story, his son Biff's discovery that his father is a fraud. Biff, whose agony is so well expressed by Garrett Lombard, disintegrates before our eyes, while Willy's wife Linda tries desperately to maintain her faith in him. Meanwhile, the evidence of his failure mounts like piles of street trash around her. Read More...

Putting on a modern stage adaptation of an eighteenth-century novel, also made into a film, is high-risk strategy, made more intense by the epistolary style of Choderlos Laclos’ original, an approach to fiction made famous by the English novelist, Samuel Richardson. He gets a credit line in the text. The story, built around secondary emotions, adds to the difficulty of winning over an audience. The events are neither nice nor wholesome. The ending is bitter; there is no natural hubris or nemesis, nor does eroticicism arise from love or lead to it. The characters are either foolish or vicious. They lack depth and humour. Though Christopher Hampton’s play is accomplished and skilful, quite a lot is lacking. Read More...

THERE is nothing quite like the conversion of a miserly man into a generous one and, flooding the stage with laughing, happy characters, this Gate production makes the very most of Charles Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol'.

It is the second-best Christmas story in the world. The best of all happened 2010 years ago, in Bethlehem, and is acknowledged throughout the theatre performance at the Gate in the rich use of carols linking together the prevailing truth of mankind's discovery, that kindness and love are their own reward. Read More...

Sebastian Barry's new play is a lyrical work of great and compelling beauty.

It concerns a friendship between two men. The older, Nicholas Farquhar, played by Stephen Rea in a measured and authoritative way, has a subtle but overwhelming impact on the younger man, Evans, played with guileless directness by Aaron Monaghan. He has come to help get jackdaws out of a chimney. Read More...

'Afterplay' is a one-act theatrical conceit by Brian Friel based on the supposed after-life of two characters from different Chekov plays. Sonya, played by Frances Barber with a rich Chekovian sense that life has passed her by, comes out of the tangled relationships that make up the text of Uncle Vanya. Read More...