A year or two into the new millennium HP
began to get indigestion and to feel weak and exhausted. An endoscopy revealed oesophagal cancer. He planned for chemotherapy, then surgery. In February 2002 he learned...
Literary responses
Seamus Heaney
Michael Billington
in the Guardian expressed dislike for the production by Lorraine Pintal
, which in making tyranny generic deleted the specific and topical references, but found the words austerely memorable and the play superbly...
Literary responses
Sarah Kane
This play outraged the critics, putting Kane on the news pages of tabloids as well as the arts pages of broadsheets.
Greig, David, and Sarah Kane. “Introduction”. Complete Plays, Methuen Drama, p. ix - xviii.
x
Paul Taylor
in The Independent likened it to having your whole head held...
Literary responses
Sarah Kane
Michael Billington
in 2005 called this his least favourite of Kane's plays. Yet he recognises its complexity. While he first saw it as a poetically allusive meditation on the obsessive nature of love, he later...
Literary responses
Harold Pinter
This play met with European as well as British success and was filmed in 1963. The excellent reviews, a complete reversal from the catastrophic ones for Pinter's previous London opening, are ascribed by Michael Billington
Literary responses
Sarah Kane
Billington
noted in April 2005 the staggering disparity of perception between the attitude to SK
in England (where shehas not entered the theatrical mainstream, but is performed mostly at universities) and in the rest...
Literary responses
Harold Pinter
Bernard Levin
called the play, in a revival of 1978, unendurable.
Fraser, Antonia. Must You Go?. Random House of Canada.
93
In the ODNB a quarter-century later, Michael Billington
called it a rich climax to Pinter's naturalistic writing for the theatre.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Literary responses
Harold Pinter
Nevertheless, reviews in the daily and Sunday papers were bad (including those of Bernard Levin
and, more surprisingly, Michael Billington
).
Fraser, Antonia. Must You Go?. Random House of Canada.
101-2, 112
Benedict Nightingale
in the New Statesman provided an appreciative notice and called...
Literary responses
Claire Luckham
English-speaking critics are divided on the play's politics. Margaret Llewellyn-Jones
thought it ideologically somewhat questionable in the way that it combines Brechtian distancing techniques with encouragement for the audience to cheer during the wrestling matches,...
Literary responses
Harold Pinter
Michael Billington
suggested in the ODNB that Pinter's reputation and career might have developed differently had this play been seen by the public at the time of its completion.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Literary responses
Claire Luckham
Reviewer Michael Billington
felt that the plot of Blackbird had a traditional feel—that using a death to precipitate a dispute over physical and emotional ownership was, along with other elements in the play, derivative...
Literary responses
Edna O'Brien
Reviewer Michael Billington
especially admired the vigour and irony of O'Brien's language.
Billington, Michael. “Fate meets human flaws”. Guardian Weekly, p. 16.
16
Literary responses
Frances Burney
The reanimation of FB
's comedies is a happy story. Tara Ghoshal Wallace
edited A Busy Day in paperback in 1984. A fringe production performed in Bristol in 1993, then in Islington, London, in...
Literary responses
Louise Page
Most reviewers preferred the first part. Michael Billington
, reviewing for The Guardian, praised the play as less an anti-war diatribe than a feeling of the texture of ordinary lives.
Eisen, Kurt. “Louise Page”. British Playwrights, 1956-1995. A Research and Production Source Book, edited by William W. Demastes, Greenwood Press, pp. 291-00.
293
Literary responses
Caryl Churchill
Nearly forty years on, critic Michael Billington
wrote that Owners had announced the arrival of a major talent I signally failed to recognise.
Billington, Michael. “The room that roared”. The Guardian, pp. G2: 19 - 20.
G2: 20
Timeline
By 13 May 2007: The director of London's National Theatre,...
Women writers item
By 13 May 2007
The director of London's National Theatre
, Nicholas Hytner
, alleged that critics (whom he called dead white men) showed misogyny in reviewing plays by women.
Texts
Billington, Michael. “’Nothing is the hardest thing to do’: Guardian/NFT interview: Stephen Daldry”. Guardian Unlimited.
Billington, Michael. “A Criminal Coldness”. Country Life, pp. 94-5.
Billington, Michael. “Another World review—compelling insights into Islamic State”. theguardian.com.
Billington, Michael. “Ding Dong the Wicked review”. The Guardian.
Billington, Michael. “Fate meets human flaws”. Guardian Weekly, p. 16.
Billington, Michael. Harold Pinter. Faber and Faber, 2007.
Billington, Michael. “Here We Go review’Caryl Churchill’s chilling reminder of our mortality”. theguardian.com.
Billington, Michael. “Jeffersons Garden review—Timberlake Wertenbakers American tragedy”. theguardian.com.
Billington, Michael. “Leave Taking review—insightful and honest tale of the anguish of immigrants”. theguardian.com.
Billington, Michael. “Making drama out of the Iraq crisis”. Guardian Weekly, p. 20.
Ezard, John, and Michael Billington. “Obituary: Joan Littlewood”. Guardian Unlimited.
Billington, Michael. “Oh What a Lovely War”. Guardian Unlimited.