Howard Brenton

Cancelling Socrates review – Howard Brenton interrogates democracy in a rich play of ideas

Fine acting and lively dialogue save this philosophical play from feeling static as it applies Athenian ideals to modern dilemmas

Arifa Akbar

09, Jun, 2022 @11:45 AM

Cancelling Socrates: how the great philosopher sealed his fate with comedy

Playwright Howard Brenton asks why ancient Athens turned on its famous citizen, and how such an uncompromising free-thinker might fare in our own ‘age of rage’

Howard Brenton

26, May, 2022 @6:00 AM

Forgotten plays: No 4 – Bloody Poetry (1984) by Howard Brenton

This magnificently honest play about the Shelleys and Byron’s summer of sexual experimentation raises difficult questions about the cost of utopian aspirations

Michael Billington

22, Jun, 2020 @8:03 AM

Ai Weiwei: 'I became the enemy of the established power, but without a crime'

The artist reflects on the events that inspired Hampstead theatre’s #aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei, streamed by the Guardian this month

Interview by Chris Wiegand

24, Apr, 2020 @6:30 AM

Guardian to stream plays about the NHS and Ai Weiwei from Hampstead theatre

Tiger Country by Nina Raine and The Arrest of Ai Weiwei by Howard Brenton will be streamed online in April

Chris Wiegand Stage editor

15, Apr, 2020 @1:00 PM

A Pinter play that merits celebration | Brief letters

Brief letters: Best plays of the 21st century | Love symbols | Warfare specialists | Rugby World Cup | Pannick v Johnson

Letters

20, Sep, 2019 @4:17 PM

The week in theatre: Rosmersholm; Human Jam; Jude – review

Hayley Atwell gives a career-best performance in a dazzling new Ibsen adaptation

Susannah Clapp

12, May, 2019 @7:00 AM

A Thousand Splendid Suns review – ultimately engaging Hosseini adaptation

Roxana Silbert bows out with an inventive staging of Ursula Rani Sarma’s adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s 2007 novel

Clare Brennan

12, May, 2019 @7:00 AM

Jude review – Hardy's hero becomes a Syrian refugee in Howard Brenton's reworking

Brenton’s ambitious but muddled new drama follows a gifted young Syrian woman who attracts the attentions of an Oxford classicist, Euripides and MI5

Michael Billington

05, May, 2019 @10:26 AM

Creditors review – Strindberg lays bare the self-pitying male psyche

Howard Brenton’s no-nonsense translation of Strindberg’s astute drama charts the marriage of a failed artist and his more successful wife

Mark Fisher

01, Apr, 2019 @8:00 AM

Knockouts, nobles and nukes: the 25 best British plays since Jerusalem

It is the hit that transformed British theatre. As Jez Butterworth’s epochal drama returns, our critic chooses the 25 best plays since Jerusalem – from exploited boxers to warring kings

Michael Billington

27, Jun, 2018 @5:00 AM