Alice Birch: ‘When I’m writing, the banalities of motherhood such as head lice disappear’
The Normal People screenwriter talks about growing up in a commune, heartbreaking plays, and the rumours that she’s collaborating with Taylor Swift
June 2022
Violet review – Coult’s debut opera opens Aldeburgh with assurance
Alice Birch’s elliptical story of a wife finding freedom as society disintegrates is opaque but Tom Coult’s confident and varied score gives the work power
May 2022
‘I like being a maker of wonderful things’: composer Tom Coult on his opera Violet
With a libretto by Alice Birch, who adapted Normal People, this Aldeburgh festival opener revolves around a collapsing world. Apt, given that – with the pandemic – its creators didn’t know it would ever make the stage
April 2020
TV review
Normal People review – Sally Rooney's love story is a small-screen triumph
This BBC/Hulu adaptation of the hit novel about the on-again, off-again relationship between two Irish teenagers captures the beauty and brutality of first love perfectly
March 2020
Lockdown culture
All the world's a page: the joy of scripts during theatre's shutdown
As venues close due to Covid-19, there’s a world of published drama to savour, from text that falls off the page to Alan Ayckbourn’s ‘undirectable’ collage
February 2020
Carla Gugino: 'Sexuality is a primal part of who we are but it's been misused'
The star of Jett and Sin City is back on stage in Alice Birch’s raw Anatomy of a Suicide. She talks about the play’s emotional toll, how she unwinds and American puritanism
January 2020
2020 culture preview
Star debuts and happy returns: theatre, dance and comedy in 2020
Tom Stoppard gets personal, Cush Jumbo does Hamlet, Hollywood names bring everything from tragedy to comedy … plus dance confronts shame and there’s standup open heart surgery
October 2019
The week in theatre: [Blank]; Lungs; Vassa – review
[Blank] review – Alice Birch's build-your-own-play experiment
August 2018
La Maladie de la Mort review – clinical dissection of male gaze
A desire for Duras: Katie Mitchell and Alice Birch on the writer's erotic, existential mystery
July 2017
The Guardian picture essay
'How does the internet feel?' Chloe Lamford's astounding stage designs - in pictures
Hacktivists in ball pools, teenagers riding unicorns and a world powered by actors on bikes … Chloe Lamford’s playful sets take audiences by surprise. She explains how she creates them
June 2017
Anatomy of a Suicide review – unhappy days are here again
Alice Birch’s riveting play, expertly directed by Katie Mitchell, examines how devastating sadness can seep through generations of women
Anatomy of a Suicide review – a startling study of mothers and daughters
Alice Birch’s radically experimental play, directed by Katie Mitchell, tests the theory that trauma can pass across three generations of women
Alice Birch: ‘I’m interested in whether trauma can be passed on through DNA’
The playwright on creating a drama about birth and suicide, moving into film and TV, and portraying women behaving badly
April 2017
Mark Kermode's film of the week
Lady Macbeth review – with murder in her mind
Rising British star Florence Pugh electrifies as a teenage bride stuck in a suffocating marriage in William Oldroyd’s heady feature debut
Peter Bradshaw's film of the week
Lady Macbeth review – a brilliantly chilling subversion of a classic
Florence Pugh is lethally charismatic in William Oldroyd’s daring journey into the darkest corners of the world of bonnets and bows
No link to the Bard … but this Lady Macbeth is just as deadly
Rising British star Florence Pugh wins global acclaim as ‘kick-ass’ bride in new film drama
May 2016
Theatre blog
Alas, poor Ophelia: the minor characters who deserve the spotlight
Ophelias Zimmer review – Katie Mitchell brings Hamlet's real ghost into focus
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