Michael Billington

Standard Name: Billington, Michael

Connections

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Literary responses Pam Gems
This play brought PG 's work to the attention of critics and playgoers alike. While reviews were generally quite positive, some had difficulty accepting the play's feminist perspective. For instance, Ted Whitehead in The Spectator...
Literary responses Pam Gems
Gems called her play uterine.
qtd. in
Wandor, Michelene. Understudies. Methuen, 1981.
65
It received mixed reviews. Michael Billington praised it as a dignified theatrical love letter, but other critics found it rambling and unfocused.
qtd. in
Demastes, William W., editor. British Playwrights, 1956-1995. Greenwood Press, 1996.
161
Since 1977 it has seen several revivals.
Demastes, William W., editor. British Playwrights, 1956-1995. Greenwood Press, 1996.
161
Literary responses Harold Pinter
Michael Billington in his biography takes the first two poems seriously, as better than Pinter's poems of the previous year. He finds alliterative exuberance in the first
Billington, Michael. Harold Pinter. Faber and Faber, 2007.
29
and an undeniable haunting, crepuscular power in...
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, 2001, 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 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 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 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, 22 July 2009, pp. G2: 19 - 20.
G2: 20
Literary responses Harold Pinter
Bernard Levin called the play, in a revival of 1978, unendurable.
Fraser, Antonia. Must You Go?. Random House of Canada, 2010.
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, 2010.
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,...
Reception Caryl Churchill
Michael Billington judged that this play felt like cramming a trunkload of ideas into a tiny case; that being too compressed for its own good made it less successful than the dazzlingLove and Information.
Billington, Michael. “Ding Dong the Wicked – review”. The Guardian, 5 Oct. 2012.
Reception Bryony Lavery
Trevor Nunn , director of Frozen, says that BL picks the most difficult subjects and faces them head-on, and finds that the writing is wonderfully spare and wonderfully poetic.
qtd. in
Barnes, Anthony. “She’s British and the Toast of Broadway. Can you name her?”. The Independent, 6 June 2004.
In England Frozen won two...

Timeline

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Texts

Billington, Michael. “White Teeth review—Zadie Smith’s ’multiculti’ melting pot boils over”. theguardian.com.