FringeReview UK

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FringeReview UK 2020

#AIWW The Arrest of Ai WeiWei

Brenton powerfully concertinas a continent’s politics and one artist’s refraction of it. Wong is outstanding


15 Heroines: 15 Monologues Adapted from Ovid

Groundbreaking. The smallest producing theatre in the West End through lockdown has become the largest.


A Midsummer Night’s Dream

This surely is the greatest Dream since Peter Brook’s landmark 1970 production.


A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Might be the finest Globe Dream


A Streetcar Named Desire

A landmark production


Afterplay

Miraculously-attuned. A wafer-thin but absolutely genuine slice of Chekhov. Do see it.


Albion

Victoria Hamilton still dominates, but Albion’s a fine ensemble piece. Goold has given Albion the air it needs: an unsettling parable on forcing an identity of ourselves.


all of it

A miniature classic of snatched meaning. Catch it.


Amadeus

In the most spectacular production imaginable, Lucian Msamati’s supremely crafted lead sets off the quicksilver of his rival Adam Gillen.


Amsterdam

Did I say sucker-punch? It’s what the Orange Tree do every time.


An Inspector Calls

Still an outstanding production we might take for granted.


Andrew Lloyd-Webber 50th Birthday Live from the Royal Albert Hall, 1998

The great discovery was the multi-roling Marcus Lovett, sexy and lethal, able to attack several roles and convince you he was born for them, even into them.


Antony and Cleopatra

Supremely worth it to see a pair so famous weighing equal in their own balance, perhaps for the first time.


Barber Shop Chronicles

Barber Shop Chronicles is a breath-taking revelation for those of us who had small inkling of a world in miniature.


By Jeeves!

A thoroughly enjoyable period-style musical.


Cats

Easily the finest production we’ll get


Cops

A first-rate distillation of cop drama, into the theatre of cop’s lives.


Coriolanus

A Coriolanus memorable for politics sinewed with personal forces: an active interrogation of democracy. And in Josie Rourke’s production Tom Hiddleston’s someone riven by intimations of his true self


Crave

One of the most important productions since lockdown.


Cyprus Avenue

Devastating drama about the DNA of bigotry played as surreal farce.


Cyrano de Bergerac

James McAvoy is peerless and his companions are Asterix-hot.


Death of England

This work never loses its charge, its own rapturous arrival Spall gives the performance of his career so far.


Death of England: Delroy

Renders huge black experience into a narrative that bears it, because so well-constructed, so character-driven and so inhabited by Michael Balogun whose blaze of awakening is both benediction and clarion.


Drawing the Line

Terrific, a harrowing education.


Far Away

Our greatest playwright since Beckett and Pinter. An outstanding revival. Hesitating?


Frankenstein

The acting scales cliff-edges of unreason. One remembers the scale of betrayal and loss of redemption


Frankenstein (alternate version)

The acting scales cliff-edges of unreason. One remembers the scale of betrayal and loss of redemption. Benedict Cumberbatch here is Frankenstein, Jonny Lee Miller the Creature. The alternate version aired first is still available.


Hamlet

In Michelle Terry’s quicksilver, quick-quipping Hamlet, much has been proved, from interpretive to gender fluidity in tragic action, that sets a privilege on being in at a beginning.


Henry VI

The most effective condensation of the pith of the trilogy we’re likely to see.


I and You

Will leave you in a heap and wonder what else Lauren Gunderson has written that comes near this.


In Praise of Love

There’s no reason not to see this rare gem


Inside This Box

Showcases future names and above all is defiant with hope and agency


Jane Eyre

You’ll never see a better adaptation of this classic


Jesus Christ, Superstar

A sovereign production, unlikely to be equalled for the foreseeable


Kunene and the King

A strain of greatness.


Les Blancs

A superb realization of Lorraine Hansberry's unfinished masterpiece - a classic of Ibsenite proportions


Lipstick

Performances and play that should turn us upside down. Do make a detour for this brave. tremulously beautiful coming of love.


Love Love Love

Epic eavesdropping casts that ultimate spell: reading ourselves by flashes of lightning.


Love Never Dies

One of the most fascinating dark-hued musicals Lloyd-Webber’s written


Nine Lessons and Carols

The Almeida’s another country. They do shows differently there. A bold communing of theatre stories with the fresh poignancy of what’s happened during 2020


Nora

Stef Smith’s brilliant riff on Ibsen’s original is revelatory


Not Quite Jerusalem

An enduring little classic of Englishness on the turn, out of the ideal-exhausted Seventies and on the edge of darkness.


One Man, Two Guvnors

Outstanding. An immediate comic classic.


Richard II

Do see this.


Rockets and Blue Lights

A paean to endurance, love, and wrenched freedoms.


Romeo and Juliet

Completeness is just one reason to cherish this clean-driven clear-headed production


Scenes with girls

Scenes with girls owns a buzz, a life, a difference about loving that gives it a sliver of unique.


Shoe Lady

Katherine Parkinson inhabits that breaking through the office crust asphyxiating us


Shoe Lady

Katherine Parkinson inhabits that breaking through the office crust asphyxiating us


Small Island

A reboot for the future, a passport for change.


Teenage Dick

Ambition treads on teenage dreams and their devastation.


The Cutting Edge

You hope, unfairly, for a sequel.


The Deep Blue Sea

Helen McCrory plumbs the erotic despair of Hester Collyer’s abandoned woman in this absorbing revival of Rattigan’s masterpiece.


The Dog Walker

I want to know what life, not just Paul Minx will do with his characters afterwards. So will you.


The Mikvah Project

Still a brave and beautiful play.


The Mikvah Project

Still a brave and beautiful play.


The New Tomorrow

There’s a generosity here, a big hug. Theatre itself affirms the value of life to those who might yet shape it for the better.


The Odyssey

A stupendous undertaking


The Official Dick Whittington – A Pantomime for 2020

It’s a joyous confection out of thin lockdown.


The Phantom of the Opera

The Albert Hall’s sovereign production, unlikely to be surpassed particularly with the special encore.


The Skin Game

Treat this as a wonderful premiere you’ve not had to stir for.


The Sound of Music

Phenomenal singing all round. A more than solid recommendation for that alone.


The Sugar Syndrome

A pitch-perfect revival. Even down to the dial-up screech.


The Taming of the Shrew

See it and you’ll never think of the Shrew without this groundbreaking stab at the dreams of men.


The Tin Drum

Nico Holonics’ blaze-through avatar is unlikely to be surpassed.


The Two Noble Kinsmen

We’re looking at a bright Book of Hours. Barrie Rutter’s done it profound service, adding a warmth and agency that opens up this pageant. This is hopefully just the first of many such he’ll bring to the Globe.


The Visit

Kushner’s just brought The Visit home with him.


The Welkin

Already a contender for one of the best plays of 2020.


The Winter’s Tale

Enjoy its slow burn miracles.


The Winter’s Tale

Far more than a curate’s egg, this production reveals things we’ve never seen


This House

Vibrant proof as to why it’s been called the play of the decade


Tiger Country

Tells us more truthfully then any play has, the heroism that hardens, the sacrifice that endures.


Treasure Island

First-rate theatre. In Joshua James’ Ben Gunn and above all Pasy Ferran’s Jim, we see stars rising quicker than Arthur Darvill’s superb Silver can point them out.


Twelfth Night

Tamsin Greig’s extremes as Malvolia mark the first intimations of the terrible and define this production. The ground’s shifted.


Uncle Vanya

The definitive Vanya for our times


Wild

Theatrically the most thrilling end to any Bartlett play


Women Beware Women

A stylish, timely production which redefines how we experience Middleton.


Wonderland

Outstanding. Surely the definitive study of the dignity of physical labour, and breaking of its amity.


You Stupid Darkness!

Bleakly funny, with flickers of tragedy, to make you see how redemptive kindness is