Review: Anna Karenina
With Diane Robinson’s team there’s a vibrant retelling, superbly produced
Review: Anna Karenina
With Diane Robinson’s team there’s a vibrant retelling, superbly produced
Review: Ballet Shoes
A paean to wonder and possibility, dreaming to some purpose. Like other winter growths, this should prove a hardy perennial, evergreen as the book.
Review: Sutura Gayle The Legends of Them
A portable world everyone should hear. Stunning.
Review: Sara Farrington A Trojan Woman
An acclaimed pocket tragedy which yet carries Euripides’ weight in Farrington’s framing, it more than touches the heart: it snatches it and hands it back as a sad and angry consolation.
Review: The Box of Delights
The finest Christmas box imaginable, and the go-to for a seasonal show. If you can get in.
Review: Shakespeare in Love
The mystery’s in the ensemble, the production, its bewitching leads. It’s a mighty reckoning in a little room.
Review: Cutting the Tightrope: The Divorce of Politics from Art
An essential, raging and ranging collection of works flashing with humour and teeth, flecked with harrowing stories and above all love for a humanity the establishment wishes us to other and consign to tragedy. A must-see.
Review: Stranger Than the Moon
Essential for anyone interested in Brecht or 20th century drama, it’s far more: starkly entrancing, then engrossing over 110 minutes.
Review: Women Who Blow on Knots
As fine a realisation as anyone could manage. The immediacy, cries, reveals are inherently theatrical and precious. A must-see.
Review: The Other Place
Zeldin has wrought something more precious than a version. A must-see.
Review: 1984
This is the fleetest most theatrical version I’ve seen for some time. Telegraphic in its conveying a nightmare world, it nevertheless does so by lightning strokes.
Review: Autumn
This is a partially bewitching production and it might send you back to the novel or quartet
Review: The Glass Slippers
Cinderella gets a 2024 glow-up – and it fits like a glass slipper
Review: Salomé
Dramatically this is the most creative response I’ve seen live. Here, a director’s reach should exceed their grasp, or what’s a production for.
Review: Eurydice
Stella Powell-Jones coaxes provisional miracles from her cast and space. The medium’s playful, even fun. The message though is bleak; and love is still in the letting go.
Review: The Cat and the Canary
An exceptional ensemble delivering a delirious twist on a tale that truly deserves it. Unmissable.
Review: Janie Dee’s Beautiful World Cabaret
Who could object to its urgency, or its starry messenger? A gem.
Review: Gareth Strachan Project M.E. The Rock Inn Pub
Strachan proves he can pull together serious talent who believe in his work. It’s a step up in all directions
Review: Princess Essex
The more we see of such uplifting, uproarious, yet probing works the better.
Review: The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
This desperate elegy of betrayal, straight from Le Carré’s own hurt, will haunt you with the truth of its despair.
Review: Jane Eyre
A faithful and engaging adaptation of a classic.
Review: Pride and Prejudice
An unalloyed delight, compressing the story but revealing things even those who know the novel will take back to it.
Review: The Suicide Club
Who Will Be the Next to Die?
Review: The Signalman
An intriguing reworking of a Dickens classic tale
Review: 1984
Withintheatre has created an excellent piece of dramatic theatre that has gravitas and is provocative.
Review: Comala, Comala
Genre defining for Latin musicals and adaptations.
Review: The Years
This production reminds us it’s often the least theatrical, least tractable works that break boundaries, glow with an authority that changes the order of things.
Review: The Grapes of Wrath
Absorbing and essential, Grapes of Wrath is here as complete as you could wish.
Review: John Fowles adapted Mark Healy The French Lieutenant’s Woman
This is BLT. How they manage it might stupefy a newcomer. A must-see.
Review: ECHO
Ultimately, the most telling line ”We are all immigrants across time” defines what remains an extraordinary experience
Review: The Children’s Inquiry
Worth two-and-a-half hours of anyone’s time.
Review: All’s Well That Ends Well
Don’t go expecting searing insights, but do go for a crack ensemble who will surely turn many to Shakespeare. An endearing and uplifting enterprise.
Review: Brief Encounter-Brighton Open Air Theatre
An unforgettable immersive theatrical experience-
Review: Mnemonic
Mnemonic is treasurable, eloquent, a rare passport. It remembers what hope, connectedness and peace smelt like. It’s worth remembering that.
Review: The Vicar of Dibley
This is a must-see. If there’s a ticket, grab it.
Review: The Beckett Trilogy
It’s reading Beckett in flashes of lightning and laughter. Conor Lovett stuns in this cut-down stand-up Beckett-novels-for-beginners-and-enders three-hour whistlestop. A tour de force as well as a tour de farce of Beckett’s genius.
Review: Kafka
It’s Klaff’s improvisatory edge, founded on absolute technique and clear-headed text, that finds an exit where none was signposted. Magnificent.
Review: Heart’s Desire/L’Amore Del Cuore
Anyone admiring Churchill, ferocious comedy or excited by a rare UK foray into Italian theatre must see this.
Review: The Kite Runner
Spellbindingly translated to the stage and here with more power even than before. Don’t miss it.
Review: Boys From the Blackstuff
More a prophesy than history in this stunning production.
Review: Geneva Convention
As this gets quieter, it shouts more loudly. Exciting as this is, it will devastate when it finds its arc. This might ascend into something crucial.
Review: That Witch Helen
An absorbing retelling. Whatever Ridewood and Sibyl Theatre tackles next will be worth waiting for.
Review: Women’s Writes
We’ve been lucky to sit in on the first stage of a very promising conversation collaboration, and theatre piece.
Review: The Cherry Orchard
In this production, it’s Chekhov who shines.
Review: That Witch Helen
The face that launched a thousand ships finally gets to speak
Review: Homestead
An adaptation of Lorca's 'the House of Bernarda Alba'
Review: The Tailor of Inverness
A gem of a piece, that only brightens.
Review: Picnic at Hanging Rock
Will haunt NVT’s Studio as much as it will you.
Review: The English Moor
Richard Brome’s 1637 The English Moor marks a new departure for Read Not Dead. You might say with this play it’s Read to be Dead.
Review: The House Party
A thrilling must-see.
Review: You’ll See
Delightfully inventive mini version of Ulysses for mini-people
Review: Little Women
There’s heartbreak and joy here. If you don’t know it, be surprised and moved at this hidden fringe gem, realised by this team in delicately-cut facets.
Review: Laughing Boy
Stephen Unwin directs his own play as a sweep of storytelling, laughter and devastation.
Review: The Other Boleyn Girl
Mike Poulton’s text gleams and snaps. Lucy Bailey’s production of it thrills and occasionally overwhelms, dazzling in its maze of missteps. A must-see.
Review: London Tide
It compels, and nothing in its three hours 15 seems superfluous.
Review: An Officer and a Gentleman
What brings this musical home is the drawing-together of threads that hang loose in Act One. And finally you believe in a story that doesn’t flinch from darkness and sings its distress. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Review: Life With Oscar
Nick Cohen’s exceptional powers as writer and performer are mesmerising
Review: Circle Mirror Transformation
A Fringe must-see.
Review: The Valley of Fear
Blackeyed have kept their telling as lean as Holmes’ hawk-like face, and it pounces. If you admire 221b at all, see it this week.
Review: Dream of a Ridiculous Man
A definitive telling of that rarest thing, an uplifting Dostoevsky tale. It’s unlikely to be rendered better than this.
Review: She-Wolves
The Forgotten Female Rulers of England
Review: The Motive and the Cue
An extraordinary production. Thorne’s vision is capped by a riveting performance by Gatiss, who glows with the still, sad music of Gielgud’s humanity.
Review: Macbeth
It’s a phenomenal feat and even if you know Macbeth, it’s still a must-see for how a quintessence can be dusted off.
Review: In and Out of Chekhov’s Shorts
Outstanding. After this, there’s no other way to tell Chekhov dramatically that he’s not already nailed down in a play himself. Chekhov would have loved it.
Review: The Girl in the Green Jumper
A first-rate production, with West-End values. A must-see.
Review: The Lonely Londoners
An outstanding production.
Review: Sister Act
In short, a fabulous example of British talent, now endangered, bringing quadruple threat to a magnificent production. Not all such mainstream shows on tour even approach outstanding, but this truly is.
Review: Rika’s Rooms
Emma Wilkinson Wright manages the narrative as an odyssey punctuated by screams. It’s a pretty phenomenal performance and the actor is so wholly immersed in Rika you know you’re in the presence of something remarkable.
Review: Good-Bye
Wholly absorbing, wholly other, it’s a gem of the Coronet’s dedication to world theatre.
Review: Uncle Vanya
Hilarious, devastating, outstanding.
Review: Drop the Dead Donkey: The Reawakening
This is as fresh as an AI paint set, and far more transgressive than the original. The fizziest, most outrageous assault on common decency since – I’ll leave it to the gibbons. A must-see.
Review: The Woman in Black
As fine a touring production as you’re likely to see
Review: Oliver!
You’re not going to see anything this special in most (if any) revivals, however luxury-cast. In stripping-back, then regrowing a complete ensemble with even lesser songs, this is the most complete Oliver! we’re likely to see.
Review: Northanger Abbey
We should fall in love right here. A joyous must-see.
Review: And Then There Were None
This is the finest Christie production I can remember. If you’re not a Christie fan, do see this anyway: it’s far more than a whodunnit.
Review: Tiny Tim’s Christmas Carol
Tiny Tim’s Christmas Carol triumphs as easily the best junior take on this classic I’ve ever seen.
Review: Rika’s Rooms
Emma Wilkinson Wright manages the narrative as an odyssey punctuated by screams. It’s already a phenomenal performance and the actor is so wholly immersed in Rika you know you’re in the presence of something remarkable
Review: Cold War
Cold War ends with a draining-out of hope in Anya Chalotra and Luke Thallon; a desolate beauty the cast certainly earn.
Review: Tom’s Midnight Garden
An absolutely first-rate ensemble and they tell the story with all the wide-eyed wonder of a real enchantment, beyond Christmas, beyond, perhaps time. A gem.
Review: The House of Bernarda Alba
Adaptor Alice Birch takes the House apart like Rachel Whiteread’s sculpture. Harriet Walter is magnificent: staring out like a jailor, patrolling. Hainsworth remains hypnotic and terrible, joyously sexual and headlong as her Juliet in self-destruction.
Review: Refilwe
At just 45 minutes, a delightfully adapted fairy-tale, adapted in its turn. Bisola Aalbi’s rewrite is a lively, timely take on a silent culture war to make people of all ages think again.
Review: La madre de Frankenstein
Miscellaneous memory
Review: Ghosts
Tom Hill-Gibbins emphasises the original’s shock in conversational prose-style too. Stripped to a straight-through 100 minutes is hurtles like the Greek tragedy with reveals it essentially is.
Review: Twelve Angry Men
This is more than a first-rate revival. In this production it’s a must-see one, the definition of a superbly-made, timeless play.
Review: The Changeling
The closer Ricky Dukes sticks to the original, the more accessible, visceral, true this production is.
Review: This Way For The Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
Based on the writing of poet Tadeusz Borowski and the paintings of Arnold Daghani This Way For The Gas bears explosive witness to shape the pulse of that post-Holocaust world. Bill Smith, Angi Mariano and their colleagues have wrought an enormous service. In the last great reprise of 'Never' we realise we're seeing the finale of an emerging masterpiece.
Review: The Yellow Wallpaper
Stephanie Mohr’s adaptation is a remarkable manifestation (no other word seems more apt) of the Charlotte Perkins Gilman short story The Yellow Wallpaper, an important realisation of a key feminist awakening. It’s good enough for you not to want it depicted in any other way.
Review: Accidental Death of an Anarchist
The adage that farce is tragedy speeded up met its greatest progenitor in Dario Fo. In a ferocious new version by Tom Basden of Franca Rame’s and Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist, directed by Daniel Raggett in a stunning production now at the Haymarket, the target here is squarely the London Met. And if you slowed down Basden’s brilliant, no-holds-unbludgeoned telling, details prove tragic enough.
Review: Mother Courage and Her Children
Beautiful production with stylised movement and physical acting
Review: Bowjangles: Dracula in Space
The stakes are high, as a talented string quartet encounter Dracula, with tremendously entertaining shenanigans aplenty
Review: Casting the Runes
It is difficult not to be hooked by Box Tale Soup’s charming vision of M.R. James’ work.
Review: Dusk
Provocative, deconstructed and creative theatrical adaptation.
Review: Shakespeare in Love
You’ll forget the film; you might even forget any staged version of Lee Hall’s in the West End. The mystery’s in the ensemble, the production, its bewitching leads Lewis Todhunter and Melissa Paris. With Claire Lewis’ direction, Michael James' music, and Graham Brown’s movement direction to the fore, it’s a mighty reckoning in a little room.
Review: Mog the Forgetful Cat
The perfect high energy introduction to theatre for 4-10yr olds
Review: Under Milk Wood
This is an exciting production, outdoors and adding a new dimension to our experience. Pace was a little slow in the first act, where the voices don’t pick each other up, and drop a fraction. But this gear-changes and the second act is energy itself, as the day wanes the actors energise and the whole spirit and voicing ups a notch too. It’s beautifully landed. Very warmly recommended.
Review: Wagatha Christie
The brilliance of movement, lighting, script-editing and strong performances, with physical jokes make this a greater thing than it might be, and this production’s gained a notch of humanity in its tour. But to wish for something more human falls into the very intrusiveness that gave rise to the trial. It’s a tribute to Wagatha Christie – and Liv Hennessy – that it raises that paradox.
Review: Des Kapital
Revolutionary songs sung by a lusty audience in the heart of Hove. A revolution in itself. If you’ve any sympathy, antipathy or subversive sense of humour towards a way at laughing at history’s atrocities, and thinking there must be a better way - this is the show for you.
Review: Moby Dick
It's hard to distinguish puppet from human in a spectacular retelling of Moby Dick.
Review: The Ladykillers- Brighton Open Air Theatre
Exemplary Ealing Comedy Revival
Review: Lovefool
Though it might be red-topped as a Fleabag for the abused, it’s so much more excoriating. It’s also a work profoundly moving, necessary and – particularly for Gintare Parulyte - an act of courage. Lovefool’s on till May 26th; do rush to this 55-minute must-see.