Genre: Biographical Drama
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: Good-Bye
Wholly absorbing, wholly other, it’s a gem of the Coronet’s dedication to world theatre.
Review: Turning the Screw
This six-hander is a 90-minute announcement of a major talent. An almost flawless play.
Review: The Good John Proctor
A valuable corrective to anticipate both real events and Arthur Miller’s take on Abigail Williams
Review: Same Team
A raw exposition of what it is like being left without a roof until you find hope in a collective heart.
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: The Good Dad (A Love Story), The Mitfords
Now a superb double-bill, and makes a compelling case for these two shows to be yoked together, with their intertwining of family, sisterhood, abuse and terrible consequences.
Review: Pain and I
A poetic musing upon the effect and poignancy of suffering, but not doing so in silence.
Review: Retrospective
This is a first-rate ensemble and Parry has mastered a superlatively-layered interaction. Forget reading, this is a brace of vibrant performances.
Review: The Confessions
Though not the ordinary made phenomenal, Alexander Zeldin’s touchstone, it’s an outstanding personally-inflected testament and striking advance.
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 Father and the Assassin
There’s no finer dramatization of India’s internal conflicts. Hiran Abeysekera’s Gandhi-killer Godse stands out in this thrilling ensemble and storms it too.
Review: Infamous
Emma Hamilton, mother and ward. Expect spats. Nine months since her National Theatre Kerry Jackson opened, April de Angelis arrives at Jermyn Street with the three-hander Infamous, directed by Michael Oakley, till October 7th. Even though the earlier play was staged in the smaller Dorfman, Infamous is chamber music by comparison. As in Kerry Jackson, De Angelis avoids tragedy where it clearly offers itself. The final two scenes though offer more; it’s piquant, momentarily uplifting, a little sad. And dramatically right it’s expressed in dance.
Review: The Quality of Mercy: Concerning the Life and Crimes of Dr Harold Frederick Shipman
A chilling exploration of the career of a serial killer
Review: Joe & Ken
Most of all, this couple capture the feel of the Orton/Halliwell exchange, the chemistry, the aromatic stink of sex from Craig Myles’ Orton, the sweat and self-disgust of Tino Orsini’s Halliwell. John Dunne’s created an Ortonesque, almost What the Dramatist Saw version of events. Orton might have liked that best. And Halliwell, narrating his own death in Orsini’s delivery, been appeased.
Review: Double Bill: Paul Robeson, Suzi of the Dress
No doubting of the power of this double-bill from Kansas. The Paul Robeson is solid gold, the Suzi of the Dress, quicksilver.
Review: When Winston Went to War With the Wireless
An absorbing, layered, superbly entertaining two-and-a-half hours that couldn’t be more relevant. Set against The Motive and the Cue, it also proves how history allows Jack Thorne to be even more versatile than we imagined.
Review: The Sound of Music
This is a top, not just first-rate cast; a riveting, rethought revival. There’s not a weak link - and some vocal surprises. The end is almost unbearably moving. Some still come over mountains as here, some in small boats. You might not feel the same about something you thought you knew. An outstanding revival.
Review: The Madness of George III
Surely the Sarah Mann Company’s finest hour, overcoming the BOAT’s wondrous yet treacherous acoustics – and weather. Alan Bennet’s 1991 The Madness of George III is their most ambitious, most jaw-dropping production. This magnificent revival poses even more urgent questions. A twitch on the thread for all of us.
Review: Dear England
There’s a sacramental thrill as you enter the NT’s Olivier: both sci-fi and ancient Greek. James Graham Dear England, directed by Rupert Goold, is like that: tackling something seen as almost too sacred, at once transcendent for many; but so impacted by nationalist hubris it’s become sclerotic. We enter the game at a historically pivotal moment. Where English football will never be the same. Outstanding.
Review: Tony!
There’s no doubt this is an offbeat, brilliant, rude, absolutely necessary musical. Its acid test will come from younger Millennials and Zoomers. But then that’s the point: the winners rewrite history. History has just struck back, and it’s a blast.
Review: The Return of Benjamin Lay
Naomi Wallace and actor Mark Provinelli inhabit this gestural giant with wit, sympathy, rage and an agency burning up centuries between. It’s profoundly moving too, speaks to our condition of techno-serfdom, new slavery, discrimination everywhere. The packed audience are never sure who might be picked on next, but delight in the calling-out. Superb.
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: A Brief List of Everyone Who Died
“Death is the most natural thing in the world.” Not to five—year-old Gracie, whose life of resistance as Gracie, Grace but mostly Graciela Jacob Marx Rice traces in A Brief List of Everyone Who Died. Yet again Finborough have mounted – and nurtured – a first-class work miles from larger fare that fades. Do rush to see it.
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.
Review: Brontë
This is what theatre means. BLT and Nettie Sheridan strike gold with emerging talent here, starting their professional careers. It’s to Sheridan’s choreography too we owe a seamless ensemble production. Familiar BLT names blaze with a new fire and in every way there’s synergy between physical exuberance and indelible characterisation. Outstanding.
Review: Tony!
There’s no doubt this is an offbeat, brilliant, rude, absolutely necessary musical. Its acid test will come from younger Millennials and Zoomers. But then that’s the point: the winners rewrite history. History has just struck back, and it’s a blast.
Review: Best of Enemies
James Graham longs for reconcilement. Here, robbed of one he plays off the temperaments of each debater, creating a timeless no-place where each graciously concedes points. It still leaves us with Graham’s profound insight into the nature of the monster both supremely articulate men created: an inarticulate spectacle and theatre of cruelty. A must-see on Encores.
Review: My Brilliant Divorce
Like any first-rate actor, Louise Faulkner lets each eyebrow rise and fall: Quizzical, hurt, amused, they all register. A work to be savoured for its exuberant telling of one of the most painful things to hit any of us, through nightmare to laughter to loving oneself, to the hope of love. Highly 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. 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: A Manchester Girlhood
Julia Pascal’s A Manchester Girlhood is a rich work, a slice of generations happening. Rosie Yadid’s musical arrangements furnish the greatest amplification of this lighting-sketch of heritage, rendering soul and hope, the essence of generations.
Review: The Motive and the Cue
An extraordinary production. If it’s a homage more magnificent than wholly revealing, it doesn’t stint on a riveting performance by Mark Gatiss, who glows with the still, sad music of Gielgud’s humanity.
Review: The King’s Speech
Outstanding. Direction is revelatory, the musical cues from Logue’s own methods culminating on the finest single scene I’ve witnessed at BLT. Even if you’re from the Republic of Brighton and Hove, do push your way to the front for this one. A study of how a Republican humanises a man mired in the cerements of his own subjection holds lessons for us yet.
Review: Anna & Marina
Dovetailing invention and quotation triumphs. It’s a narrative of thrust and weave as well as tone. Overall it's terrific: one of Richard Crane’s very best works. If you care for gripping drama, can be drawn by hypnotic verse and superb acting, haste over to this unique hour.
Review: No I.D.
The celebration of acceptance and being wholly comfortable in your own body for the first time in your life transmits to everyone. It should make you more comfortable, knowing how Tatenda Shamiso radiates the joy of his, bestowing a kind of benediction. A quietly groundbreaking show.
Review: Dancing at Lughnasa
A flawless cast and creative team gather to a point in Josie Rourke’s often meticulously faithful revival, and disperse. This is the only play this year I’d willingly see again soon. Outstanding.
Review: And Then They Came For Me
A multi-genre piece that can play anywhere, and needed now more than ever. Both to challenge denialists and most of all to illustrate the inhumanity of governments like ours towards refugees
Review: The Only White
A vital play that needs to seen. See it here and subsequently a well-deserved transfer or revival.
Review: Sugar Coat
Essential theatre. Five singer-actors, memorably punchy music, witty and heartbreaking – most of all groundbreaking – storytelling. 90 minutes of this and you’ll know just what to do with the patriarchy.
Review: Fisherman’s Friends: The Musical
A glorious night out, a wonderful cast and in Shahmir a mesmerising star in the making.
Review: Steel Magnolias
Uniquely moving, it’s a night worth anyone’s time, and its truths that resonate long after the curtain.
Review: Urban Nan
A walking tour that never leaves your ears, but takes you on a fantastic final journey
Review: Dinner With Groucho
McGuinness produces one of his finest works wrought from the sawdust of others and rendered it the burst of stars that irradiate the end.
Review: Nan Makes History
A beautifully gentle introduction into a classic journey exploring the works of a classic Scots writer
Review: Jews. In Their Own Words.
It’s Jonathan Freedland’s and Tracy-Ann Oberman’s brilliance to bring off-kilter, casual devastation to the stage; in raw unsettlings that for many keep the suitcase packed.
Review: Lost in the Willows
As a definitive staged version of Kenneth Grahame’s life, it will certainly hold the stage in its subsequent tour.
Review: Silence
More of a scattering of earth, ashes and love than simply groundbreaking. But caveats aside, groundbreaking it is.
Review: I, Joan
The title role goes to Isobel Thom, making their professional debut: the greatest I’ve ever seen.
Review: Marys Seacole
No simple swapping of heirs and originals, but a dream of the future by Seacole, or equally present dreams raking the past. Do see this.
Review: Anne Boleyn
If it’s drama you’re after in Brighton Fringe, this is one of the two or three essential stops. Thrilling, authoritative, with Greene the jewel in a sparkling ensemble.
Review: The Misfortune of the English
Pamela Carter’s schoolboys embody human connectedness, warmth, a final camaraderie before the chill of history. Unmissable.
Review: The Corn is Green
There’s many reasons to see Williams’ finest play. To realise our potential it’s not enough to have dreams, but for someone to show us what those dreams could be.
Review: The Paradis Files
Not so much an event as a concentration of Errollyn Wallen’s genius celebrating the life of blind composer Maria Theresia van Paradis, in Graeae’s world-class production
Review: The Marriage of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
Such exquisite works find their time; speak to it again and again and again.
Review: Beautiful
Outstanding, and outstandingly transferred as a tour that brings its stature with it.
Review: A Splinter of Ice
Absorbing. With such an acting masterclass the play’s a bewitchingly-voiced fugue on the limits of belief and betrayal.
Review: Slings and Arrows
The principal reason why a stage should always be a platform for the voices unheard.
Review: Rosetti’s Women
A lovely, dramatic presentation that covers the racy relationships, from the perspectives of three of his women, of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Review: Hamilton and Me: An Actor’s Journal
In rapid, elegant, idiomatically kerned language, Giles Terera proves himself a superb expositor of where it happens.
Review: On Arriving
On Arriving takes sixty minutes it seems we’ve been immersed in a Greek Tragedy of ninety. See it.
Review: Chamberlain: Peace in Our Time
A light-filled small gem of a show, tuning into wireless crystals of a lost world.
Review: The Lady in the Van
Sarah Mann and her company will surely return with this gem of transubstantiation.
Review: Sacrament
A revelation, superbly written and acted. Comparisons have been made with A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing. I can think of no higher praise either. You must see this.
Review: Illusions of Liberty
A finely-calibrated solo play of what it’s like to enter that tunnel of near-undiagnosable but very real illness. Corinne Walker’s both authoritative and quicksilver. Do catch it.
Review: Angela
A tender, beautifully pitched exploration of the individuality of a life, despite what illness may eventually steal.
Review: Amadeus
In the most spectacular production imaginable, Lucian Msamati’s supremely crafted lead sets off the quicksilver of his rival Adam Gillen.
Review: #AIWW The Arrest of Ai WeiWei
Brenton powerfully concertinas a continent’s politics and one artist’s refraction of it. Wong is outstanding
Review: Swive
A Hilliard rather than Holbein, it’s the velocity of Elizabeth’s survival that enthrals
Review: #We Are Arrested
Peter Hamilton Dyer carries this celebration of the conscience to be fully human
Review: The Thrill of Love
A superb revival, and the best production of this popular play I’ve seen.
Review: The Monster and Mary Shelley
A solo celebration of the mind that brought Frankenstein from its fevered edges to realisation on the page
Review: The Drift
An impressive solo show about how integrated Scotland believes it is but shows us the reality of the length it needs to go, in order to achieve that aim.
Review: What Girls Are Made Of
Cora Bissett’s set the bar thrillingly high for a new genre. Who could follow her?
