Genre: Contemporary 0
Review: Bambiland
A performance of a very challenging piece of theatre which targets war and our complicity in the industry of war.
Review: The Gummy Bear’s Great War
An absurd, imaginative, and superb performance on a new level involving Gummy Bears for Peace.
Review: L’Addition – Here & Now Showcase
Intriguing exploration of two characters exceptionally well performed by Bert and Nasi.
Review: Freak Out!
A theatrical response to a serious issue of our time along with a dollop of end-of-the-pier entertainment.
Review: Jess
A surgeon buckles under the pressure of work, a bullying environment and a personal life under pressure.
Review: Timeless
Timeless comprises four contrasting dance pieces that are all interesting and well performed.
Review: Via Dolorosa by David Hare
Through many voices, playwright David Hare has penned an Israel-Palestine story that could have been written today. It is dramatic, powerful, and moving.
Review: The Hidden Garden
Beauty and grace poised in a confined space, watched by a spellbound audience, in another confined space.
Review: Read the F***ing Manual
Thought provoking theatre on the importance of taking care of yourself and others in a hostile world. The potential to be a play for our times.
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: After Sex
Deservedly hugely popular. With uber-smart dialogue, Dromgoole ensures that under the brittle wrap, there’s an ache and overriding desire for connection.
Review: The Hot Wing King
Hall, following Nottage in particular, emerges as one of the most exciting US dramatists.
Review: ECHO
Ultimately, the most telling line ”We are all immigrants across time” defines what remains an extraordinary experience
Review: Bindweed
Laura Hanna is outstanding in a play that ought to establish itself and playwright Martha Loader; and should enjoy a much longer run.
Review: Alma Mater
Kendall Feaver’s very integrity might not satisfy those who enjoy outcomes dispelled in light. But that’s the point.
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 Constituent
This extremely fine play is even more prescient than Penhall and Warchus intended, with an earlier election. The Constituent though, will survive it till August.
Review: Surrender
The writing will snare you, Phoebe Ladenburg will hold you, and you’ll lean over the fourth wall.
Review: Some Demon
A superbly uncomfortable edge-of-seat revelation. Groundbreaking, it’s also definitive on something we often see far too dimly.
Review: Constellations
This superb revival suggests Constellations will certainly travel for a long time.
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: 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: Women’s Writes
We’ve been lucky to sit in on the first stage of a very promising conversation collaboration, and theatre piece.
Review: You’re Not Doing It Wrong If No-one Knows What You’re Doing
How families shape you - until you find your own particular shape
Review: The Trials of Magnus Coffinkey
Of the 115 (mostly London) shows I’ve seen this year so far, it ranks as the most profound, and one of the very finest.
Review: Cold Water
Still in her twenties but vastly experienced, it’s going to be exciting to see where Lawford breaks out to next.
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: Company RAus’s Dido
A multimedia portrayal of Dido's love and loss, in sound, light and solo dance
Review: Lived Fiction
Unique, spellbinding, groundbreaking; above all makes everyone more alive to the possibilities of being human.
Review: Captain Amazing
Simon Stephens commented “If I could get all your numbers I would ring you all up individually and urge you to see Captain Amazing.” That can’t be improved on. It’s a must-see.
Review: Rock, Paper, Scissors
A joyous revival. Though working in TV production, Hayden’s writing is too good, too well-shaped not to develop in theatre instead.
Review: Dawn Again: A Rap Opera
Elliot has a problem: two girlfriends, both giving birth on the same day in the same hospital
Review: Laughing Boy
Stephen Unwin directs his own play as a sweep of storytelling, laughter and devastation.
Review: Frozen
Frozen is far more than a thriller: it’s an interrogation into the limits of what evil-doing is, what redemption and some capacity to forgive might be, and its consequences: and above all it ends in a thaw cracking like a Russian spring.
Review: Boys on the Verge of Tears
It’s an exciting, fragile world Sam Grabiner’s promised us in the future.
Review: Testmatch
A superbly witty interrogation of identity, abuses many histories deep, asking questions it sets up in not too sober a fashion. Testmatch is a lightning-conductor.
Review: Banging Denmark
This production’s 100 minutes are so absorbing you’re not quite sure if the time’s stopped, or just your preconceptions. Stunning, a must see.
Review: Neil Crossland Piano Recital, Unitarian Church, New Road Brighton
All in all an outstanding recital. Neil Crossland’s piano recital at the Unitarian Church is again on another level
Review: Muswell Hill
Cook and team have shown commendable disregard for comfortable options, sharing a rediscovery.
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: Hide and Seek
An absorbing two-hander with as unexpected an ending as Lauren Gunderson’s I and You
Review: Casserole
One of the finest small-scale plays to come out of Arcola’s Studio 2 recently. Do see this.
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: 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 Duchess of Malfi
There’s so much to admire here that it’s a happy duty to urge you to see it, if you can, any way you can.
Review: Stitches
The end’s both poignant and visionary. A show to remember long after the Bear’s imagined batteries run down.
Review: Vanya
This is the greatest one-man performance I’ve seen, said a Chekhov-immersed director of 45 years’ experience next to me. Yes.
Review: ACT Playwriting Course
Mark Burgess and his students should feel immensely satisfied. And of course the students themselves divinely dissatisfied as they develop their craft.
Review: King Lear
This smouldering production – fast-talking or timeless - fully engages with the play. It makes almost perfect sense: and two families’ DNA ring true as rarely before.
Review: Just For One Day
Despite history’s caveats, O’Farrell’s core message isn’t about white saviours or pop stars but how ordinary people unite to change things.
Review: Till the Stars Come Down
Even this early, it’s safe to predict we’ll look back at the end of 2024 and proclaim it as one of the year’s finest.
Review: Othello
With institutional racism and trauma compounded in a feedback loop, this Othello’s a timely, and timeless broadside on everything toxic we inhale and expel as venom.
Review: For Entertainment Purposes Only
Philip Ayckbourn’s songs are the heart of this collection. It’d be thrilling to see a full musical here; and staged in London. Enthusiastically recommended, there’s gems, with more of Ayckbourn’s elegiac sensibility than I’ve ever seen. More of this please.
Review: A Chat With Adonai
Jacob Kay and Helen Baird are both exemplary and funny – there’s explosions of laughter. At 40 minutes there’s much matter hurled at the speed of dark. See it if you can, and check out the other Bitesize plays at Riverside.
Review: The Beautiful Future is Coming
Beautiful Future engages throughout though the near future is where it beats quickest. Flora Wilson Brown’s play makes you wonder what life, not just the playwright, might do with her characters. Urgently recommended.
Review: Afterglow
It’s conquered both sides of the pond. Stunning, heartwarming, heartbreaking. We need this.
Review: Taking Care of Baby
Exemplary performances and production: with Charly Sommers outstanding as a woman hollowed out by everyone she knows. An auspicious full-length debut for Neil Hadley.
Review: Leaves of Glass
This is possibly Ridley’s masterpiece. Always exercised by the spectral presence of something just out of eyeshot, he never lets that intrude. Scorching and necessary, Leaves of Glass delves into family toxicity, ceaselessly dragging us back into the past.
Review: Boy In Da Korma
A necessary, engaging, original variation on finding your voice: and a theatrical coup. Acting, writing, directing, video, lighting and tech support, indeed singing are first class. A gem.
