Genre: Contemporary 0
Review: Sitting Pretty
When you see this show return, it’ll be outstanding, and in the frame for awards.
Review: The Vertical Hour
The definitive Fringe revival of a mainstream play this year. Absorbing, baggy, intimate. See it.
Review: There’s a Ghost in My House
Stunning. Greet the nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is.
Review: Vagabonds My Phil Lynott Odyssey
An original off-kilter approach to elegy, tribute and becoming yourself.
Review: Two Horsemen
The glaring energy of this piece can’t disguise how it strikes profundity in its funny-bone.
Review: Hole
Don’t miss the chance to see this transcendent actor prove she possesses another dimension altogether.
Review: I Wish My Life Were Like a Musical
Flawless, a stunning pocket-sized musical you really must see.
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: Living Newspaper #7
Like all the Royal Court’s Living Newspaper series, we need this. Watch a group of young dramatists take on the future
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: Vespertilio
Vespertilio marks Barry McStay’s emergence as a writer of distinction. Anything he writes now should be looked out for.
Review: Jew… ish
One of the wittiest but also truthful comedies about love, identity, sexual politics and gefilte fish I’ve seen
Review: Living Newspaper #6
Like all the Royal Court’s Living Newspaper series, we need this. Watch what this does with the future
Review: Living Newspaper #5
Like all the Royal Court’s Living Newspaper series, we need this. Watch.
Review: Outside
As with Inside, Outside not only fits us, they help us to move on, and become in their modest, unassuming and utterly transcendent way, part of how we learn to.
Review: New Moon Monologues April
As we saw in March, don’t be lulled by friendly colours and fluffy fonts. Queens of Cups again proves they’re a company to revel with and wait for heart-stopping reveals
Review: Icarus
After all the gods and their lack of choice, we come to the final instalment, the human dimension. Where we have one. A heartfelt, satisfying finish.
Review: Orpheus
A terrific reinvention, bringing gods and heroines up from the death of myth to an altered world.
Review: New Moon Monologues March
Don’t be lulled by the friendly colours and fluffy fonts. Queen of Cups is absolutely a company to watch, and its showcase productions are literally unmissable
Review: Hymn
Its potency lies in a fine peeling apart by Adrian Lester and Danny Sapini, and the language that bridges it.
Review: Before After
A pristine, heartwarming Valentine of a musical, starring a pair of real-life lovers, it deserves a real-life run
Review: Walk of Shame
A slow burning expose of the shame we should feel at how we treat those who exercise the liberty we expect them to have
Review: Just Like Giving Blood
Upton’s notches of logic are nudged with brilliance, the actual narrative a granular run-up to an enormous yes.
Review: The White Hart
Winner of an OnComm award from Off West End, another Upton triumph by stealth
Review: The Official Dick Whittington – A Pantomime for 2020
It’s a joyous confection out of thin lockdown.
Review: 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
Review: 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.
Review: 15 Heroines: 15 Monologues Adapted from Ovid
Groundbreaking. The smallest producing theatre in the West End through lockdown has become the largest.
Review: 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.
Review: San Francisco Fringe Festival 2020 Sneak Peek!
Catch a taste of what's to come at the 2021 San Francisco Fringe Festival!
Review: Love Love Love
Epic eavesdropping casts that ultimate spell: reading ourselves by flashes of lightning.
Review: Shoe Lady
Katherine Parkinson inhabits that breaking through the office crust asphyxiating us
Review: The Ruins of Empires
A fantastical run through the falls of Empires and how we, as subjects, can and should rise up and take the advantages back for the common good.
Review: Barber Shop Chronicles
Barber Shop Chronicles is a breath-taking revelation for those of us who had small inkling of a world in miniature.
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: A Separate Peace
Stoppard looks at society’s phantom limb ethic. Even when it’s gone it aches, and it aches to have someone opting out.
Review: Tiger Country
Tells us more truthfully then any play has, the heroism that hardens, the sacrifice that endures.
Review: I and You
Will leave you in a heap and wonder what else Lauren Gunderson has written that comes near this.
Review: Maim
A hymnotic theatrical panic for the land, which exposes us to the language and the lyrical beauty of our own country.
Review: Quartet
Like The French Lieutenant’s Woman, there are now two endings to Quartet. You must see this if you know the film only, or care about music, ageing, friendship and achingly lost love.
Review: Shoe Lady
Katherine Parkinson inhabits that breaking through the office crust asphyxiating us
Review: Far Away
Our greatest playwright since Beckett and Pinter. An outstanding revival. Hesitating?
Review: The Dog Walker
I want to know what life, not just Paul Minx will do with his characters afterwards. So will you.
Review: The Good Dad (A Love Story)
Intricate, fiercely intelligent, this play packs far more force than some twice its length. Sarah Lawrie’s intensity is magnificent.
Review: Death of England
This work never loses its charge, its own rapturous arrival Spall gives the performance of his career so far.
Review: 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.
Review: Blood Brothers
The blend of definitive and new cast members in a recent classic has overwhelming impact: as story, as lyric fable, as terrible moral for these distracted times.
Review: Scenes with girls
Scenes with girls owns a buzz, a life, a difference about loving that gives it a sliver of unique.
Review: The Winterling
A triumph. Nearly flawless, it must be seen by anyone interested in contemporary drama.
Review: Roots
An Edinburgh International Festival, HOME Manchester, Spoleto Festival USA & Theatre de la Ville Paris co-production
Review: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
The three lead actors, divas and a superb cast give this production its beating pink heart.
Review: #We Are Arrested
Peter Hamilton Dyer carries this celebration of the conscience to be fully human
Review: My Brilliant Friend Parts One and Two
Cusack and McCormack give the performances of their lives
Review: A Letter to a Friend in Gaza
Amos Gitai’s curating hope from the ruins, impelling the audience to construct a narrative.
