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.
Genre: Dark Comedy
Review: The Comeuppance
Might prove the most lasting American drama about. emerging to a different world.
Review: Hangmen
Assured, idiomatic performances. And Martin McDonagh’s distinction resonates in a manner peculiar to him alone. A must-see for anyone in Sussex.
Review: London Zoo
A masterly play in the making. It goes where very few dare, and in an environment we think we know. Very highly recommended.
Review: The Merchant of Venice
Shakespeare told in flashes of lightning maybe, but with the thunder of laughter and a ghost of wrongs rumbling long after the lights go down. A gem of distillation, dispatch and truth. If you can, go.
Review: Mates in Chelsea
Mates in Chelsea is definitely worth seeing, and apart from adaptations surely the best thing this writer’s produced in a decade. Royal Court Theatre
Review: Little Wars
Allows the best of those it portrays, to shine in one intense beam of feminist solidarity, women against tyranny and genocide.
Review: Meetings
Mustapha Matura draws in and telescopes devastating consequences - perhaps telegraphs years of damage into a few weeks for dramatic licence. That doesn’t lessen his impact. The point is western exploitation kills, in many guises.
Review: That Face
Its qualities are extraordinary, that of a Greek tragedy on Prozac performed by St Trinian’s. Prozac Nation’s referenced, but Polly Stenham’s point is how parental damage numbs you out of feeling anything at the right time, with displacement activities chateau-bottled around a bed. Yet it is, of course, very funny. An outstanding revival, given extra intensity by the staging; an intimacy so palpable you both flinch and laugh at the same moment.
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: The Taming of the Shrew
A slowly evolving, involving reading. Alex Louise can certainly develop this to a full-scale production. She just needs to take care of the script’s truth, though it seems contradictory. Confidence and imagination will soon sort that.
Review: SAD-VENTS
Eleanor Hill A fascinating, even groundbreaking show about living life in the shadow of tragedies.
Review: Potty the Plant – A New Dark Comedy Musical
A light hearted pseudo-horror story with a few jibes at current affairs
Review: The Ruffian on the Stair and Funeral Games
Joe Orton’s The Ruffian on the Stair and Funeral Games come to the Lantern Theatre for four performances. This in-house double bill of one-acters is directed by Daniel Finlay and Mark Burgess respectively. A fitting end to the Lantern’s extraordinary week
Review: NSFW
A stunning vindication of an underrated early play of Lucy Kirkwood’s. With superb direction and tech, the mostly professional and professionally-trained cast would grace any stage. NVT triumphantly prove NSFW can join the modern canon.
Review: Word-Play
Here though, Rabiah Hussain’s greatest strengths are allied to an excoriating sense of the limits of first language, how it colonises, even destroys mother tongues, and marginalises, even imprisons those who buck the monolinguistic norm. Hussain’s poised for remarkable things.
Review: Cuckoo
Michael Wynne bringing something full circle touches where the floating island of home and family might bring sanctuary, or last refuge before the cuckoos come and kick you out. A must-see, particularly for those who’ve not thought the Royal Court could rock with laughter.
Review: After All These Years
Giles Cole’s extending from one wistfully comic short to a three-act Chekhovian elegy for the dance of age, is in a defining league of its own.
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: all of it
Still the most sheerly thrilling yet intimate piece MacDowall has written, though all three pieces amplify that. A miniature classic of snatched meaning its staging too flashes by with shocking brevity. In all it lasts just 90 minutes. Catch it.
Review: The Last Night Out
Very-well written, darkly comedic, more touchingly true, writer Paul M Bradley and Georgie Banks take this just as far as it’ll go. Highly recommended.
Review: A Caravan Named Desire
Anything by Alexander and Helen Millington is worth coming for. A Caravan Named Desire isn’t yet at the level of I Love Michael Ball but by the time you see it, it almost certainly will be. This is a team to watch and queue for.
Review: I Love Michael Ball
Alexander Millington’s I Love Michael Ball is, in the words of one director, the absolute spirit of the Fringe. That is, brilliantly oddball, in fact deranged. Millington, wholly in command, is winningly able to return us to the sanity of sheer good singing. So make a date.
Review: After All These Years
Giles Cole’s extending from one wistfully comic short to a three-act Chekhovian elegy for the dance of age, is in a defining league of its own. A superb play, it will now reach the West End.
Review: The Emergence Festival
A fascinating evening of well-considered works that augur well for many with a real future in the arts.
Review: The MP, Aunty Mandy and Me
A young gay man from a small northern village gets sucked into the heady world of working for his local MP, and faces many big dilemmas.
Review: Communicating Doors
An excellent revival and the best chance to see this remarkable thriller-cum-farce-cum-meditation.
Review: The Dance of Death
Highlights the truth of its bleak laughter. Humane Strindberg. Now there’s a thing.
Review: Cock
A superb revival of Bartlett’s warmest, most ground-breaking, perhaps most enduring play so far.
Review: Double Murder: Clowns / The Fix
An extraordinary choreographic exploration of murder and hope
Review: Nathan Cassidy: Observational
With a crippling bad back, Nathan joins a gym and a big, strong man changes his life
Review: Hangmen
Assured, idiomatic performances. And Martin McDonagh’s distinction resonates in a manner peculiar to him alone.
Review: The Merchant of Venice
A reading of Adrian Schiller’s Shylock as probing as other great productions of the past decade; and of Sophie Melville’s nearly-rounded, brittle Portia.
Review: Quentin Crisp: Naked Hope
Ask yourself this. If there were no praise or blame – who would I be?
Review: Measure for Measure
Immerse yourself in Blanche McIntyre’s quizzical production. You’ll come nearer to this play.
Review: The Cat and the Canary
If you’re a Classic Thriller Theatre Company fan, don’t hesitate. Though we can be grateful to Bill Kenwright for trying out these creaky creepies, a serious bit of thought ought to go in to just what genres they are first.
Review: The Merchant of Venice
This production needs a run. It’s potentially a great interpretation.
Review: Between Two Waves
A play about the Climate Crisis, family, photography and being screwed by insurance.
Review: Two Horsemen
The glaring energy of this piece can’t disguise how it strikes profundity in its funny-bone.
Review: The Merchant of Venice
A fleet traversal memorable for insights the company bring during and after their performance of it
Review: 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.
Review: The Winter’s Tale
Far more than a curate’s egg, this production reveals things we’ve never seen
Review: The Taming of the Shrew
See it and you’ll never think of the Shrew without this groundbreaking stab at the dreams of men.
Review: You Stupid Darkness!
Bleakly funny, with flickers of tragedy, to make you see how redemptive kindness is
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: A Day in the Death of Joe Egg
Over 50 years on, this still sets benchmarks. Its power to enthral, to appal can never date.
Review: All’s Well That Ends Well
Hannah Morrish’s Helena shines in this achingly desperate, quietly beautiful production.
Review: Fleabag
Original, raw, brilliantly funny and devastating. This production is Fleabag neat. Its harrowing streak of genius burns like a healing scar torn.
Review: Beep Boop
A one man mime and physical comedy theatre show with a live digital soundscape, exploring society’s uneasy obsession with online life and the curious delusional pull away from an actually lonely reality.
Review: Umbrella Man
Start your Fringe day with a bang in the hands of a very talented poet and storyteller
Review: The House of Influenza
A solo show of many zany characters exploring what one might do in a suburban zombie attack if an over indulgence in horror movies is your only frame of reference
Review: Hitler’s Tasters
You will stumble out at the end completely bowled over by the power of this play
