Review: The Cat and the Canary
An exceptional ensemble delivering a delirious twist on a tale that truly deserves it. Unmissable.
Review: The Cat and the Canary
An exceptional ensemble delivering a delirious twist on a tale that truly deserves it. Unmissable.
Review: Midnight Cowboy Radio
Bye, Bye Miss American Pie
Review: Peep
very funny and has some incredible good lines
Review: FAMEHUNGRY
A bold, in-your-face piece that challenges our perceptions of social media
Review: SOS BRM
An engaging exploration of grief, loss and guilt
Review: Neurochatter
A raw and powerful show that shows, not tells.
Review: The Ruffian on the Stair
Joe Orton, Always Welcome
Review: Beyond Krapp
A beautifully poised solo drama filled with caution for the dying and the hope that the living can still listen.
Review: The Bookies
A Dark Comedy Worth Taking a Gamble On
Review: How Dead Am I?
An absurdly enticing view of what I might be like at the end of your world … but with snacks.
Review: The Martyrs
any zeitgeisty theatre director should jump at the chance to produce this play fully staged.
Review: Corpse Flower
A beautiful nod to the expressionistic silent movie era, just with words and words that will enchant you!
Review: So Young
Every aspect of this production is outstanding
Review: Gloria’s Gift
In a world where we're all so connected, how can we be more disconnected than we've ever been?
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: 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: The Bounds
As it stands, this is a play with greatness seeded in it.
Review: The Cherry Orchard
In this production, it’s Chekhov who shines.
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: 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: 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: Adrift
Psychological Thriller – sci-fi at it’s finest! New writing, not to be missed!
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: Dark Noon
A Staggering Achievement
Review: Chicken
A unique and ambitious satire
Review: Dimanche
Sensational, Dystopian Portrait of a Changing World
Review: One Room Sleep One Night
There’s No Sleeping in This Room
Review: Dough
Energetic, well acted play about money.
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: Mark Burgess Talking Orton Lantern Theatre
A striking verbatim transcript.
Review: Who’s Been a Naughty Chops
A one woman show determined to win by any form of submission.
Review: Lie Low
A slick swirl of consent issues, insomnia and dancing to Benny Goodman
Review: BUTCHERED
The physicality of Ez Holland and Nic Lawton has to be seen to be believed.
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: Miss Margarida’s Way
A darkly funny satire on the depths of totalitarian manipulation
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: Sleeping Trees: Western!
Sleeping Trees return to Brighton!
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 Ladykillers- Brighton Open Air Theatre
Exemplary Ealing Comedy Revival
Review: Lady Bracknell’s Confinement
A Powerhouse and masterclass of Theatrical Invention
Review: Experiment Human
A Monkion experiment involving Benedict Cumberbatch
Review: The Emergence Festival
A fascinating evening of well-considered works that augur well for many with a real future in the arts.
Review: Harry’s Christmas
Berkoff's festive offering
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: The Lesson
Groundbreaking, superb, unmissable.
Review: The 47th
A must-see.
Review: Cock
A superb revival of Bartlett’s warmest, most ground-breaking, perhaps most enduring play so far.
Review: Horsepower
Exceptional, both as dramatic writing, design and performance.
Review: Double Murder: Clowns / The Fix
An extraordinary choreographic exploration of murder and hope
Review: So…
Brand new show by performance makers Jon Haynes and David Woods
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: Metamorphoses
The overriding sense, not surprisingly with these actors, is joy.
Review: Is God Is
A stunning, preternaturally timed production
Review: Mustard by Eva O’Connor
One-woman bravura storytelling about love and addiction
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: Harvey Greenfield is Running Late
You can't please all of the people all of the time
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 Winter’s Tale
Enjoy its slow burn miracles.
Review: This House
Vibrant proof as to why it’s been called the play of the decade
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 Visit
Kushner’s just brought The Visit home with him.
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: Cops
A first-rate distillation of cop drama, into the theatre of cop’s lives.
Review: Apologia
Richly charactered, thoroughly absorbing.
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 Christmas Carol
The most original, potent and uplifting Christmas Carol I’ve ever seen
Review: Measure for Measure
An outstanding production
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: Shadows
Speaks with a fierce innocence