Review: The Father and the Assassin
There’s no finer dramatisation of India’s internal conflicts. Shubham Saraf’s Gandhi-killer Godse stands out in this thrilling ensemble and storms it too.
Review: The Father and the Assassin
There’s no finer dramatisation of India’s internal conflicts. Shubham Saraf’s Gandhi-killer Godse stands out in this thrilling ensemble and storms it too.
Review: Two Pairs of Eyes
An immersive ghost story
Review: Straight Line Crazy
Danny Webb gives the performance of his life. Ralph Fiennes is coiled majesty. Two-and-a-half hours of such material have rarely been so thrilling.
Review: Airswimming
Superb revival of Charlotte Jones’s play about two women incarcerated for fifty years for bring different. With a standing ovation of such force that convention had to be broken with the actors forced back on stage.
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: two Palestinians go dogging
Packs a mighty question that can still knock you off balance.
Review: Spirit of Woodstock 2 – The Sequel
There’s no greater writer/performer working in Brighton, or Sussex, and Spirit of Woodstock Parts I and 2 is Jonathan Brown’s most dazzling show to date.
Review: The Misfortune of the English
Pamela Carter’s schoolboys embody human connectedness, warmth, a final camaraderie before the chill of history. Unmissable.
Review: Hangmen
Assured, idiomatic performances. And Martin McDonagh’s distinction resonates in a manner peculiar to him alone.
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: Ghost Boy: a playwright’s progress
If you want a single account of the heady days of 1960s-70s British theatre, this has to be it
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: The Chalk Garden
Not quite the last drawing-room comedy. But the Janus-faced prophesy of plays that took thirty years to catch up.
Review: Di and Viv and Rose
A first-rate revival of this heartwarming play, surprising you with grief, and joy
Review: Relatively Speaking
With his new production director Robin Herford, most associated with this play, brings pace, panache, and more than a dose of Ayckbourn’s generosity of spirit
Review: Leopoldstat
Stoppard’s written out his theatrical testament. Outstanding.
Review: The Dresser
If you’ve not seen The Dresser, you shouldn’t pass up this production.
Review: Hairspray
An intermittently superb musical
Review: The Midnight Bell
An outstanding ballet by any standards. One that like its inspiration Patrick Hamilton will last.
Review: Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied Tunisia
A profound parable for co-existence and its sometime impossibility, perpetually skewed by others’ disruptions.
Review: This Beautiful Future
Heartstopping. There’s an absoluteness here we need. We must prove desperate for it or die ourselves.
Review: Richard II
One of OFS’s strongest productions, it’s also a return to roots.
Review: Six
Outstanding, the finest West End musical for years
Review: The Odyssey
As spellbinding as Circe and Calypso in one
Review: Sweet William
Naturally enriched by living with Shakespeare Michael Pennington unearths local habitations and names for him.
Review: The Whole Shebang
See it again!
Review: Troy Story
Again the most educative stand-up and a thrilling presentation. Oh and bloody funny on war, male sexuality and the Bechdel Test.
Review: Staircase
A first-rate revival of a play that with its ostensible shock-value in aspic, reveals subversions and a clever structure so unsettling we should all look in the mirror and wince.
Review: Wilde Without the Boy
A jewel of inhabiting
Review: Pandora’s Jar/Honour Among Thebes
The most educative stand-up and a thrilling presentation. Oh and bloody funny on the tragedies.
Review: Clean: The Musical
This should be in the West End
Review: Chamberlain: Peace in Our Time
A light-filled small gem of a show, tuning into wireless crystals of a lost world.
Review: The Vertical Hour
The definitive Fringe revival of a mainstream play this year. Absorbing, baggy, intimate. See it.
Review: The Lady in the Van
Sarah Mann and her company will surely return with this gem of transubstantiation.
Review: Ghosts
The ultimate guilty pleasure, and not necessarily in a good way, as the slavery past of Glasgow is blown open in a gentile narrative manner
Review: 15 Heroines: 15 Monologues Adapted from Ovid
Groundbreaking. The smallest producing theatre in the West End through lockdown has become the largest.
Review: Troilus and Cressida
We’re privileged to see this rarely-performed work moulded by OFS. A play for our times.
Review: Rockets and Blue Lights
A paean to endurance, love, and wrenched freedoms.
Review: Love Love Love
Epic eavesdropping casts that ultimate spell: reading ourselves by flashes of lightning.
Review: Amadeus
In the most spectacular production imaginable, Lucian Msamati’s supremely crafted lead sets off the quicksilver of his rival Adam Gillen.
Review: Les Blancs
A superb realization of Lorraine Hansberry's unfinished masterpiece - a classic of Ibsenite proportions
Review: Small Island
A reboot for the future, a passport for change.
Review: From Henry VI Part 3 to Romeo and Juliet
Join and revel – they’re not anywhere near ended.
Review: The Madness of George III
This magnificent revival poses even more urgent questions. A twitch on the thread for all of us.
Review: Coriolanus
A Coriolanus memorable for politics sinewed with personal forces: an active interrogation of democracy. And in Josie Rourke’s production Tom Hiddleston’s someone riven by intimations of his true self
Review: The Sound of Music
Phenomenal singing all round. A more than solid recommendation for that alone.
Review: Richard II
Do see this.
Review: The Skin Game
Treat this as a wonderful premiere you’ve not had to stir for.
Review: Drawing the Line
Terrific, a harrowing education.
Review: Wonderland
Outstanding. Surely the definitive study of the dignity of physical labour, and breaking of its amity.
Review: Phnom Penh – 40 Years On From The Khmer Rouge
An extraordinarily assured debut
Review: Afterplay
Miraculously-attuned. A wafer-thin but absolutely genuine slice of Chekhov. Do see it.
Review: Nora
Stef Smith’s brilliant riff on Ibsen’s original is revelatory
Review: The Tin Drum
Nico Holonics’ blaze-through avatar is unlikely to be surpassed.
Review: An Inspector Calls
Still an outstanding production we might take for granted.
Review: Talk
Mark Wilson and his team triumph in a whisper, and a restraining cry.
Review: The Welkin
Already a contender for one of the best plays of 2020.
Review: Henry VI
The most effective condensation of the pith of the trilogy we’re likely to see.
Review: Swive
A Hilliard rather than Holbein, it’s the velocity of Elizabeth’s survival that enthrals
Review: A Christmas Carol
The most original, potent and uplifting Christmas Carol I’ve ever seen
Review: Hunger
An exemplary, scrupulous production so starkly contemporary, it makes Hunger contemporary forever
Review: Candida
Convinces here far more than any production I’ve seen.
Review: Richard III
This production could draw out the poison of being dead serious in terminal bursts of laughter
Review: My Brilliant Friend Parts One and Two
Cusack and McCormack give the performances of their lives
Review: Hansard
A masterfully conceived vehicle to stalk politics now
Review: A History of Water in the Middle East
Hugely absorbing it’s entertaining too.
Review: Frankenstein
There’s a clean sharp fusion between these two writers that heralds something special.
Review: Youth Without God
We’re launched into a necessary world
Review: Amsterdam
Did I say sucker-punch? It’s what the Orange Tree do every time.
Review: Preludes
I’m hooked. We need more of this.
Review: Your Sexts Are Shit: Older Better Letters
Don’t take your Nan to this show.
Review: Kemp’s Jig
A wonderfully told tale of a forgotten man in the history of Elizabethan theatre
Review: Hitler’s Tasters
You will stumble out at the end completely bowled over by the power of this play
Review: Taboo
A chilling glimpse into the world of a little known but influential woman from the Nazi era.
Review: Hair
Outstanding
Review: Mary Stuart
It must be seen
Review: Scarlett Fever: The Great Southern Search
Old Hollywood meets tribal acting in an engaging piece of physical theatre.
Review: Conflict of Interest
Fascinating unearthing of a family at war - on both sides
Review: The Duchess and the Stripper
Wallis Simpson goes to Blaze's.
Review: Further Education
A strong, committed production of a very fine comedy
Review: Henry V
The enormous energy Sarah Amankwah brings proclaims greatness in the making
Review: Paul Duncan McGarrity: A Practical Guide to Storming Castles
The most entertaining archaeologist since Indiana Jones
Review: All I See Is You
Funny, upsetting and with just the right amount of teenage angst - it’s 1960’s UK. This is a coming of age story where queer men are never truly permitted to come of age.