Review: Phantasmagoria
There seem enough potential endings to make what happens neither predictable, nor entirely obvious. A first-rate cast with enough residual fascination in the characters they create to wonder at what life, and not just Deepika Arwind, might do to them. The terror is existential and we should ask what it might do to us.
Review: Los finales felices son para otros
An exquisite industrial and Argentinian take on Richard III
Review: Passing
A mesmerising play, one that won’t fade and whose topicality will only reverberate more. The dialogue’s consummate and touching, the gradual reveals of blindness – and blandness - to racism on a memory-trip with a disastrous family album, releases a slow detonation of all that’s wrong still. One of my comedies of the year. Pretty outstanding.
Review: This Way For The Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
Based on the writing of poet Tadeusz Borowski and the paintings of Arnold Daghani This Way For The Gas bears explosive witness to shape the pulse of that post-Holocaust world. Bill Smith, Angi Mariano and their colleagues have wrought an enormous service. In the last great reprise of 'Never' we realise we're seeing the finale of an emerging masterpiece.
Review: The Yellow Wallpaper
Stephanie Mohr’s adaptation is a remarkable manifestation (no other word seems more apt) of the Charlotte Perkins Gilman short story The Yellow Wallpaper, an important realisation of a key feminist awakening. It’s good enough for you not to want it depicted in any other way.
Review: The Father and the Assassin
There’s no finer dramatization of India’s internal conflicts. Hiran Abeysekera’s Gandhi-killer Godse stands out in this thrilling ensemble and storms it too.
Review: Mother Courage and Her Children
Beautiful production with stylised movement and physical acting
Review: Chevalier – Hobbyhorse Circus
A very sweet and well-executed homage to the circus horse, ideal for families with small children or those still young at heart.
Review: Yours Unfaithfully
In Miles Malleson’s play, full of probing discussions, there’s a refusal to tilt at solutions. You feel he’s lived along the line; his provisionality speaks with permanence. That’s what makes it so remarkable.
Review: Under the Kunde Tree
There’s much to learn here, and as theatrical spectacle this is the intimate intimating the epic. Clarisse Makundul has given us a powerful work, and I’d urge you to see it.
Review: Lovefool
Though it might be red-topped as a Fleabag for the abused, it’s so much more excoriating. It’s also a work profoundly moving, necessary and – particularly for Gintare Parulyte - an act of courage. Lovefool’s on till May 26th; do rush to this 55-minute must-see.
Review: You Bury Me
An essential play so rich in its one-hour-forty you emerge dazed with possibilities. Director Katie Posner hopes it’ll change you. So do I.
Review: Pussycat in Memory of Darkness
Neda Nezhdana’s play is a world: not simply a map of pain and war footage. Both essential and in the mesmerising Kristin Millward’s and Polly Creed’s hands, with this team, it’s almost a compulsory visit.
Review: Django in Pain
Poignant, charming and meaningful play that is imaginative and vibrant in vision and message.
Review: Dinner With Groucho
McGuinness produces one of his finest works wrought from the sawdust of others and rendered it the burst of stars that irradiate the end.
Review: Silence
More of a scattering of earth, ashes and love than simply groundbreaking. But caveats aside, groundbreaking it is.
Review: Circus Abyssinia: Tulu
Vibrant music, excellent acrobatic skills, fast paced with colourful lights and costumes!
Review: Mary, Chris, Mars
Imaginative - and will appeal to families with an interest in space, astronauts and object/shadow puppetry.
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: Rice
Do see this work of understated virtuosity, rich in character, substance, a shape-shifting singularity.
Review: Statements After an Arrest under the Immortality Act
An important, scorching revival, Statements explores the limits of love in a forcing-house of oppression and racism.
Review: Mary Stuart
A new take on Schiller’s play that removes the men and truly heightens the drama.
Review: Misfits
An important play, tackling the deadly serious with laughter that all too easily could lead to stark tragedy.
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: Two Horsemen
The glaring energy of this piece can’t disguise how it strikes profundity in its funny-bone.
Review: Frankenstein
Imaginative, Exquisitely Haunting and Moving - Visual Storytelling at its best!
Review: Les Blancs
A superb realization of Lorraine Hansberry's unfinished masterpiece - a classic of Ibsenite proportions
Review: Three Sisters
This spectacular production beats with a fervour and purpose few adaptations achieve. Ellams has made Three Sisters new.
Review: Hunger
An exemplary, scrupulous production so starkly contemporary, it makes Hunger contemporary forever
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.
Review: Sadness and Joy in the Life of Giraffes
Rodrigues is a dramatist we need to see far more of.
Review: Taboo
A chilling glimpse into the world of a little known but influential woman from the Nazi era.
Review: The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys and The Laments
In nearly every way an outstanding pair of productions.
Review: What I Never Told You (Lo Que Nunca Te Dije)
An intimate glimpse into one couple’s relationship.
Review: The Flies
There’s nothing like the Exchange’s approach: their bi-lingual virtuosity burns questions.
Review: The Lady From the Sea
A groundbreaking production. Even outside its unique terms it’s outstanding.
Review: Underground Railroad Game
The most radical piece of American theatre I’ve seen, and certainly the bravest. See it.
Review: A Life On The Silk Road
An Epic and Unique Journey Through Dance, Music, Puppetry, and Physical Theatre
Review: HUFF
A gut-wrenching tale of Indigenous brothers caught in a torrent of solvent abuse in the wake of the death of their mother.
Review: First Snow / Première neige
Inventive bilingual collaboration where family tensions merge with debate around cultural identity
Review: £￥€$ (Lies)
By the end of this you’ll know far more about the banking sector than even Robert Peston explains. Now go and play them for a fool.
Review: Exit the King
We need such risk-taking theatre back. This outstanding production of Exit the King might just remind us how to get it.
Review: In the Night Time (Before the Sun Rises)
This production’s sheer inventiveness, the feral truth of the acting and fabulously exploding set surely reinvent something; and land this drama where it should be: in the bleak dark before a bleached-out dawn.
Review: Lonely Planet
If you know Angels in America, you’ll be grateful for Dietz’s concentration and economy. Much reckoning is packed into a little room.
Review: Utility
It’s a great phase of U. S. playwrighting, driven by women, and we’re lucky to be living in the middle of it. Schwend unleashes unexpected miracles and is one reason to see this hushed superlative of a play.
Review: Act and Terminal 3
everything – set, actors, script – come mesmerizingly and painfully together.
Review: The Morning After The Life Before
A perfectly rendered, heart-warming, necessary light in the darkest of moments.
Review: Creation (Pictures for Dorian)
A Transformative Night of Voyeurism and Exploring The Nature of Beauty
Review: Arr We There Yet?
A Madcap Mashup of Circus and Storytelling with a Little Tango for Extra Spice
Review: My Father Held A Gun
"A passionate, storytelling show with live cinematic music about war and peace, acts of heroism, and the love for life."
Review: Moormaid
Bott asks serious questions. How can a terrorist redeem themselves, and how do individuals negotiate this? Can art play any part in rehabilitation?
Review: The Gulf
Gould’s team have made this as authentic as some of U. S. casts who travelled over from The New York Public Theater for the Nelson plays. There’ll always be some who don’t get this kind of theatre, but there’s an increasing appetite for and understanding of it. When you do, like Kendra’s Betty, you’ll be hooked.
Review: This Restless State
If it comes near you – visit the website – do try and see this pungently-paced meditation on upheaval. This Restless State breathes across its zones as a play with real potential that simply needs a little more daring, a little less peeling back.
Review: Rambert
The theatre of Goat, its apotheosis into something else from its comedic opening, is stunning. It’s what the Rambert does; completely reinvent itself and the dance. this and the earlier ballet are outstanding in themselves. The Cunningham company are lucky to learn from them.
Review: The Great Wave
Turnly’s straightforward play treats of a history we’re unfamiliar with, and we need it straight. That’s more than enough to make it thoroughly absorbing, with far more questions than when we entered the space. Do see it.
Review: Eleanor’s Story: An American Girl in Hitler’s Germany
"An inspiring and captivating tale of survival"
Review: Grimly Handsome
If you want theatre to change your life a little and wonder where our DNA and urges trek to, you could do infinitely worse than shiver here.
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. The act of barbering is more than an exchange of service with fringe benefits: it’s a profound act of human adjustment, including that vital glance in the mirror.
Review: Goats
It’s an essential drama, and an even more essential document for navigating the Syria we don’t know, that of ordinary non-opposition Syrians making the best of it and thus the worst. Perhaps a pared-down version might one day follow. It’s too good to miss for the sake of a few shaggy scenes.
Review: Bad Roads
Leading Ukraine dramatist Natal’ya Vorozhbit won’t indulge the luxury of exploring just one outstanding tableau in isolation in these six harrowing vignettes. Infinitely more than postcards from the edge of the redacted west, they nudge then kick us back out of our own barbaric comforts.
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