Review: Hide and Seek

An absorbing two-hander with as unexpected an ending as Lauren Gunderson’s I and You


Review: Coming Clean

A must-see for anyone interested in the theatre of the past 40-odd years.


Review: Afterglow

It’s conquered both sides of the pond. Stunning, heartwarming, heartbreaking. We need this.


Review: As You Like It

It’s the trio of cousins and lover who ensure this production enjoys its fathoms-deep in love. An As You Like It with an inviting new prologue by Travis Alabanza, underscoring the forest’s healing as well as magical inversions; but shorn of its Epilogue. When you see how that Epilogue’s so rich in queerness and transgression it seems an own goal to the fluffier part of this production’s vibes.


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: Joe & Ken

Most of all, this couple capture the feel of the Orton/Halliwell exchange, the chemistry, the aromatic stink of sex from Craig Myles’ Orton, the sweat and self-disgust of Tino Orsini’s Halliwell. John Dunne’s created an Ortonesque, almost What the Dramatist Saw version of events. Orton might have liked that best. And Halliwell, narrating his own death in Orsini’s delivery, been appeased.


Review: The Swell

An absorbing play, as breathtaking as one of its surfing epiphanies. The Swell will break over your head. Let it. You’ll come up for air changed. A small masterpiece.


Review: A Brief List of Everyone Who Died

“Death is the most natural thing in the world.” Not to five—year-old Gracie, whose life of resistance as Gracie, Grace but mostly Graciela Jacob Marx Rice traces in A Brief List of Everyone Who Died. Yet again Finborough have mounted – and nurtured – a first-class work miles from larger fare that fades. Do rush to see it.


Review: Suddenly Last Summer

A flawless production, where Lawrence gives one of the three or four finest performances I’ve seen this Fringe: in other words, phenomenal.


Review: Best of Enemies

James Graham longs for reconcilement. Here, robbed of one he plays off the temperaments of each debater, creating a timeless no-place where each graciously concedes points. It still leaves us with Graham’s profound insight into the nature of the monster both supremely articulate men created: an inarticulate spectacle and theatre of cruelty. A must-see on Encores.


Review: The Vortex

James tears into Williams impelling the final scene with classic ferocity, though ending on a question-mark. Both exquisitely pointed, and glaring with pulsing, contained energy, the effect’s like a journey to the edge of a long night. A triumphant opening to the 2023 Chichester season.


Review: Morning Glory

A small masterpiece of amused, unflinching reveal, which does something no-one else has done at all.


Review: Hamlet

Destined as one of the toughest OFS undertakings, it comes through with a blaze


Review: The Chosen Haram

A masterful fusion of circus, dance and visual storytelling, delivering a profoundly modern queer tale.


Review: Happy Meal

A queer rom com where Millennial meets Gen Z and change is all around.


Review: No Place Like Home

Part epic poem, part solo drama, with music, dance and video art - a problematic portrayal of gay club culture.


Review: Wilf

: Profound, hilarious comedy where gay tart Calvin tries to sort out his life and mental health with the help Wilf, a rusty Volkswagen polo.


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: Rajesh and Naresh

A witty feel-good gay love story that moves between Mumbai and London.


Review: Brother’s Keeper

A moving, harrowing and well-crafted tale of survival from childhood abuse.


Review: For Queen And Country

The British soldier who became a Parisian nightclub drag queen to spy on the Nazis. An accomplished piece.


Review: Horrible Herstories

An attempt, in the best possible tradition to retell a history which was very much her story to tell


Review: Cock

A superb revival of Bartlett’s warmest, most ground-breaking, perhaps most enduring play so far.


Review: Vespertilio

Vespertilio marks Barry McStay’s emergence as a writer of distinction. Anything he writes now should be looked out for.


Review: Living Newspaper #6

Like all the Royal Court’s Living Newspaper series, we need this. Watch what this does with the future


Review: Lipstick

Performances and play that should turn us upside down. Do make a detour for this brave. tremulously beautiful coming of love.


Review: Psycho Drama Queen

An intense look at how being someone else is not always the escape you hope it will be.


Review: In PurSUEt

Obsession, addiction and the relentless pursuit of Sue Perkins.


Review: Parakeet

A new play about finding your flock in a world that doesn't seem to care


Review: Butterflies

Taut and funny new writing from this queer led theatre company


Review: Afterglow

It’s conquered both sides of the pond. We need this.


Review: The Pride

Don’t wait for another West End revival see this one.


Review: Like Orpheus

Queer club culture and surreal movement are married in this rave ridden soliloquy of love in the margins


Review: Out of Water

Anything Zoe Cooper writes now must be keenly anticipated.


Review: After Edward

This has to be the smartest debut from this venue since Jessica Swales’ Bluestockings: no wonder the playscripts sold out early.


Review: The Funeral Director

One of the most riveting few minutes of contemporary theatre I’ve seen all year.


Review: Enough

A violent attack on the social norms which drive self-harm in its many and varied forms.


Review: Ganymede

A square set of love stories that ends with a worthy examination of the meaning of love and acceptance.


Review: Elise

A Fascinating Portrayal of the Lost Women of the Beatnik Era


Review: Iolanthe

You’ll have to see this if you care for music theatre at all. it’s unmissable.


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: Grotty

Know the Dalston lesbian scene? Verbally and dramatically as well as breaking new ground, this sings. Do see Grotty at the Bunker and be illumined. It’s rare to see such brutal tenderness laugh itself to the lip of the balcony.


Review: The Writer

This is necessary, exciting, playful, and still unsettling, not just because of what it asks but the manner of narration. It’s also seminal.


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: The York Realist

Robert Hastie’s revival at the Donmar reaffirms this a modern classic in a production fully realizing Peter Gill’s quiet universality. By the close, when George quotes lines from the York Realist we’re on another plane from a superb play about love. It’s an outstanding play: this revival is as fine as we’re likely to see.


Review: Beyond Therapy

You want Bruce and Prudence to be happy till the lights go down, and to do that it needs a supreme breathlessness, then a slow exhalation at the very end. Worth seeing still.


Review: Large Trash Print

This very fine 2007 work by Jonathan Brown strikes a blow for tolerance and inclusivity now as it did a decade ago. Brown’s superlative writing and acting is ridiculously confined to this city.


Review: Adam

Powerful story of gender and cultural identity


Review: Skin

Inspired and inspiring piece - creative, dynamic and tender


Review: La Cage aux Folles

La Cage aux Folles one might say comes home to Brighton’s Theatre Royal in this revival by Bill Kenwright Productions directed by Martin Connor. There’s no mystery why Brighton gets two weeks of this.


Review: Angels in America Part Two: Perestroika

Seeing Part Two reinforces the impression that in its virtues and a few vices, there’s nothing like this in theatre. An epic conveying a generational anger undergoing criminal abandonment, it blazons all corners of a nation. And the almost national multitude of cast and creatives Marianne Elliott’s assembled stands proud in this, almost beyond praise.


Review: Angels in America: Millennium Approaches

Marianne Elliott with her superb cast and ramped-up effects towards the end ensure this episodic freewheeling fantasia hooks you compulsively, beating you over the head with angels’ wings as Part One shuts them hypnotically and we’re suspended.


Review: Common

D C Moore’s Common set in 1809 twists language in a collision of cultures as landed land-grabbers of Enclosure expel the last gleaners from common land. Comedy radiates from Anne-Marie Duff’s downright siren Mary. A sexier Mother Courage crossed with Churchill’s protean fairy Skriker, she’s plausible without magic. Common will continue to gnarl and root beyond its run. It’ll be well worth seeing how it ages.


Review: The Goat

Ian Rickson more than revives Edward Albee’s 2002 masterpiece The Goat, at the Haymarket. What emerges in one hundred-odd minutes is a deadly tread of Greek tragedy, pitched in a slow build punctuated by the shattering of plates.


Review: The Mikado

This Mikado not only redefines but rescues the operetta from an edgy oblivion, where we could never lose the melodies, yet increasingly hesitate to stage the work. It’s back.


Review: Fall of Duty

Not so much another First War narrative but a parallel rediscovery of singalong music, song and dance, stars and tears in their eyes. Tightness of video, the engagement of audience and extremely well-counterpointed denouement makes this a memorable show. And did I mention the Childs can sing?


Review: Whose Sari Now?

This is consummate storytelling, and Moorthy’s narrative variables attest to pitch and speed, a charactering that gifts all it can to the individual and in some cases real tales. There’s much here we cannot forget.


Review: The Boys in the Band

Mark Gatiss might be the best-known of the ensemble in The Boys in the Band but delights in being just one of this nine-hander which never falters, never droops and dances words to actions in a small masterpiece that seems poised to remain contemporary forever.


Review: F*cking Men

A startling and moving look at love and sex between entwining lives of Gay men.


Review: Smother

An emotional dance performance anyone can relate to


Review: A Boy Named Sue

Finely crafted, well acted play that is smart, poetic, gutsy and compelling!


Review: Kenny Morgan

Superb take on Rattigan’s lover’s suicide attempts, that inspired Rattigan’s masterpiece The Deep Blue Sea.


Review: Porno Dido

A brutal and bawdy satire about artistic ambition and compromise.


Review: Dancing in the Dark

Inspired off-centre situationist drama from acclaimed Wired Theatre about family, grief and sexual identities.


Review: Groomed

Patrick Sandford's groundbreaking play, acted by himself, of his own childhood abuse, acted alongside a sax player...


Review: Cock

An exploration of sexuality within the 21st century confines of unconfined and ill defined relationships.


Review: Bed

Witty dialogue... balanced perfectly with poignant moments