Genre: New Writing
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: Rice
Do see this work of understated virtuosity, rich in character, substance, a shape-shifting singularity.
Review: What If If Only
Churchill’s anatomy of grief is what abides. Its emotional plangency and pulling the future open is unique.
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.
A fascinatingly delivered riff on one woman’s journey for recognition and soul which includes a brush from a smear test.
Review: Looking for América
Epic personal story, very well crafted and performed. It’s a lifetime and back – a meaningful, visceral and emotive experience. Not to be missed!
Review: Bard In The Yard : The Scottish Play
Will’s got a nasty case of writer’s block and is in desperate need of ideas and people to help him.
Review: Hamilton and Me: An Actor’s Journal
In rapid, elegant, idiomatically kerned language, Giles Terera proves himself a superb expositor of where it happens.
Review: The Power of Silence
Memories, imagery, tender and searing recollections - it creeps up on you!
Review: Misfits
An important play, tackling the deadly serious with laughter that all too easily could lead to stark tragedy.
Review: Evening Conversations/Life Laundry
Engrossing, it should provoke. Sudha Bhuchar absolves us by being bloody funny.
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: On Arriving
On Arriving takes sixty minutes it seems we’ve been immersed in a Greek Tragedy of ninety. See it.
Review: The Mother Load
Three women, three pregnancies, three experiences, much laughter and revelation in a funny and engaging audio performance.
Review: Hindu Times
A religious text for our times, told in the language of the now with universal messages.
Review: Braw Tales
An innovative and bright response to the pandemic in cartoon and monologue that is as diverse as great to watch.
Review: and breathe…
Yomi Sode’s hybrid theatre is a compelling immersion of witness and poetry: we need more of it.
Review: The Girl Who Was Very Good at Lying
Andrews vividly conveys what it is to be an undone thing, someone unravelling tales to live.
Review: More Grimm Tales
A rollicking production with razored timing, musical cues and ad-libs worked in to half-second slots. A must-see.
Review: Bette: Bathhouse to Broadway!
One of the most musically satisfying, funny, filthy and inclusive tribute acts of its kind.
Review: Branching Out
Three very fine and one outstanding work, Scratches – the best kind of play on depression, self-harm, black holes. Because it’s screamingly funny and deeply connected to why we do theatre.
Review: Leaves
This haunting 45-minute tale is a superb small gem from Jermyn Street’s Footprints Festival.
Review: Sitting Pretty
When you see this show return, it’ll be outstanding, and in the frame for awards.
Review: After All These Years
A superb play, it should as one director present said, be in the West End. With these actors.
Review: The True Story of the Little Girl who thought she was The Second Coming of Jesus Christ
Every little girl dreams of being special, but Ellie Rose doesn’t just dream – she knows she’s special.
Review: There’s a Ghost in My House
Stunning. Greet the nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is.
Review: Vagabonds My Phil Lynott Odyssey
An original off-kilter approach to elegy, tribute and becoming yourself.
Review: Two Horsemen
The glaring energy of this piece can’t disguise how it strikes profundity in its funny-bone.
Review: Hole
Don’t miss the chance to see this transcendent actor prove she possesses another dimension altogether.
Review: Bag Lady
This could develop into something special. Thoroughly recommended as an industrial-strength ice-breaker.
Review: I Wish My Life Were Like a Musical
Flawless, a stunning pocket-sized musical you really must see.
Review: Sacrament
A revelation, superbly written and acted. Comparisons have been made with A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing. I can think of no higher praise either. You must see this.
Review: Living Newspaper #7
Like all the Royal Court’s Living Newspaper series, we need this. Watch a group of young dramatists take on the future
Review: Illusions of Liberty
A finely-calibrated solo play of what it’s like to enter that tunnel of near-undiagnosable but very real illness. Corinne Walker’s both authoritative and quicksilver. Do catch it.
Review: Vespertilio
Vespertilio marks Barry McStay’s emergence as a writer of distinction. Anything he writes now should be looked out for.
Review: Jew… ish
One of the wittiest but also truthful comedies about love, identity, sexual politics and gefilte fish I’ve seen
Review: Living Newspaper #6
Like all the Royal Court’s Living Newspaper series, we need this. Watch what this does with the future
Review: Outside
As with Inside, Outside not only fits us, they help us to move on, and become in their modest, unassuming and utterly transcendent way, part of how we learn to.
Review: New Moon Monologues April
As we saw in March, don’t be lulled by friendly colours and fluffy fonts. Queens of Cups again proves they’re a company to revel with and wait for heart-stopping reveals
Review: Icarus
After all the gods and their lack of choice, we come to the final instalment, the human dimension. Where we have one. A heartfelt, satisfying finish.
Review: Orpheus
A terrific reinvention, bringing gods and heroines up from the death of myth to an altered world.
Review: Living Newspaper #3 Royal Court Theatre
Hot off Sloane Square a team of writers, actors and creatives twist the news to truth
Review: Angela
A tender, beautifully pitched exploration of the individuality of a life, despite what illness may eventually steal.
Review: New Moon Monologues March
Don’t be lulled by the friendly colours and fluffy fonts. Queen of Cups is absolutely a company to watch, and its showcase productions are literally unmissable
Review: Love’s Poison
Whether as James Allen's play The Engagement, or as narrative, Love’s Poison should be seen or read by everyone.
Review: Hymn
Its potency lies in a fine peeling apart by Adrian Lester and Danny Sapini, and the language that bridges it.
Review: Before After
A pristine, heartwarming Valentine of a musical, starring a pair of real-life lovers, it deserves a real-life run
Review: Contemporary political ethics (or, how to cheat)
A subtle and effective examination of democracy from out of the mouths of the naïve and academic
Review: Just Like Giving Blood
Upton’s notches of logic are nudged with brilliance, the actual narrative a granular run-up to an enormous yes.
Review: The White Hart
Winner of an OnComm award from Off West End, another Upton triumph by stealth
Review: The Official Dick Whittington – A Pantomime for 2020
It’s a joyous confection out of thin lockdown.
Review: Nine Lessons and Carols
The Almeida’s another country. They do shows differently there. A bold communing of theatre stories with the fresh poignancy of what’s happened during 2020
Review: Lament for Sheku Bayou
An astonishing story lamented and told in an extraordinary fashion that resonates and poetically demands change.
Review: Death of England: Delroy
Renders huge black experience into a narrative that bears it, because so well-constructed, so character-driven and so inhabited by Michael Balogun whose blaze of awakening is both benediction and clarion.
