Review: Our American Queen
Klingenstein’s attentive, witty above all brilliant re-imagining of two remarkable young people. Exceptional.
Genre: Political 0
Review: Christmas Day
An absorbing drama, taking risks and never losing its balance. For the most part superbly-crafted, with memorable characters, sparking with urgency and sparkling dialogue throughout. The most exciting new play in London.
Review: We Are the Lions, Mr Manager
At a time of racialised targeting – a distraction technique born of the very forces Jayaben Desai fought – Grunwick speaks with startling relevance.
Review: Mistero Buffo
A thoroughly worthwhile revival, it still kicks and thrills in equal measure. Highly recommended.
Review: Cow/Deer
Emphatically theatre worth doing, worth attending, worth fighting to clarify and worth being changed for.
Review: Deaf Republic
Its claustrophobia overwhelms and moves, whilst leaving Dead Centre room for yet another slant on Ilya Kaminsky’s imaginary.
Review: Balfour Reparations
An interesting theatrical deconstruction of what might happen in 20 years’ time if we wake up to what we did in Palestine.
Review: Michael Elsener: How to Live in Paradise
Swiss satire meets soulful storytelling in a sharp, multilingual journey through politics, identity, and paradise lost.
Review: Kaddish (How to Be a Sanctuary)
A bold, multi-voiced meditation on grief, justice, and Jewish identity, staged with striking theatricality.
Review: Sorry: A Canadian’s Apology for America
A polished, multi-layered solo show that blends sharp political insight with theatrical flair and quick-witted crowd work.
Review: Between The River And The Sea
Stories depicting the complexity of identity, truth, and family life of Palestinian-Israeli actor Yousef Sweid.
Review: Short Plays 2025
Enough here to engage and make anyone who’s not yet ventured to NVT to keep coming back. Do see this collation of crazies.
Review: La Guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu
An engaging play about the manipulation of public opinion to satisfy the taste for war of a tiny elite
Review: Chiara Atik Poor Clare
Sassy yet profound, probing yet exuberant, it asks all of us: No, don’t look at me. Look at you. A quiet must-see this summer.
Review: Tim Price Nye
Through choreographic sweep, Tim Price crafts a necessary, traditional warning. A must-see with the finest last line since Good.
Review: Claire Dowie See Primark and Die Finborough
There’s more than a touch of Ken (even more, Daisy) Campbell about the way Dowie structures her circular storytelling. Here it’s at its most consummate, most artful and repays re-reading to catch Dowie at your throat.
Review: Joan Littlewood Oh What a Lovely War
The Merry Roosters forget who they are and come together, awed by the transcendent theatre they’ve invoked. See it.
Review: Charlie Josephine: I, Joan
Daisy Miles, supremely, Laurits Hiroshi Bjerrum and Rhys Bloy excel in a fine cast and prove this clarion of a play can rise again triumphantly.
Review: Beth & Josie EXPOSED: F*&# De$antis
A stand-up comedy show that is a big middle finger to DeSantis.
Review: Billy Barrett and Ellice Stevens After The Act Royal Court Downstairs
Most of all this musical is necessary. With four outstanding multi-roling performers, a message both affirmative and defiant; and with a fierce joy that makes it a must-see.
Review: Timberlake Wertenbaker Little Brother
bsorbs and remains indelible. Stella Powell-Jones is helming a quietly radical shift in Jermyn Street. And she’s taking the audience with her.
Review: Athena Stevens Diagnosis
Over 50 minutes, a compelling, unique and disturbing vision unravels: prophesying prophesy is invisible. That’s why as many as possible should see it.
Review: Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky The Gang of Three
The wittiest, wisest play I’ve seen this year, it deserves a long run, not least so we can absorb its lessons. Unmissable.
Review: Samuel Rees and Gabriele Uboldi Lessons on Revolution
It’s intersectional, it’s personal, it’s interactive: all great reasons to see this play: unless you’re a board member of BP, or the government.
Review: Tending
Essential theatre, essential witness and mandatory for anyone who wants to know how human we have to be, from beginning to end.
Review: Dr Strangelove
Steve Coogan reigns supreme, and a cast like John Hopkins then Giles Terera are a gift to both Coogan and the show.
Review: Dear England
With its nimbus of inevitability as national storytelling, it’s still groundbreaking.
Review: Jane Upton (the) Woman
A ground-breaking play, fully deserving of its London run. Catch it there.
Review: Perfect Arrangement
There’s never been a more urgent time for this gem of a work: a small hybrid classic that’s never been produced in the UK before. See it now.
Review: Khawla Ibraheem A Knock on the Roof
What and who can you choose is something more people are forced to decide as the century rolls. But Mariam’s plight is specific, ongoing, now far worse and essential viewing.
Review: Dan O’Brien The Voyage of the Carcass; Emily Jenkins Bobby & Amy
Dan O’Brien’s piece is for dedicated farceurs. By itself outstanding, it’s hoped by several Emily Jenkins’ Bobby & Amy have a postlude of its own, with this team and these two young actors pitched at this moment in their careers.
Review: A Good House
A play deeper than the satire which propels it. And subtly layered enough to brush the epic. A stunning smack between the eyes and a must-see.
Review: Belly of the Beast
Belly of the Beast should be a set text in schools. And should definitely tour there.
Review: Relief Camp
A play that vividly portrays the clashes between ethnic communities in Manipur as the tragic culmination of a long history of subjugation by colonial and state powers.
Review: Cutting the Tightrope: The Divorce of Politics from Art
An essential, raging and ranging collection of works flashing with humour and teeth, flecked with harrowing stories and above all love for a humanity the establishment wishes us to other and consign to tragedy. A must-see.
Review: Stranger Than the Moon
Essential for anyone interested in Brecht or 20th century drama, it’s far more: starkly entrancing, then engrossing over 110 minutes.
Review: Women Who Blow on Knots
As fine a realisation as anyone could manage. The immediacy, cries, reveals are inherently theatrical and precious. A must-see.
Review: 1984
This is the fleetest most theatrical version I’ve seen for some time. Telegraphic in its conveying a nightmare world, it nevertheless does so by lightning strokes.
Review: The Welkin
The sheer acting catches fire: not a weak link. With their most ambitious production ID triumph. There’s nothing like them at full stretch.
Review: Gigi & Dar
Compelling and unanswerable, it’s more humane than recent history in several parts of the world allow. Setting it in 2016, Josh Azouz knows history itself has been overtaken. Highly recommended.
Review: Greenhouse Festival LAMDA Festival New Directors in association with Orange Tree
Every one of these productions could enjoy a run at the Orange Tree: they’re exciting and accomplished.
Review: The Unlikely Secret Agent
How it ends I urge you to discover in this sizzling paean to humanity.
Review: Eric Davidson’s Amazin Prime Parodies (26 Songs to Make the Whole World Cringe)
Parodies par excellence
Review: Rebels and Patriots
A fascinating and complicated drama following four teenagers who end up in the Israeli Defence Force at a time of conflict.
Review: In the Sick of It
The NHS is on its knees, yet no one has thought to call a theatre company... until NOW.
Review: The Martyrs
any zeitgeisty theatre director should jump at the chance to produce this play fully staged.
Review: Of This Land On Which We Meet
Circus entertainment, land politics and compassion intertwine, and leave the audience breathless
Review: The Constituent
This extremely fine play is even more prescient than Penhall and Warchus intended, with an earlier election. The Constituent though, will survive it till August.
Review: Kafka
It’s Klaff’s improvisatory edge, founded on absolute technique and clear-headed text, that finds an exit where none was signposted. Magnificent.
Review: Richard III
In a female-led cast led by the eponymous Richard III (Michelle Terry) it’s striking that the trio of cursing women is this production’s highlight
Review: The English Moor
Richard Brome’s 1637 The English Moor marks a new departure for Read Not Dead. You might say with this play it’s Read to be Dead.
Review: Kunstler
An outstanding production persuading us such a self-narrating show can enthral as well as inform. A hidden gem.
Review: Magpie
This really has no place in the Brighton Fringe. Perhaps the Festival. What is a slice of the darkest Sean O’Casey doing at a 9pm slot? Outstanding.
Review: Laughing Boy
Stephen Unwin directs his own play as a sweep of storytelling, laughter and devastation.
Review: Just For One Day
Despite history’s caveats, O’Farrell’s core message isn’t about white saviours or pop stars but how ordinary people unite to change things.
Review: Till the Stars Come Down
Even this early, it’s safe to predict we’ll look back at the end of 2024 and proclaim it as one of the year’s finest.
Review: The Beautiful Future is Coming
Beautiful Future engages throughout though the near future is where it beats quickest. Flora Wilson Brown’s play makes you wonder what life, not just the playwright, might do with her characters. Urgently recommended.
Review: The EU Killed My Dad
Do see this, preferably alongside its sometime co-runner The Beautiful Future is Coming. A dizzying theatrical gem.
Review: Cowbois
Cranford’s gone Wild West, via the Court and RSC. Cowbois is of course daft. But it’s magnificent in its silliness, contains wonderful – and truthful – moments. Deadly serious can have you rolling in the aisles and still jump up for the revolution.
Review: 1979
Political history told in Mamet-fast satire, imagined conversations and accurate stats. What could be more thrilling? 82 minutes later you won’t ask why this three-hander is like curing New Year’s hangover with Red Bull, ice, something illegal and a vodka chaser.
Review: Rika’s Rooms
Emma Wilkinson Wright manages the narrative as an odyssey punctuated by screams. It’s already a phenomenal performance and the actor is so wholly immersed in Rika you know you’re in the presence of something remarkable
Review: Protest Song
Tim Price’s magnificent one-man play reminds us – yells at us - how much we’re all connected, and unless we stand together, how much we lose.
Review: Cold War
Cold War ends with a draining-out of hope in Anya Chalotra and Luke Thallon; a desolate beauty the cast certainly earn.
Review: Oh What a Lovely War
Musically directed by Ellie Verkerk the six-strong cast play instruments throughout. They’re a phenomenal team, singing beautifully a capella or in solo. With six young actors mostly fresh out of drama school absolutely at the top of their first game, we’re treated to acting both hungry to prove and yet touched by the world they’ve entered. This is an outstanding production.
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
