Review: Fisherman’s Friends: The Musical
A glorious night out, a wonderful cast and in Shahmir a mesmerising star in the making.
Genre: Theatre 0
Review: Romeo and Julie
A gentle, heart-warming, occasionally hilarious play, and strikes a fresh redemptive note in Gary Owen’s work. Callum Scott Howells and Rosie Sheehy blaze across this play like meteors inexorably entering the earth’s orbit, seemingly doomed to break up or worse. And did I say it showers screamingly funny one-liners too?
Review: Duet For One
Kempinski has crafted an enduring drama of what it’s like to lose the joy of a life worth living.
Review: Steel Magnolias
Uniquely moving, it’s a night worth anyone’s time, and its truths that resonate long after the curtain.
Review: Sound of the Underground
It’ll remain one of the break-out, breakthrough, certainly ground-breaking shows this year.
Review: A Mother’s Song
An incredible musical feat of centuries of connection made through song, motherhood and a dazzling sense of bridging continents and time with ballads.
Review: The Shawshank Redemption
The Shawshank Redemption returns in an even stronger production than in 2015: sharper, more visceral, and with a stronger set and sound, frames even more resonant performances
Review: Farragut North
The finest UK production of this play, certainly the best drama in Brighton this month.
Review: In the Net
See In the Net for its ambition, its occasionally gorgeous language, Offie-worthy lighting and in Carlie Diamond, an actor to greet and watch, making I predict one of the most assured debuts of the coming year.
Review: Watch on the Rhine
Hellman’s uneasy drama, reaching out to our own quandaries, has answers that stay news. A must-see.
Review: Irrelevant
Keith Merrill and Debbie Chazen have crafted an Everywoman (and man) for whoever’s gifted yet still never makes it. Look forward to a lot more of this kind from Merrill’s Le Gallienne.
Review: Salt-Water Moon
In exquisitely caught Newfoundland accents, Bryony Miller and Joseph Potter craft a hypnotic, unfamiliar, unforgettable world in David French’s gaunt lyric of a love-song. Their chemistry’s palpable.
Review: Rocky Horror Show
The most lucid-voiced Rocky I’ve seen and on balance strongest cast for a long time. Two great reasons to return, or adventure for your first awakening on Planet Transexual.
Review: Hakawatis Women of the Arabian Nights
Original, bawdy, exploratory, seductive and elegaic in equal measure. A Faberge egg, continually hatching.
Review: James and the Giant Peach
With memorable music and ensemble singing added to a first-rate BLT production, there’s no better Christmas show in town.
Review: Mother Goose
This is more than panto: it’s an affirmation of something that panto here welcomes in, in our time uniquely invoking layers as only Elizabethan/Jacobean drama can.
Review: 12:37
The Finborough produces marvels, though this one, without losing its dazzling, tight DNA, deserves the widest possible transfer.
Review: Henry V
Bracing, fresh, wholly re-thought in every line, emerging with gleaming power, menace and wit. And I defy anyone not to smile at this new take on Shakespeare’s downbeat ending.
Review: David Copperfield
A paean to live theatre; soaring seasonal spirit, struck with tenderness, joy, sorrow, plangent affirmation.
Review: The Snow Queen
A fantastic experience of their very first live performance of a vivacious and proud group of very able people.
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: The Massive Tragedy of Madame Bovary!
An outstanding revival, full of fierce fun, pathos and a massive tragedy for Christmas, wrapped in red bon-bons.
Review: Sarah
An unnerving testing of that space between naturalism and hallucination, redemption and blank unknowing, studded with a language that flies off the page.
Review: From Here to Eternity
Grabs you from the towards the close of Act One and doesn’t let go: from here to curtain we’re in heart-stopping eternity.
Review: Here
A major talent with a distinct voice, and the consummate assurance to express it with stamp and precision
Review: The Lavender Hill Mob
Certainly enjoyable and the second act shows what it might be. There’s not a moment’s longeurs
Review: Pericles
Kelly Hunter’s team have wrought a miracle of flight, realised by an outstanding cast who here at least, make us rank Pericles with Shakespeare’s other late Romances.
Review: An Inspector Calls
Still an outstanding production we might take for granted, Stephen Daldry has overhauled it, and crafted new touches of comedy and music-hall exaggeration.
Review: Enough of Him
A poignant and personal confrontation of our colonial past with uncomfortable truths we need to confront, or we shall never move on.
Review: Not One of These People
Worth 95 minutes of anyone’s time, you come out heavier with the weight of where you’ve been.
Review: The Seagull
A Seagull for the initiated, a meditation rather than the play itself, it’s still a truthful distillation, wholly sincere, actors uniformly excellent
Review: Cher A New Musical
See it here first before you feel compelled to travel to pay West End prices.
Review: Downs With Love
A brilliant piece of social commentary which uses the right people to examine the wrong things.
Review: The Solid Life of Sugar Water
What theatre can do, how it can change us, how completely different it is from any other experience, has few examples that come close to this.
Review: Noises Off
An outstanding must-see, even for those who might have seen Noises Off more than once before.
Review: The Crucible
A Crucible of searing relevance; by grounding it in its time, it scorches with clarity.
Review: Short Plays 2022 New Venture Theatre, Brighton
Absorbing and a small feast of theme, acting and writing style.
Review: Jews. In Their Own Words.
It’s Jonathan Freedland’s and Tracy-Ann Oberman’s brilliance to bring off-kilter, casual devastation to the stage; in raw unsettlings that for many keep the suitcase packed.
Review: Lost in the Willows
As a definitive staged version of Kenneth Grahame’s life, it will certainly hold the stage in its subsequent tour.
Review: Dracula
Robert Hamilton’s novel stage version of Dracula should be published and used widely
Review: The Revlon Girl
The Revlon Girl is a masterpiece of displacement as ritual. Tess Gill’s directed many fine shows for BLT, but she’s never bettered this.
Review: Love All
Another first-rank revival from JST, specialists in rediscoveries: a fitting end to Tom Littler’s tenure.
Review: Morning Glory
A small masterpiece of amused, unflinching reveal, which does something no-one else has done at all.
Review: Yellowman
Phenomenal. It’s Aaron Anthony’s and Nadine Higgin’s phenomenal performances that own the Orange Tree’s stripped-back space, and fill it and Yellowman with complexity, heart and utter conviction
Review: Silence
More of a scattering of earth, ashes and love than simply groundbreaking. But caveats aside, groundbreaking it is.
Review: The Doctor
A triumph for all concerned. Juliet Stevenson even gains in stature. Robert Icke’s revival could hardly go better than this.
Review: I, Joan
The title role goes to Isobel Thom, making their professional debut: the greatest I’ve ever seen.
Review: Breathless
A pitch perfect drama with crafted bittersweet comedy which explores the challenges of navigating life whilst not coping with a mental health disorder.
Review: The Comedy of Errors
One of the most vivid, aesthetically cogent, certainly funniest OFS productions
Review: Tam O’ Shanter – Tales and Whisky
Burns' and other gothic poetry and stories told with a dram of whisky
Review: Caitlin
A fascinating insight into the story of a woman who should never have been a walk on part in anyone’s drama
Review: Born Under a Bad Sign
A brilliant exploration of what hope can do when you follow a team that’s not one of the big two…
Review: Megalith
A challenging piece of performance connecting our digital now with a deeper connection to the past earth.
Review: How to Be Lost
A wonderful piece of theatre which uses the considerable abilities of the performers onstage to ironically direct us into how to be lost!
Review: Swell
A fascinating drama based around the effects of impending environmental catastrophe rather than the science of it.
Review: S.O.E.
Well balanced and effective theatrical homage to the bravest and most selfless act that could be imagined.
Review: Call Mr. Robeson
An in-depth musical journey through the life of one of America's most important African-American singers
Review: We Were Promised Honey!
An astonishingly well-crafted and compellingly well told piece of outstanding theatre.
Review: Door to Door Poetry: Nationwide
Don’t slam the door. Don’t be nervous. The door to door poet is at your service.
Review: Space Hippo
Blockbuster shadow puppetry show that is full of fun and has a hippo sized heart
Review: Look no hands
A fascinating tale, a great bike and a glimpse into an unusual manifestation of PTSD
Review: The Man Who Planted Trees
Charming story, masterful storytelling, entertaining and enlightening show imaginatively brought to life with beautiful sets, props and puppets.
Review: The Girl Who Was Very Good At Lying
An outstanding powerful, imaginative and funny exploration of the stories we tell to escape who we are and where we are.
Review: Up Her Sleeve
An insightful journey of a young girl from childhood to adult through a number of difficult periods
Review: Delicious Fruit
A challenging piece of physical theatre based upon the views of the many queer voices heard by our two guides who asked all the questions.
Review: It’s Not Rocket Science
A charming performance taking aim at the misogynistic orthodoxy trying to stop career trajectories reaching towards the stars
Review: Waiting For God
Sarah Mann and Nathan Ariss lead a fine company into a dash to eternity and back. With a memorable finale of two weddings and a funeral.
Review: Cicely and David
An intriguing glimpse into the friendship that started the modern hospice movement (and is a fund raiser for the Hospices of Hope - Ukraine Appeal)
Review: Palimpsest
A very creative and funny show about going on a date and finding yourself in a show.
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: About Money
A fantastic dramatic performance of a very difficult topic performed in an exceptionally authentic manner
Review: I Don’t Like Mondays
A fascinating insight into one of the most controversial political topics in the US which confounds us in the UK
