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: The Proposal/The Bear translated by Stephen Mulrine
Elaine Larkin’s production is all of a piece and like all original readings asks of Chekhov what he wants. Larkin also makes demands on her actors they mostly cope very well with, and two excel in: though some of Chekhov’s subtleties – they exist even here – are bleached out. Firmly recommended though.
Review: Knocking On The Wall
Exquisite slivers of a great talent, this three-piece-suite could not be more expressively rendered than at the Finborough, home of such miniatures, and occasionally, epics.
Review: Influence
A superb debut show, Influence enjoys quite a long run and suggests that Stockroom’s an exciting fresh venture. And that embedded with Collective Theatre’s acting studios and writing rooms provided, this company and theatre synergy is more like a gleaming hub where magic in non-magic shows is poised to happen.
Review: The Inquiry
An absorbing, in many ways authoritative first play Refusing cynicism, trying for humanity all round, Harry Davies is already striking the right balance. His next play should be eagerly awaited.
Review: Retrospective: Soldier/Sailor
Exquisitely-calibrated theatre. A gem. Mark Burgess will hopefully return with more of his past and possibly new plays. There’s plenty of them.
Review: Retrospective
This is a first-rate ensemble and Parry has mastered a superlatively-layered interaction. Forget reading, this is a brace of vibrant performances.
Review: 2:22 A Ghost Story
A ghost told me it’s better now than in the West End. Sharp, satisfying in itself, above all hauntingly intelligent in its questions.
Review: The Confessions
Though not the ordinary made phenomenal, Alexander Zeldin’s touchstone, it’s an outstanding personally-inflected testament and striking advance.
Review: Portia Coughlin
Alison Oliver’s appeared in the outstanding revival of the year till now: Dancing at Lughnasa. Now she leads the other one. If you see one play this month, make it Portia Coughlin.
Review: Meetings
Mustapha Matura draws in and telescopes devastating consequences - perhaps telegraphs years of damage into a few weeks for dramatic licence. That doesn’t lessen his impact. The point is western exploitation kills, in many guises.
Review: Educating Rita
Even if you’ve seen this play, know the film, get a fresh education in masterly acting and see this.
Review: Blue Mist
A stunning debut, linguistically brilliant, very funny, freighted with critique and truthful.
Review: Jock Night
With one-liners and wit in nearly every exchange, it’s a beautifully-scripted, scream-out affirmation of love, lust, loss and forever’s time being. And built to last.
Review: Death of England: Closing Time
Hayley Squires blazes Carly as a revelation wielding the writers’ language like a Swiss army-knife with secret gouges, and renders her still loveable. Yet here after all’s said, talked through, it’s when Denise’s “It’s closing time Carly. It’s over. Come on babe, let’s do this” and takes her hand you’re not sure whether to cry or cheer.
Review: Greatest Days
It’s a one-stop night out to spot upcoming with established talent. Everything from costume-change to curtain-call is a kaleidoscope.
Review: A View from the Bridge
Here, the hurtling much shorter second act contains a thrilling impulsion and catastrophe that had the audience on its feet. Mostly that’s responding to a great play, but latterly this production carries that charge.
Review: The Changeling
The closer Ricky Dukes sticks to the original, the more accessible, visceral, true this production is.
Review: You.
You’s Rialto production at the Rialto won a FringeReview award in 2015. No reason to change that verdict.
Review: Dead Dad Dog
McKay is even-handed, and very funny. And don’t you just love a ghost in 1985 who’s never heard of Margaret Thatcher?
Review: Blood Brothers
This reinvigorated classic has overwhelming impact: as story, as lyric fable, as terrible moral for these distracted times.
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: Imposter 22
A joyous, riotously funny, wholly untypical experience. A play to shift boundaries and ourselves.
Review: Brief Life & Mysterious Death of Boris III, King of Bulgaria
Fringe-historical gold, which means very good indeed. It doesn’t mean Copenhagen, with Frayn’s subtle collisions and collusions. It’s a different, desperately joyous animal that signs its truth and shames the world.
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: Compositor E
Charlie Dupré’s fast-paced, dazzlingly original Compositor E cuts into how the anonymous assert fingerprints: brilliant, unsettling, absorbing. McCarthy and the Omnibus team deserve huge credit for a work that might play to a larger space.
Review: Pygmalion
What this production gives, in its hovering over periods, is a technocratic gloss on Shaw’s optimism and female agency. That optimism and agency though is why this play continually fascinates. Not because of the mechanics of accent, or even social mobility, but sheer release of human potential. In Patsy Ferran’s Eliza that transformation’s palpable.
Review: Black Mountain, I Dream Before I Take the Stand
In Black Mountain Brad Birch shows in part how fine he can be. Arlene Hutton’s I Dream Before I Take the Stand is a short assault on the way the law assaults its victims, particularly women.
Review: Humble Boy
A revelatory production of what we must now think of as a small masterpiece, where Ayckbourn and Chekhov echoes recede to Charlotte Jones’ uniqueness. Jones really deserves her place in the forefront of contemporary dramatists. Humble Boy confirms its own place, pivotal to her oeuvre which has grown more robustly and cleverly than the flora or indeed bees that ululate to the end.
Review: That Face
Its qualities are extraordinary, that of a Greek tragedy on Prozac performed by St Trinian’s. Prozac Nation’s referenced, but Polly Stenham’s point is how parental damage numbs you out of feeling anything at the right time, with displacement activities chateau-bottled around a bed. Yet it is, of course, very funny. An outstanding revival, given extra intensity by the staging; an intimacy so palpable you both flinch and laugh at the same moment.
Review: Infamous
Emma Hamilton, mother and ward. Expect spats. Nine months since her National Theatre Kerry Jackson opened, April de Angelis arrives at Jermyn Street with the three-hander Infamous, directed by Michael Oakley, till October 7th. Even though the earlier play was staged in the smaller Dorfman, Infamous is chamber music by comparison. As in Kerry Jackson, De Angelis avoids tragedy where it clearly offers itself. The final two scenes though offer more; it’s piquant, momentarily uplifting, a little sad. And dramatically right it’s expressed in dance.
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: Birthright
There’s no denying Birthright’s sheer power, authenticity and perennial struggle played out between natural justice and lagging custom. It’s the breakthrough work of a masterly writer, whom only the Finborough look set to revive, as they have here. We’d be impossibly poorer without the Finborough.
Review: Henry V
A satisfying seasonal finale: a clear, engaging, visceral production with nothing vital lost. It’s as straight-down-the-martial line as outdoor productions of Henry V need to be.
Review: Accidental Death of an Anarchist
The adage that farce is tragedy speeded up met its greatest progenitor in Dario Fo. In a ferocious new version by Tom Basden of Franca Rame’s and Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist, directed by Daniel Raggett in a stunning production now at the Haymarket, the target here is squarely the London Met. And if you slowed down Basden’s brilliant, no-holds-unbludgeoned telling, details prove tragic enough.
Review: Afghanistan Is Not Funny
Henry Naylor’s fast paced existential crisis raises uncomfortable, but important question about the role of the press.
Review: Billy and The Situation
The show portrays Billy 'Fyre Festival' McFarland and Mike 'The Situation' Sorrentino's time as cellmates when they were locked up for fraud in a New York state penitentiary.
Review: Romeo and Juliet
One of the finest OFS productions. Its velocity, tumbling comedy and bawdy, tragedy through lightning brawls, rapier-wit foiled in quicksilver, rapiers foiling wit, headlong teen despair, the exaltation of love flown in lyric sonnets and defying stars: it’s all here, principally because of three outstanding actors. The Romeo of newcomer Isabella Leung, who’s never played Shakespeare in her life, the return of Catie Ridewood as Juliet. And the return from that golden season of 2021: David Samson as Mercutio.
Review: Awake, Gay and Writing a Play
Escaping from a high-control religious group is not as simple as walking away. It is a waking-up process that can take years.
Review: Paved with Gold and Ashes
The TrIangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire New York 1911, told by the women workers who were there
Review: A Mirror
This is a far more ambitious work than Sam Holcroft’s Rules For Living, and grounded in things she’s wished to write for a decade. It’s ingenious, necessary and occasionally at the end needs a tweak more to land. It’s still unmissable.
Review: Brain Hemingway
A blocked playwright with a looming deadline is haunted by the subject of her last failed show: Ernest Hemingway.
Review: Shortlist
Shortlist really must be experienced by anyone who appreciates excellent theatre, brilliant writing or those who simply want a good laugh.
Review: Things Hidden Since The Foundation Of The World
A scintillating play of ideas about the internet and its impact on what we know and how we know it
Review: Bangers
Aria and Clef craft a musical world of wonder and despair in this nostaligic Banger of a play.
Review: ‘I Love You, Now What?’
A wonderfully sad and gut wrenchingly funny three hander about loss and love
Review: Shakespeare in Love
You’ll forget the film; you might even forget any staged version of Lee Hall’s in the West End. The mystery’s in the ensemble, the production, its bewitching leads Lewis Todhunter and Melissa Paris. With Claire Lewis’ direction, Michael James’ music, and Graham Brown’s movement direction to the fore, it’s a mighty reckoning in a little room – seamlessly transferred to an ampitheatre.
Review: The Taming of the Shrew
A slowly evolving, involving reading. Alex Louise can certainly develop this to a full-scale production. She just needs to take care of the script’s truth, though it seems contradictory. Confidence and imagination will soon sort that.
Review: Fergus O’Donnell, Losing the Plot, Rebecca Frew Safe, Bernadette Cremin Painless
Erin Burbridge kept tech sound and lighting effectively sashaying throughout, and tre propsl, particularly in the latter piece, attractive and undistracting. In just three months work, with term-breaks, this course run and directed by Burgess tonight has produced something vital. It needs celebrating and its best work a swift life in full-scale productions.
Review: Declan
A child-like young man scours a hostile town and his imagination trying to find answers to the disappearance of his missing friend, Declan..
Review: WONDER DRUG: A Comedy About Cystic Fibrosis
Charlie Merriman is a gifted performer and story teller, with every part of him used to take us on his quest for the Wonder-Drug
Review: Arc: Amy Rosenthal Birth, Alexis Zegerman Marriage, Craig Ryan Death
This 65 minutes takes you on a traversal of human, not simply Jewish experience, out of all proportion to its length. One of the highlights of the latter dog-days, or as here, the long night of the hamster. Three leading playwrights showcased by Emanate, which in just two years has shown how essential it already is, how indispensable it can become.
Review: Why I stuck a Flare Up My Arse For England
A truly fascinating explanation of an inexplicable act for your country.
Review: 97+
Tomcaintheatre A very worthy piece of theatre on the effects of a tragedy that still resonates today.
Review: Burnt Lavender
Indulgent, decadent, glorious, gorgeous and beautiful anthem to the pride in being yourself.
Review: For Better, For Worse
A decent family drama in the shadow of momentous national decision making.
Review: Family Portrait
A fascinating and beautifully imagined film showing us the value of family, no matter what form.
Review: Chriskirkpatrickmas: A Boy Band Christmas Musical
Even the Grinch Would Enjoy This Blast From the Recent Past
Review: The Effect
It’s as if a decade’s experiment has altered this headlong, mind-rippling play. Returning to the National Theatre after 11 years, Lucy Prebble’s 2012 The Effect directed by Jamie Lloyd now comes out bigger than ever, one of the finest 21st century British plays, questioning identity and emotion under the effect of drugs, placebos, what we imagine ourselves into. What, in fact, the imaginary of love is.
Review: Makeshifts, Realities, Honour Thy Father
Finborough’s absorbing ReDiscovered season continues with a triple-bill of plays directed by Melissa Dunne that after tonight, you might never wish to imagine apart. Of course they should transfer, be far better-known, and at least they’re packed out - grab a ticket if you possibly can. We can be grateful again for Neil McPherson’s curating yet another series of early 20th century revivals.
Review: Kravitz, Cohen, Bernstein and Me
Charming, delightful, and witty, a lovely way to spend an hour with the three "Lennys" through Deb Filler's experiences.
Review: JM Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K
Beautifully adapted, directed, performed and designed - masterful puppetry, poignant and meaningful.
Review: The Brief Life & Mysterious Death of Boris III, King of Bulgaria
King Boris of Bulgaria stands up to Hitler, accompanied by Bulgarian and Jewish folk music.
Review: When We Died
An absorbing one-woman play seamlessly blending physical theatre with a poignant, gut-wrenching narrative
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