Genre: Theatre 0
Review: Whaddya Know – We’re In Love!
There’s first-class musical entertainment here, crouched under the disguise of a schoolboy plot. Irresistible.
Review: If I Catch Alphonso, Tonight!
Jenner’s moved out of the comfort zone of his Coward years which suit him particularly, or straight acting. It’s a remarkable feat.
Review: When the Wind Blows
BLT have produced in less than two weeks two outstandingly fine full-length productions. This latest offering confirms this theatre’s confidence in producing stark contrasts: an unfashionable yet horribly topical drop of silence into a bustling city.
Review: One Woman Alien
I can predict that by the end of its run, this should be the most outstanding one-person show you’ll see in the last week.
Review: She Wolf
So what did Harvey Weinstein and the fifteenth century European ruling classes have in common? Exactly. A lot. English has achieved a phenomenal amount. She co-ordinates everything as she directs and manages her own minimal props.
Review: The Odditorium Tribute to Ken Campbell
of you and won’t let go. Most theatre makers of whatever stripe are pretty clear Ken’s a game changer.
Review: Coldstream: Critical Threat
"A poignant, contemporary, powerfully evocative play asking some uncomfortable questions"
Review: Under The Skin
An uninvited journalist knocks on the door of a Holocaust survivor, for an unexpected interview.
Review: Blaas (Blow)
Tender, otherworldly, explorative and extraordinary, this is an exquisite show that is more than worth the trip out of town.
Review: Waiting For Curry
Susanne Crosby’s Waiting for is a four-hander with a social reckoning, and very unexpected plot point. The audience was packed. There’s a quietly sad magic to this low-key play; people recognize themselves in it. It speaks.
Review: Dial M for Murder
This production of Dial M for Murder is in the best traditions of the house. A superb entertainment, suavely and consummately executed with some depth, it must feel reassuring to tread in such a solidly realised black and white world.
Review: Pigspurt’s Daughter
Guardian obituary, 2008. ‘Ken Campbell was one of the most original and unclassifiable talents in British theatre of the past half-century.’ It just happens that his daughter Daisy is both that and far more. She’s one of the most cunning crafters of comedy and storytelling in the anti-business
Review: Not Talking
Not Talking is a superb, affirmative debut play, up there with Bartlett’s finest, prophetic of much later work.
Review: Eastward Ho!
This is one of the most exuberant and superbly orchestrated Read Not Deads I’ve seen.
Review: Proxy
Caroline Burns Cooke uses storytelling and physical performance to breath life into this true story of Munchausen by proxy.
Review: The Sorrowful Tale of Sleeping Sidney
This is a gem of many colours. Do see it. The miraculous construction’s matched by Jordan’s storytelling and sense of dark mischief. In Jordan’s hands it’s a re-possession of lost innocence by a strange sleight of a knowing child.
Review: Macbeth
There’s a visceral intent and bravery, a willingness to tear though every received nostrum, some wild use of the revolve with an admittedly frantic cast trying to catch a magic roundabout, that suggests something magnificent could be made of it all. The rationale’s an urgent one: in a post-Trump post-Brexit post-climate-refugee state we could even be looking at this world soon.
Review: The Start of Something
A finely crafted set of interwoven monologues telling three women’s stories of love and loss
Review: The Fall
It’s a play which for theme, formal handling and ingenuity would be highly recommendable alone. Coupled with the excitement of ten young actors getting the measure of this and themselves provides a thrilling reach into tomorrow, including the tomorrows we hope never come.
Review: How It Is
You’ll have to see this. It’s in no way a continuation of their previous Beckett. and it’s immersive, outstanding, unrepeatable and unimaginable anywhere else: Gare St Lazare, and in the UK, no-one but the Print Room it seems would dare to stage it.
Review: Metamorphosis
If you decide on one storytelling piece of theatre in this half of the Fringe, I doubt you’ll do better than experience this.
Review: King Charles III
This is an outstanding production, one of the two or three finest amateur ones I’ve ever seen. It can hold its head amongst consummate professional ones.
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: For King and Country
Terrific immersive fun. If you want to know what might have happened in an alternative December 1940, this is as exciting, informative and perhaps as authentic experience as you could encounter.
Review: Nine Night
Natasha Gordon emerges as a playwright whose capacity to balance seven characters in profound ambivalence – and shuddering proximity - to each other is both thrilling and wholly assured. Anything Gordon does now must be eagerly anticipated.
Review: 4.48 Psychosis
An outstandingly imaginative, fearless recreation of Kane’s testament in another medium. It triumphs and is easily the most remarkable, necessary opera to have been produced in years.
Review: Moormaid
Bott asks serious questions. How can a terrorist redeem themselves, and how do individuals negotiate this? Can art play any part in rehabilitation?
Review: Absolute Hell
This can’t be seen as anything less than a triumph of Ackland’s skein of characters caricatures and remarkable vision – which Hill-Gibbins consummately brings off. We’re not used to this scale, perhaps, from this period either. It’ll take some time to settle, and can’t be essayed too often with such a cast. But it is treasurable.
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: Mayfly
Mayfly’s a play conscious of its deft artistry. Equally though it’s a work that despite its buzzing coincidences never loses the pulse of its profound ache. That’s why it’s so heartbreakingly funny, tender, even affirmative. A superb debut, the first it’s to be hoped of many others here. Joe White’s one to watch, and so is the magnificent Orange Tree, invariably staging a mighty reckoning in a little room.
Review: The Prudes
Neilson’s piece twists an unexpected root out of recent debates over power and sexual abuse the Royal Court has addressed so consistently. Uniquely Neilson’s made the faintly horrible full-on hilarious.
Review: The Winslow Boy
It’s a uniformly excellent cast. For Tessa Peake-Jones and particularly Aden Gillett, Timothy Watson and above all Dorothea Myer-Bennett, this is a treasurable revival of a now classic play, whose themes are every week recalled in political injustices visited by government on defenceless people. ‘Let right be done’ is as sadly relevant as ever.
Review: The Way of the World
A triumphant revival. What’s striking isn’t just the clockwork plotting but the amplitude, even insouciant luxury Congreve allows his characters to unfold in. It comes together in this rich, endlessly self-fascinated masterpiece from a master of self-effacement.
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: Instructions For Correct Assembly
As an ingenious commentary on everything from genetic manipulation to over-determining children’s achievements, Instructions For Correct Assembly is a necessary unforgettable object lesson, in all senses.
Review: Son of a Preacher Man
Son of a Preacher man has real potential. It’s easily more than a cut above a jukebox musical, and Revel-Horwood’s work particularly coupled with Herbert’s musical arrangements is exemplary. As is the marvellous and marvellously hard-working ensemble.
Review: Reared
Reared is above all forgivingly funny, John Fitzpatrick’s comedy exquisite in group dynamics but sometimes on a telling image also contains create one of the most gripping story-telling scenes in recent drama.
Review: Flashdance
It’s Joanne Clifton’s night. She lives Alex, dangerously pushing every routine with an extravagance, a hunger, sexiness and raw power that makes it one of the most memorable dance performances in a musical I’ve ever seen.
Review: Flashdance
Review: The Country Wife
A dazzling revival. If you don’t know the finale, with its superb resolution, this 1920s-style production is a memorable way in, with its clarity, its comedy and its last dangerous kiss. Stunning. Do see it.
Review: Maria
Scott has a finely-grounded tone with an acuity of insight and a lyrically-charged gift that literally pictures the un-nameable pearl-grey blanket of depression occluding Maria’s living.
Review: Three Sisters
Poignantly well balanced exploration of the themes of a Chekhovian classic by a disabled company perfectly able to produce quality theatre
Review: Love Me Now
There’s an almost tragic power to the two endings, amidst glimpses of redemption. How difficult it seems to admit love, particularly for men in the toxicity of casual sex where people become apps and black voids to delete. Unmissable. Michelle Barnette’s next play will be worth waiting for.
Review: Random Selfies
This is sweet, fleet story-telling with just the right amount of pitch and yaw for anyone to take, without it becoming too dark or didactic. Ten-year-old Lola’s engaging, and in Natalia Hinds’ hands utterly believable, energetically inhabited with a sense of fun clearly relished by this revelatory actor.
Review: Black Men Walking
There’s a resolution and a few late epiphanies. It’s an important work, satisfying in its refusal to over-imbue a situation which needs less plot-driven conflict than to lay open its stories like a knap of stone revealing the shine.
Review: Summer and Smoke
Sometimes it fees as if Williams’ characters can’t breathe without their intrinsically skew-sided unhappiness. Ferran’s Alma though takes on a life that transcends this and makes one wonder again.
Review: Quartet
Like The French Lieutenant’s Woman, there are now two endings to Quartet. You must see this if you know the film only, or care about music, ageing, friendship and achingly lost love.
Review: Betrayal
A really fine mid-season revival: after forty years, it’s good to see Pinter back at Lewes Little. Perhaps this season presages more daring things to come.
Review: This Restless State
If it comes near you – visit the website – do try and see this pungently-paced meditation on upheaval. This Restless State breathes across its zones as a play with real potential that simply needs a little more daring, a little less peeling back.
Review: Julius Caesar
Together with several definitive and newly-founded interpretations, it’s Hytner’s lithe political thriller that emerges by contrast as a physical assault on the senses. From out of the smoke and flashes of this outstanding production, there’s jumpings-on and off as participants run up from all sides and even jostle people out of the way.
Review: Rambert
The theatre of Goat, its apotheosis into something else from its comedic opening, is stunning. It’s what the Rambert does; completely reinvent itself and the dance. this and the earlier ballet are outstanding in themselves. The Cunningham company are lucky to learn from them.
Review: The Great Wave
Turnly’s straightforward play treats of a history we’re unfamiliar with, and we need it straight. That’s more than enough to make it thoroughly absorbing, with far more questions than when we entered the space. Do see it.
Review: Old Fools
There’s truths to discover here. Indeed, to remember love, happiness and life vigorously to combat the oblivion surrounding it. It’s still a hidden gem of a piece, and you should see this brief hour-long odyssey, either to reflect from its early evening finish or if visiting, as a sweetly sad, perhaps wiser prelude to whatever you choose from the later lights.
Review: Bad Jews
This is a play supremely worth seeing: for its flayed comedy, acerbic wit, farce-dipped dynamics, monster roles, wincing and raw truths. It’s a triumph from all parties in the best NVT American vein. Don’t miss it.
Review: Female Parts
Adult Orgasm Escapes from the Zoo. That title, from the 1983 version of one of the plays presented here summarises what you can expect. Sadly, subversion has to be rationed. Franca Rame and Dario Fo’s five short plays from 1977 Female Parts, get two outings – they’re joined in a similar bid for self-determination by OneNess Sankara’s The Immigrant, the first black woman in space. Go: it’s likely someone will vault over your head.
Review: Humble Boy
Jones really deserves her place in the forefront of contemporary dramatists. Humble Boy confirms its own place, pivotal to he oeuvre which has grown more robustly and cleverly than the thematic flora or indeed bees that ululate to the end.
Review: Of Mice and Men
This is a first-rate revival. Everything snaps and sings with a lyric devastation that asks with Guthrie just whose land this is, in a year where presidential excesses have seen the US population ask the same question for the first time in generations.
Review: Present Laughter
Gary Essendine’s rampant again. Will Liz Essendine with Miss Reed’s help work out a five-point peace plan as all the writhing lovers seemingly wish to embark on the same boat for Africa (pronounced Efrica, out of that Streep echo)? Will her blithe response to all latch key claimants that they spent the night at her flat make any difference? Do find out. A gem.
Review: The Woman in the Moon
This superb production has shifted our sense of Lyly’s pre-eminence still further. Lyly hugely influenced Shakespeare like no other writer. Lyly remains the Globe’s Read Not Dead greatest rediscovery, and this production underscores that more fully and emphatically than even before, in unexpectedly to this bold, necessary reading.
Review: Electra
As a gifted exploration of Electra’s themes and a transposition of them to 21st century values, this is as exhaustive, detailed and convincing as you’d wish.
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: Brighton Rock
Greene’s original will continue to tease with its unrelieved religious intensity. Otherwise for a secular age this adaptation, and this production, is as good as it gets.
Review: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Family
we are made to feel like travellers and companions of Norris, not just spectators.
Review: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
There have been classic accounts to eclipse this production, but Jack O’Connell in particular throbs with a ferocious identification few can have matched. Here too, director Benedict Andrews takes Maggie literally about who’s now the stronger, and Sienna Miller seizes her chance. It’s a riveting conclusion, for the right reasons.
Review: Love Letters to the Public Transport System
Uplifting and as enjoyable as it is inpsirational
Review: Our Lady of Sligo
The fact that sadly you’ll not see another Sebastian Barry in these parts unless you pick up one of his Booker-shortlisted novels is one good reason to see this. The fact that there’s some magnificent acting though makes it a must-see, for the soul as well as theatre-goer.
Review: Girls & Boys
When you hear an opening like: ‘I met my husband in the queue to board an easyJet flight and I have to say I took an instant dislike to the man’ you relax. Too soon. Thus the chippy wit of Carey Mulligan’s opening of Dennis Kelly’s monologue Girls & Boys at the Royal Court Theatre Downstairs, directed by Lyndsey Turner stretches ninety minutes into something else. Fourteen years after her debut on this stage, it confirms Mulligan as a great stage actor.
Review: Gundog
This Theatre Upstairs production lends a striking suspension of time to the middle of a sheep nowhere. Simon Longman’s Royal Court debut Gundog exudes the kind of stark belonging his plays seem made of. With such faultless direction and acting, Longman’s reach is patent.
Review: How To Be a Kid
More than an enchanting diversion Sarah McDonald’s play does ask just how quickly we need to grow up, even when we have.
Review: Black Mountain
Brad Birch has won awards recently, and in Black Mountain he shows in part how fine he can be. It’s in the speech by the partner of man who’s cheated on her. That’s the rich ore mined on this particular mountain. That, and an ear for dialogue that shows Birch will do even finer things.
Review: Out of Love
There’s much in this sweet, fleet and heart-breaking narrative of female friendship over thirty years that needs to be seen, including the poignant and unexpected epilogue. It’s a thumbnail classic.
Review: The Open House
It’s a wholly original drama, and if you like the super-naturalist verismo of Amy Herzog’s Belleville recently at the Donmar or Annie Baker’s John at the National, you’ll enjoy this sidling from that. It’s conceptually even more original. Do see this. It’s a masterly play - in a theatre famed for its dishevelled uniqueness.
Review: Medea Electronica
Like the recent Suppliants, in a very different way, Medea Electronica asks just what we mean by Greek tragedy, what our conceptions of drama without music are. An essential experience.
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.
