Genre: Theatre 0
Review: Escape from the Planet of the Day That Time Forgot
Very entertaining, well acted devised comedy! A delirious sci-fi romp!
Review: Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
"an incredible show which authentically reproduces the novel onto the stage."
Review: A Series of Unfortunate Breakups
A bittersweet tale of 3 relationships that never quite end the way you expect
Review: Five Go Off on One
The Famous Five, without one, go off on an adventure on summer hols for jolly japes and smuggling scrapes.
Review: Finding Joy
Bittersweet comedy about the relationship between a teenage boy and his grandmother who has dementia
Review: Jeu Jeu La Foille: Frontal Lobotomy
Burlesque, poetry, puppetry and the history of frontal lobotomy
Review: The Unknown Soldier
A solo play that will stay with you long after you have left the theatre
Review: Present Laughter
Expertly-tailored, classy and for the most part surely-pitched fare: Stephen Unwin is sure-footed too and coaxes the best from his ensemble: jewel-like precision, light-footed blocking and quotable gestures makes this a production ravishingly conscious of its superiority.
Review: Rapture
A hip hop infused dive into the lives and loves of a group of British Muslim teenagers
Review: The Seagull
Olivia Vinall provides a tremulous foil for Joshua James’ vulnerable volatile Konstanin in a fresh emphasis on youth superbly undermined by Anna Chancellor and Geoffrey Streatfeild. World-class English-speaking Chekhov.
Review: Ivanov
Geoffrey Streatfeild inhabits this most problematic Chekhovian role like a stooping question-mark, a lanky laureate of the Russian superfluous man. James McArdle’s angular self-deluding hatred and smoothed-down hair and cheeks compresses into a Caledonian hiss worthy of John Knox. Nina Sosanya’s ardent but dignified pleading and Oivia Vinall’s headlong ardour all combine an explosive mix. Outstanding.
Review: Platonov
James McArdle’s vibrant, sexy quixotically self-aware Platonov is just the star of this family of actors assembled for the three Chekhov plays at the National, with perfectly judged reactions from each other like a small repertory company. In David Hare’s vivid yet faithful version - compressed by half - it’s no small feat to have finally delivered a definitive sixth masterpiece of Chekhov’s.
Review: The Plough and the Stars
The plot’s shocking volte-faces, so perfectly realized here streaked with blood and comedy, make this O’Casey’s masterpiece. Stephen Kennedy’s dipsily detailed drunk is the great turn here in a cast where Judith Roddy, Justine Mitchell, Josie Walker, and Grainne Keenan also excel in this flawless production.
Review: Pigs and Dogs
In a quarter-hour we’re struck with a rich and head-spinning narrative of how same-sex culture’s been oppressed first by the west and now through European language. You end up stopping in outraged disbelief at this virulent legacy of colonialism. If you can’t see it, read it.
Review: Unreachable
A profoundly quizzical play about directorial and film-mogul silliness, using one liners and silliness to address these questions.
Review: Love and Information
Stunning ensemble play, Churchill’s flickering meditation on how we communicate and convey love and every other shade of being.
Review: No Villain
Superb premiere of Miller’s 1936 play showing more than glimpse of the later Miller and more autobiographically-based than any other work would be again.
Review: Sunset at the Villa Thalia
Making noise quietly, Campbell’s new play perhaps pulls a few punches because it believes in quiet. Ben Miles dominates the stage in this uneasy parable, and Elizabeth McGovern’s uproariously funny and pathos-ridden.
Review: Rehearsal for Murder
Clever piece by the Murder She Wrote team, set in 1989, mostly ingenious, mostly satisfying Whoddunit.
Review: Joan, Babs & Sheila Too
A stunning traversal of Joan Littlewood’s life by Gemskii and Conscious Theatre. Without her, there would never have been A Taste of Honey, Oh What a Lovely War, or much of postwar British theatre.
Review: The Importance of Being Ernest
Beautifully designed and sumptuous production where the palm goes to the older cast, in this fresh and vigorous production. Look out for matching buttonholes, silks and ensemble.
Review: All My Sons
Superb, pitch-perfect production from an amateur theatre renowned for the professionalism of everything from sets to acting.
Review: After Miss Julie
Provocative but absorbing take on Strindberg’s 1888 masterpiece. Fine cast led by Helen George make much of demob denouements.
Review: Blue/Orange
Thrilling revival of this absorbing still relevant 2000 play about abusing the already-abused in the name of psychiatry.
Review: The Deep Blue Sea
Helen McCrory plumbs the erotic despair of Hester Collyer’s abandoned woman in this absorbing revival of Rattigan’s masterpiece.
Review: Accidental Death of an Anarchist
In a stunning New Venture Theatre production Accidental Death of an Anarchist explodes with a cast of six. Rod Lewis directs
Review: Richard III
Whilst Ralph Fiennes reins in his Richard, making his violent misogyny all the more chilling, his demonic fun evaporates. But an exemplary cast, with Vanessa Redgrave light up Goold’s direction in a production that never drags.
Review: White Feather Boxer
Timely and fascinating play of a pacifist pugilist’s conscience, in 1967, and 1914 from the author of Hanging Hooke and Stella.
Review: Ross
Joseph Fiennes dazzles sotto-voce in his finest theatre performance to date, in this consummate revival of the troubling life of Lawrence of Arabia.
Review: Doctor Faustus
Kit-off Harington stars in this rewritten Marlowe piece, long on sex and violence but short on Marlowe. Intermittently brilliant.
Review: The Flick
Mesmerising exploration of three characters maintaining a failing cinema, heartbreakingly funny, mimetically riveting. One of the Nationals’ very finest new plays under the new regime.
Review: Haim: In the Light of a Violin
Mesmerising, heart-rending concert-cum-narration of a child’s journey through violin lessons to auditioning in Auschwitz, and beyond as told through his eyes.
Review: People Places and Things
Denise Gough’s award-winning performance centres this terrifying eddy of addiction and slipping recovery.
Review: Kenny Morgan
Superb take on Rattigan’s lover’s suicide attempts, that inspired Rattigan’s masterpiece The Deep Blue Sea.
Review: Human Animals
A thrillingly compressed dystopia crossing The Birds, and Caryl Churchill with draconian government opportunism.
Review: A View From Islington North
Intermittently thrilling plays from the urgent left, two premieres and a couple of small gems roughened by the tumble of Westminster and the Corporates that really must be seen - unless you’re Gideon.
Review: Elegy
Starring Barbara Flynn and Zoe Wannamaker, Nick Payne’s new play – a thrilling and devastating probe at our identity - picks up the threads of science, self and mortality from Constellations and The Art of Dying, marking his most ambitious play since the former.
Review: Cuttin’ It
Superb distillation of the costs of FGM to victims and victim-perpetrators, James reaches out to all in this searing two-hander.
Review: Behind the Front Lines; Warriors and Wives
A narrative piece of theatre weaving the story of a wife and a soldier under the conditions of war
Review: Brideshead Revisited
Bryony Lavery’s adaptation of Brideshead, the first for the stage dazzles with stagecraft and storyline but something’s lost tail-chasing the detail.
Review: Simon Says
A touching brief play scooped out of the air by two bright students with only a title to go on.
Review: Wolf Meat
Profoundly silly and farcically serious show with just the kind of anarchy that offers coke to audience members. Contains brief and ghastly nudity.
Review: How to be a Girl
This is a relentless one act play about the pressure placed on girls by the media. It unpicks the irony of being advised to resist peer pressure and be independent, yet being told what to buy, how to look and how to behave.
Review: Year Without Summer
Fascinating sideling glimpse of Romantic poets and writers through a chaise-long laced with gothic intent.
Review: Here All Night
Sam’s all night shiner, Beckett’s Wake and Cabaret. Haunting, funny, unmissable.
Review: Something Rotten
Scintillating subversive and original take on Hamlet’s unhappy uncle, weighed down by doubts and too many jokers. Beware of complicity.
Review: The Threepenny Opera
A coming-of-age for Rufus Norris, a wholly credible, cheekily interventionist Threepenny Opera with a few devastating critiques
Review: Dancing in the Dark
Inspired off-centre situationist drama from acclaimed Wired Theatre about family, grief and sexual identities.
Review: First Love
Conor Lovett lightens his pitch Becket’s exploration of lust, sexual disgust and the intolerable consequences of generation.
Review: The End
Conor Lovett rivets with a naturalistic pitch in this cut-down stand-up Beckett diminuendo of an ex-inmate’s prospects. More tour de force in a tour de farce of Beckett’s genius.
Review: 1 in 3
1 in 3 is a brave, thoughtful and heartfelt new play which explores the deep and truthful world of chemotherapy
Review: And the Rope Still Tugging Her Feet
Compelling, downright funny yet tragic true narrative of the Kerry Baby affair of 1984. Caroline Burns Cooke triumphs as writer and actor.
Review: The Marlowe Papers
A diamond in Shakespeare’s or Marlowe’s ruff? Ros Barber’s novel adapted for the stage, starring vaulting Jamie Martin.
Review: A Good Jew
Keenly-anticipated new play by Jonathan Brown breaks new territory; it’s both theatrically challenging and disturbing.
Review: Limelight
Showstopping numbers stud this heartwarming, touching new play with numbers by Liz Tait.
Review: Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour
Lee Hall’s and Vicky Featherstone‘s sell-out Edinburgh Fringe musical comes to the Theatre Royal. It more than bears out the accolades heaped on it.
Review: The Beckett Trilogy
Conor Lovett stuns in this cut-down stand-up Beckett-novels-for-beginners-and-enders three-hour whistlestop. A tour de force as well as a tour de farce of Beckett’s genius.
Review: The Bald Prima Donna
Spirited pacey revival of Ionesco’s first play, with one stand-out performance and superbly idiomatic one. A perfect introduction to the playwright.
Review: Boy
A superbly bleached-out vision of a seventeen-year-old’s prospects on a stunning conveyer-belt set. Not a comfortable but necessary seventy minutes.
Review: A Dirty Get-Away!
Brilliantly silly and profound meditation on the nature of memory loss as innocence
Review: Persona
Clean focused reading by Bexelei Theatre's young talent of Jon Barton's new play on trolling
Review: An Enemy of the People
Howard Davies directs a fine cast led by Hugh Bonneville in Chichester's generously human revival of the ultimate whistleblowing drama
Review: Sex, Strokes, Death, Denial
Jack Duffel's new play mixes extreme naturalism with verse in a play creatively probing death and displacement in the family
Review: Thorn
Tremendously energised one-man play about an Australian minister's son on a mission, but which one?
Review: Airswimming
Superb revival of Charlotte Jones’s play abut two women incarcerated for fifty years for bring different.
Review: Menkind
A well-produced show that holds the attention and provides plenty of laughs along the way.
