FringeReview UK

A Small and Quiet Light

It will live as a further bright witness. How a Muslim Sufi princess of bi-racial origins and deeply cosmopolitan heritage ended with a posthumous George Cross. Outstanding.

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American Psycho

If you can queue, you’ll be in good company. Jean queued for Les Mis at 6.30 am.

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BBC Proms Canat de Chizy Skyline Shostakovich Symphony No. 10, Royal Albert Hall

One older Prommer declared that was the finest Tenth he’d ever heard. I wouldn’t disagree.

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Bitter Visions By Order of Hildegard

In its miniature and vast scale, outstanding.

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Bury the Hatchet

Killer theatre whetted, ground and gleaming. It will turn heads. Again. Unmissable.

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Cable Street

This is an event. Break in (without breakages!) if you have to, to see this. You’ll be standing in the aisles to swarm the barricades.

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Cleansed

A production uniquely redemptive amidst the horrors.

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Cosi Fan Tutte

Here’s a great chance to see up-close and classical some stars of tomorrow.

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Deep Azure

One of the few moments of Peter Brooks’ term “Holy Theatre” has arrived at the Wanamaker. A must-see.

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Dido and Aeneas Arcola, Grimeborn Festival

Ensemble OrQuesta should be tracked down, and The Magic Flute queued for.

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Ewartung, The Murderous Delusions of Gavrilo K

Unmissable for those interested in the wilder shores of late Romanticism, once it’s staged again

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Glorious!

Wendi Peters sends you out singing: with all the right notes in the wrong order. Solidly recommended.

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Iphigenia

Pacing is fleet, inexorable, even with those frozen minutes of contemporary video. Unmissable.

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Love’s Labour’s Lost

Summer-drenched pizzazz and spectacle could hardly have been better timed.

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Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing

An outstanding and landmark double production.

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Magic

Brave, timeless, and troubled, Magic sometimes refuses to give up its secrets too. Absorbing.

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Murder Games

A hidden gem, and a marriage-which-is-not-a-marriage, made in opera heaven.

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Oberon

Weber’s greatness – wider than his operas - has been rather underplayed in his bicentenary year in the UK, the place which finally killed him off.

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Rinaldo

Very highly recommended for anyone who enjoys taking the pith of Handel. Seriously.

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Summerfolk

We need Summerfolk. Sided and slant, this version is a must-see. And almost as much as Chekhov, we need more Gorky.

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Sussex Musicians Club

A terrific end to a universally strong set of performances.

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Teeth ‘n’ Smiles

As Teeth ‘n’ Smiles ends, we’re left to feel the long withdrawing roar of the 1960s, and the bleaker horizons and disillusion Hare saw by 1975. A must-see.

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The BFG

Evans and his team have transported the magic so completely it’s taken up residence. Both outstanding and a delight

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The Gambler

Chiten Theatre intensifies to a point of light here something barbarous, atavistic, and goes to the heart of nihilism. Still outstanding.

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The Magic Flute

OrQuesta provide the pattern of how to mount a vocally full-scale, full-length opera in an intimate space. An outstanding Magic Flute.

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The Playboy of the Western World

An impossible balance, but having seen Playboy at farce-speed, it’s good to weigh in with a loquacious backbeat of despair. Wholly absorbing.

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The Rivals

As polished a Sheridan gem as I’ve ever seen.

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The Tempest

Orlando Gough’s music stamps this production, and makes the pulleys of reinvention sing despite themselves. For that and the sweep of decolonised languages, a must-see.

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Ukraine Unbroken

An absorbing evening; essential theatre.

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War Horse

An astonishing spectacle that still moves and will forever craze the idiocy of war on the retina like an iced-over No-Man’s Land.

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