Review: Our American Queen
Klingenstein’s attentive, witty above all brilliant re-imagining of two remarkable young people. Exceptional.
Genre: Biographical Drama 0
Review: Sunny Afternoon
Joe Penhall’s book is outstanding and frankly puts most musical biopics in the shade. His wit and deft charactering of core band and satellites who interact with the complexity of a play, the way the songs move the narrative. Ray Davies’ storytelling and songs are self-recommending. Sunny Afternoon still deserves those awards.
Review: The Mask Policy
Tianjiao Tan’s crafted a unique, witty take on an industry with little exposure as it were. A revelation.
Review: Forbidden Places
Tom Stoppard dying the day before recalled Leopoldstraat to many. No-one expected this harrowing slant successor. No wonder the audience were on their feet. Outstanding.
Review: Jobsworth
A must-see one-person coffee-black comedy, it lasts a full 90 minutes. Libby Rodliffe is a phenomenal performer. And uproarious.
Review: We Are the Lions, Mr Manager
At a time of racialised targeting – a distraction technique born of the very forces Jayaben Desai fought – Grunwick speaks with startling relevance.
Review: Wyld Woman: The Legend of Shy Girl
For Isabel Renner’s witty one-liners, production values and above all her own performance, this show ends up highly recommended.
Review: Keep Your Sunny Side Up
In nearly every way exceptional. Hampshire is consummate and sets off Rouselle as worthy to inhabit Fields.
Review: Who Do They Think They Are?
A finely-written show, with tensions wrought individually to a satisfying whole.
Review: Adrian Lukis Being Mr Wickham
There’s nothing more charming or endearing in the West End this summer.
Review: Mussolini
"An intelligent and technically remarkable portrait of the dictator as a clown and mime-artist"
Review: ADHD? WTF is ADHD!
Emma Wilkinson-Wright is unnervingly close to the pulse of how real this is. A hidden gem.
Review: This SH*T happens all the time
A stunning one woman show with a riveting actress and an important message.
Review: Sean Daniels The White Chip
The most entertaining life-saver you’ll see, whether you need it or not.
Review: Tim Price Nye
Through choreographic sweep, Tim Price crafts a necessary, traditional warning. A must-see with the finest last line since Good.
Review: Claire Dowie See Primark and Die Finborough
There’s more than a touch of Ken (even more, Daisy) Campbell about the way Dowie structures her circular storytelling. Here it’s at its most consummate, most artful and repays re-reading to catch Dowie at your throat.
Review: Mario Banushi Taverna Miresia
Not even the world theatre powerhouse of the Coronet has hosted anything like this. Mario Banushi must be seen.
Review: Charlie Josephine: I, Joan
Daisy Miles, supremely, Laurits Hiroshi Bjerrum and Rhys Bloy excel in a fine cast and prove this clarion of a play can rise again triumphantly.
Review: Billy Barrett and Ellice Stevens After The Act Royal Court Downstairs
Most of all this musical is necessary. With four outstanding multi-roling performers, a message both affirmative and defiant; and with a fierce joy that makes it a must-see.
Review: Tim Coakley In Search of the Dance
Tim Coakley has a potential minor masterpiece on his hands, as he searches for that perfect crashed chord.
Review: Playhouse Creatures
When Doll Common claims “Life’s like a storm. Don’t get in its way” one thinks of the stoicism of those in the eye of it, and their audience. A consummate revival.
Review: Flutter-Bye
Since this play and Allison Ferns have a lot of legs, it’ll be worth coming back to see it run.
Review: Jane Upton (the) Woman
A ground-breaking play, fully deserving of its London run. Catch it there.
Review: Belly of the Beast
Belly of the Beast should be a set text in schools. And should definitely tour there.
Review: Ballet Shoes
A paean to wonder and possibility, dreaming to some purpose. Like other winter growths, this should prove a hardy perennial, evergreen as the book.
Review: Ruari Conaghan Lies Where It Falls
Ruari Conaghan has nowhere to hide in every sense. He exudes the charismatic of 100 watts cosplaying a glowing 40, then hits you between the eyes
Review: The Ungodly
The Ungodly which playwright Joanna Carrick also directs is different, and special. No wonder it transfers to Off-Broadway next spring. An outstanding piece of theatre.
Review: Beryl Cook: A Private View
A further triumph in Kara Wilson’s groundbreaking fusion of words and paint.
Review: Giant
Giant is both a magisterial debut and a landmark work for braving a terrain littered with - as Tom says - "booby traps... And surprise surprise - boom."
Review: Gareth Strachan Project M.E. The Rock Inn Pub
Strachan proves he can pull together serious talent who believe in his work. It’s a step up in all directions
Review: The Unlikely Secret Agent
How it ends I urge you to discover in this sizzling paean to humanity.
Review: Precious Cargo
Precious Cargo brings to light a key part of history that must not be forgotten.
Review: The Years
This production reminds us it’s often the least theatrical, least tractable works that break boundaries, glow with an authority that changes the order of things.
Review: The Promise
Clare Burt’s Wilkinson, racking asthmatically across the play, is indelible, crowning the evening in an arc of sacrifice, Essential theatre-going, an education.
Review: Crown of Straw
A hint, a soupcon, a mint, from a rehearsed reading o muckle glister tae follae.
Review: Kafka
It’s Klaff’s improvisatory edge, founded on absolute technique and clear-headed text, that finds an exit where none was signposted. Magnificent.
Review: The Hills of California
For nearly any other playwright, this would count as something of a masterpiece.
Review: The Kite Runner
Spellbindingly translated to the stage and here with more power even than before. Don’t miss it.
Review: You’re Not Doing It Wrong If No-one Knows What You’re Doing
How families shape you - until you find your own particular shape
Review: Sappho
A bit of theatrical democracy invoking pre-democracy crafts an exquisite irony for a rainy afternoon. Do see it.
Review: Kunstler
An outstanding production persuading us such a self-narrating show can enthral as well as inform. A hidden gem.
Review: I Hope Your Flowers Bloom
A gentile evening with a fantastic narrative about love from a male perspective.
Review: Little Women
There’s heartbreak and joy here. If you don’t know it, be surprised and moved at this hidden fringe gem, realised by this team in delicately-cut facets.
Review: Laughing Boy
Stephen Unwin directs his own play as a sweep of storytelling, laughter and devastation.
Review: The Motive and the Cue
An extraordinary production. Thorne’s vision is capped by a riveting performance by Gatiss, who glows with the still, sad music of Gielgud’s humanity.
Review: Good-Bye
Wholly absorbing, wholly other, it’s a gem of the Coronet’s dedication to world theatre.
Review: Turning the Screw
This six-hander is a 90-minute announcement of a major talent. An almost flawless play.
Review: The Good John Proctor
A valuable corrective to anticipate both real events and Arthur Miller’s take on Abigail Williams
Review: Same Team
A raw exposition of what it is like being left without a roof until you find hope in a collective heart.
Review: Rika’s Rooms
Emma Wilkinson Wright manages the narrative as an odyssey punctuated by screams. It’s already a phenomenal performance and the actor is so wholly immersed in Rika you know you’re in the presence of something remarkable
Review: The Good Dad (A Love Story), The Mitfords
Now a superb double-bill, and makes a compelling case for these two shows to be yoked together, with their intertwining of family, sisterhood, abuse and terrible consequences.
Review: Pain and I
A poetic musing upon the effect and poignancy of suffering, but not doing so in silence.
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: The Confessions
Though not the ordinary made phenomenal, Alexander Zeldin’s touchstone, it’s an outstanding personally-inflected testament and striking advance.
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: 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: 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: The Quality of Mercy: Concerning the Life and Crimes of Dr Harold Frederick Shipman
A chilling exploration of the career of a serial killer
Review: Joe & Ken
Most of all, this couple capture the feel of the Orton/Halliwell exchange, the chemistry, the aromatic stink of sex from Craig Myles’ Orton, the sweat and self-disgust of Tino Orsini’s Halliwell. John Dunne’s created an Ortonesque, almost What the Dramatist Saw version of events. Orton might have liked that best. And Halliwell, narrating his own death in Orsini’s delivery, been appeased.
Review: Double Bill: Paul Robeson, Suzi of the Dress
No doubting of the power of this double-bill from Kansas. The Paul Robeson is solid gold, the Suzi of the Dress, quicksilver.
Review: When Winston Went to War With the Wireless
An absorbing, layered, superbly entertaining two-and-a-half hours that couldn’t be more relevant. Set against The Motive and the Cue, it also proves how history allows Jack Thorne to be even more versatile than we imagined.
Review: The Sound of Music
This is a top, not just first-rate cast; a riveting, rethought revival. There’s not a weak link - and some vocal surprises. The end is almost unbearably moving. Some still come over mountains as here, some in small boats. You might not feel the same about something you thought you knew. An outstanding revival.
Review: The Madness of George III
Surely the Sarah Mann Company’s finest hour, overcoming the BOAT’s wondrous yet treacherous acoustics – and weather. Alan Bennet’s 1991 The Madness of George III is their most ambitious, most jaw-dropping production. This magnificent revival poses even more urgent questions. A twitch on the thread for all of us.
Review: Dear England
There’s a sacramental thrill as you enter the NT’s Olivier: both sci-fi and ancient Greek. James Graham Dear England, directed by Rupert Goold, is like that: tackling something seen as almost too sacred, at once transcendent for many; but so impacted by nationalist hubris it’s become sclerotic. We enter the game at a historically pivotal moment. Where English football will never be the same. Outstanding.
Review: Tony!
There’s no doubt this is an offbeat, brilliant, rude, absolutely necessary musical. Its acid test will come from younger Millennials and Zoomers. But then that’s the point: the winners rewrite history. History has just struck back, and it’s a blast.
