Review: Silence
More of a scattering of earth, ashes and love than simply groundbreaking. But caveats aside, groundbreaking it is.
Genre: Biographical Drama
Review: I, Joan
The title role goes to Isobel Thom, making their professional debut: the greatest I’ve ever seen.
Review: Marys Seacole
No simple swapping of heirs and originals, but a dream of the future by Seacole, or equally present dreams raking the past. Do see this.
Review: Anne Boleyn
If it’s drama you’re after in Brighton Fringe, this is one of the two or three essential stops. Thrilling, authoritative, with Greene the jewel in a sparkling ensemble.
Review: The Misfortune of the English
Pamela Carter’s schoolboys embody human connectedness, warmth, a final camaraderie before the chill of history. Unmissable.
Review: The Corn is Green
There’s many reasons to see Williams’ finest play. To realise our potential it’s not enough to have dreams, but for someone to show us what those dreams could be.
Review: The Paradis Files
Not so much an event as a concentration of Errollyn Wallen’s genius celebrating the life of blind composer Maria Theresia van Paradis, in Graeae’s world-class production
Review: The Marriage of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
Such exquisite works find their time; speak to it again and again and again.
Review: Beautiful
Outstanding, and outstandingly transferred as a tour that brings its stature with it.
Review: A Splinter of Ice
Absorbing. With such an acting masterclass the play’s a bewitchingly-voiced fugue on the limits of belief and betrayal.
Review: Slings and Arrows
The principal reason why a stage should always be a platform for the voices unheard.
Review: Rosetti’s Women
A lovely, dramatic presentation that covers the racy relationships, from the perspectives of three of his women, of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Review: Hamilton and Me: An Actor’s Journal
In rapid, elegant, idiomatically kerned language, Giles Terera proves himself a superb expositor of where it happens.
Review: On Arriving
On Arriving takes sixty minutes it seems we’ve been immersed in a Greek Tragedy of ninety. See it.
Review: Chamberlain: Peace in Our Time
A light-filled small gem of a show, tuning into wireless crystals of a lost world.
Review: The Lady in the Van
Sarah Mann and her company will surely return with this gem of transubstantiation.
Review: Sacrament
A revelation, superbly written and acted. Comparisons have been made with A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing. I can think of no higher praise either. You must see this.
Review: Illusions of Liberty
A finely-calibrated solo play of what it’s like to enter that tunnel of near-undiagnosable but very real illness. Corinne Walker’s both authoritative and quicksilver. Do catch it.
Review: Angela
A tender, beautifully pitched exploration of the individuality of a life, despite what illness may eventually steal.
Review: Amadeus
In the most spectacular production imaginable, Lucian Msamati’s supremely crafted lead sets off the quicksilver of his rival Adam Gillen.
Review: #AIWW The Arrest of Ai WeiWei
Brenton powerfully concertinas a continent’s politics and one artist’s refraction of it. Wong is outstanding
Review: Swive
A Hilliard rather than Holbein, it’s the velocity of Elizabeth’s survival that enthrals
Review: #We Are Arrested
Peter Hamilton Dyer carries this celebration of the conscience to be fully human
Review: The Thrill of Love
A superb revival, and the best production of this popular play I’ve seen.
Review: The Monster and Mary Shelley
A solo celebration of the mind that brought Frankenstein from its fevered edges to realisation on the page
Review: The Drift
An impressive solo show about how integrated Scotland believes it is but shows us the reality of the length it needs to go, in order to achieve that aim.
Review: What Girls Are Made Of
Cora Bissett’s set the bar thrillingly high for a new genre. Who could follow her?
Review: HICK: A Love Story, Based on Eleanor Roosevelt’s Letters to Lorena Hickok
Enthralling play, vivid, romantic, well crafted and performed
