Review: Shipwreck
A superb ensemble piece. Of all dramas on these interesting times in America, it’s the one truly necessary.
Genre: Contemporary 0
Review: Cyprus Avenue
Devastating drama about the DNA of bigotry; and it all starts in surreal farce.
Review: When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other
This cast’s exemplary dedication deserves watching for their sheer performative belief.
Review: I’m Not Running
Compelling dissection of what hampers the mindset of our main progressive party.
Review: Sweat
No wonder this play’s just extended its run. Don’t even read this before you try booking.
Review: Hole
Wow drama, the original Greek tragoidia. It invokes the same powers, almost the same gods.
Review: Madagascar The Musical
Highly Recommended for monkeys and lemurs of all ages – quite apart from lions, zebras, hippos and giraffes.
Review: The Funeral Director
One of the most riveting few minutes of contemporary theatre I’ve seen all year.
Review: ear for eye
Listen for our commonality, don’t look for difference. Here’s a memorable place to start.
Review: Dr Carnesky’s Incredible Bleeding Woman
These women are not shy when it comes to tackling the taboo topic of menstruation
Review: Allelujah!
Bennett’s exhorting us to fight back with laughter and rage in this riveting, timely play. It’s a sad and angry consolation.
Review: Stories
Utterly compelling. Anything Nina Raine writes now is routinely expected to touch greatness. No pressure.
Review: Cock
A superb revival of Bartlett’s warmest, most ground-breaking, perhaps most enduring play so far.
Review: I’m Not Running
Compelling dissection of what hampers the mindset of our main progressive party.
Review: Happy Now?
However fine the original 2008 cast, you won’t miss them with this company’s revival of a stunning contemporary play. See it.
A completely absorbing experience packed into a pulsing interior. Don’t miss it.
Review: Stay Happy Keep Smiling, Fury
Where else in Brighton can you see two new acclaimed plays so swiftly?
Review: The Woods
Of this play's witness and power there can be no doubt whatsoever. Compelling and unmissable.
Review: Poet in da Corner
Exemplary, thrilling, adrenalin-shot and shout-worthy. There has to be a part two, and it ought to be soon.
Review: Billy
Billy is a listicle advert for useless misogyny, a constructivist nightmare, an IKEA bookcase and a durational comedy. GET IT? Good!
Review: Infinity
Between confessions and spacesuits is a dynamic and moving play that will reveal why we all need each other so very, very much.
Review: Drip Feed
Complex, imperfect and very human, a moving story about a queer woman living in Cork during the 1990s
Review: The Political History of Smack and Crack
As theatre it Catherine-wheels with anger. As an unsentimental education this takes some beating. Don’t miss it.
Review: Underground Railroad Game
The most radical piece of American theatre I’ve seen, and certainly the bravest. See it.
Review: Dance Nation
As an airborne metaphor for how you get to be grown-ups, what it does to you, Dance Nation takes as it were some beating.
Review: Enough
A violent attack on the social norms which drive self-harm in its many and varied forms.
Review: The Play That Goes Wrong
A play about amateurs no amateur company should even dare contemplate. There’s genius in the timing of all this. Outstanding.
Review: Home, I’m Darling
It’s a moment when rejoicing to concur with the general public, as Samuel Johnson once did over Gray’s Elegy, is the only thing to do.
Review: Sunshine Boy
A fascinating homage to the world of a true maverick and genius from one of Scotland’s own.
Review: Gie’s Peace
Inspiring Stories of Courageous Women - An Exploration of War Through Storytelling and Music
Review: Definition of Man
A philosophical tour de force, a physical concerto, a confessional, nostalgic memorial to humanity, ruminating on past love and the promise of each other
Review: HUFF
A gut-wrenching tale of Indigenous brothers caught in a torrent of solvent abuse in the wake of the death of their mother.
Review: The Approach
Three women. Three lives. Three conversations spanning half a decade. Woven and connected and Isolated and reconnected.
Review: Testament
A graduate showcase of physical and absurdist theatre exploring grief and letting go.
Review: Passionate Machine
Time travel, Russian poetry, a PhD, a single Mum, quantum physics, a Rocky montage. Fun, moving and brilliant.
Review: There But For the Grace of God (Go I)
A rare instance of an actor knowing exactly how to direct himself. It’s a super-Fringe show well worth reviving, and Welsh clearly puts his life into it.
Review: A Joke
A joyful leap into the unknown. These incredible performers take you on masterclass of japery.
Review: £￥€$ (Lies)
By the end of this you’ll know far more about the banking sector than even Robert Peston explains. Now go and play them for a fool.
Review: Lovesong
It remains a highlight of the season, a mostly wonderful celebration of this rare gift from Abi Morgan. Let’s have more drama like this.
Review: In the Night Time (Before the Sun Rises)
This production’s sheer inventiveness, the feral truth of the acting and fabulously exploding set surely reinvent something; and land this drama where it should be: in the bleak dark before a bleached-out dawn.
Review: Katie Johnstone
Most of all you take away the sheer bravura of Georgia May Hughes’ throwing everything up in the air. She carries the energy to a cheery bleakness. And you want to cheer.
Review: Taiwan Season: Varhung – Heart to Heart
Mesmerizing, this is fine work, fine dance, fine visual storytelling!
Review: Flesh and Bone
Warren’s East London heritage is similar to other writers, and it’s his time to re-tell it now, with new notes and a love of language that muscles in and won’t let go.
Review: One For Sorrow
Cordelia Lynn’s a compelling dramatist whose political imagining is swept into musical paragraphs, landing on rhythmic details, pitches of self-betrayal.
Review: The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives
The genius of this production is to keep hilarity airborne whilst slipping in something poisonous. You must see this.
Review: Jumpy
You begin to wonder how life, not the playwright, will treat these playhouse creatures. De Angelis has hit a true vein. You must see this delirious state-of-the-pause play.
Review: Section 2
This is an urgent, compellingly written stunningly acted piece of naturalistic drama. It should be filmed for mental health awareness week, and acted wherever possible.
Review: No One is Coming to Save You
No One is Coming to Save You makes me want to see a lot more of Nathan Ellis.
Review: Utility
It’s a great phase of U. S. playwrighting, driven by women, and we’re lucky to be living in the middle of it. Schwend unleashes unexpected miracles and is one reason to see this hushed superlative of a play.
Review: Legally Blonde
You must see this. Apart from the heroic production itself, if there’s one outstanding performer it has to be Lucie Jones with Rita Simons’ superb support. Jones' voice is stunning, stratospheric, above all characterful.
Review: Act and Terminal 3
everything – set, actors, script – come mesmerizingly and painfully together.
Review: Confidence
This is a must-see in reviving the theatrical profile of a fine dramatist for too long shrouded in the digital of radio and TV when the acoustic world is claiming her back.
Review: Tits in Space
A show with a wise sweetness at its core; a brightness to cast the growing shadows out there.
Review: The Morning After The Life Before
A perfectly rendered, heart-warming, necessary light in the darkest of moments.
Review: Creation (Pictures for Dorian)
A Transformative Night of Voyeurism and Exploring The Nature of Beauty
Review: My Father Held A Gun
"A passionate, storytelling show with live cinematic music about war and peace, acts of heroism, and the love for life."
Review: Whaddya Know – We’re In Love!
There’s first-class musical entertainment here, crouched under the disguise of a schoolboy plot. Irresistible.
Review: Bear North
Do come if you want charm, unpredictable choruses and weather. And where else can you see a dancing bear not even brushed backwards in the making of this show?
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: 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: 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.
