Genre: Dark Comedy
Review: Stephen Sondheim, David Ives Here We Are
Altogether this mightn’t be in the top tier of Sondheim musicals, but it’s one of the most interesting, even profound, and Sondheim exits with a rapt question-mark. Unmissable.
Review: Rocky Horror Show
An excellent revival. The strength of this cast led with a special wit by Clune makes it absolutely worth seeing however many times you have. Otherwise, just see it!
Review: The Beauty Queen of Leenane
This is stark theatre. Some will hate Martin McDonagh, and some already love him. I’d say you must see this, where it all started.
Review: All the Happy Things
It’s impossible to believe Sienna doesn’t believe Emily’s not part of this at some level, and by the end, you’ll think so too.
Review: The Secret Garden/Bleak Expectations
Deliciously wholesome satire, this is a deliriously-paced, superbly-acted production.
Review: Dr Strangelove
Steve Coogan reigns supreme, and a cast like John Hopkins then Giles Terera are a gift to both Coogan and the show.
Review: Double Act
Death & Co. The Laurel and Hardy of Suicide, the Little and Large of it Do see this timely, painfully funny, and absorbing new play.
Review: Men’s Business
A quietly phenomenal, ground-breaking play, blistering in sumps of silence. See it.
Review: Perfect Arrangement
There’s never been a more urgent time for this gem of a work: a small hybrid classic that’s never been produced in the UK before. See it now.
Review: Dan O’Brien The Voyage of the Carcass; Emily Jenkins Bobby & Amy
Dan O’Brien’s piece is for dedicated farceurs. By itself outstanding, it’s hoped by several Emily Jenkins’ Bobby & Amy have a postlude of its own, with this team and these two young actors pitched at this moment in their careers.
Review: Cymbeline
One of the most uneven of late plays, its heights have to be seen; and though there’s pitfalls, this absorbing production surmounts most. A feat.
Review: The Devil May Care
Do see this particularly for an outstanding performance from Burrows and an exceptionally fine one from Woodhouse. This adaptation remains an exhilarating reminder of what a difference a century makes.
Review: Goodbye Erdogan
A deeply engaging show about a small man overwhelmed by the seismic changes in modern Turkish society.
Review: Shakespeare in Love
The mystery’s in the ensemble, the production, its bewitching leads. It’s a mighty reckoning in a little room.
Review: Sam Holcroft Rules for Living
Season’s Greetings for robots. It interrogates a therapy many believe works. More than worth seeing in this first-class NVT cast and production.
Review: The Cat and the Canary
An exceptional ensemble delivering a delirious twist on a tale that truly deserves it. Unmissable.
Review: Beyond Krapp
A beautifully poised solo drama filled with caution for the dying and the hope that the living can still listen.
Review: How Dead Am I?
An absurdly enticing view of what I might be like at the end of your world … but with snacks.
Review: The Martyrs
any zeitgeisty theatre director should jump at the chance to produce this play fully staged.
Review: Corpse Flower
A beautiful nod to the expressionistic silent movie era, just with words and words that will enchant you!
Review: Gloria’s Gift
In a world where we're all so connected, how can we be more disconnected than we've ever been?
Review: All’s Well That Ends Well
Don’t go expecting searing insights, but do go for a crack ensemble who will surely turn many to Shakespeare. An endearing and uplifting enterprise.
Review: The Beckett Trilogy
It’s reading Beckett in flashes of lightning and laughter. 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: Rock, Paper, Scissors
A joyous revival. Though working in TV production, Hayden’s writing is too good, too well-shaped not to develop in theatre instead.
Review: Testmatch
A superbly witty interrogation of identity, abuses many histories deep, asking questions it sets up in not too sober a fashion. Testmatch is a lightning-conductor.
Review: Banging Denmark
This production’s 100 minutes are so absorbing you’re not quite sure if the time’s stopped, or just your preconceptions. Stunning, a must see.
Review: The Comeuppance
Might prove the most lasting American drama about. emerging to a different world.
Review: Hangmen
Assured, idiomatic performances. And Martin McDonagh’s distinction resonates in a manner peculiar to him alone. A must-see for anyone in Sussex.
Review: London Zoo
A masterly play in the making. It goes where very few dare, and in an environment we think we know. Very highly recommended.
Review: The Merchant of Venice
Shakespeare told in flashes of lightning maybe, but with the thunder of laughter and a ghost of wrongs rumbling long after the lights go down. A gem of distillation, dispatch and truth. If you can, go.
Review: Mates in Chelsea
Mates in Chelsea is definitely worth seeing, and apart from adaptations surely the best thing this writer’s produced in a decade. Royal Court Theatre
Review: Little Wars
Allows the best of those it portrays, to shine in one intense beam of feminist solidarity, women against tyranny and genocide.
Review: Meetings
Mustapha Matura draws in and telescopes devastating consequences - perhaps telegraphs years of damage into a few weeks for dramatic licence. That doesn’t lessen his impact. The point is western exploitation kills, in many guises.
Review: That Face
Its qualities are extraordinary, that of a Greek tragedy on Prozac performed by St Trinian’s. Prozac Nation’s referenced, but Polly Stenham’s point is how parental damage numbs you out of feeling anything at the right time, with displacement activities chateau-bottled around a bed. Yet it is, of course, very funny. An outstanding revival, given extra intensity by the staging; an intimacy so palpable you both flinch and laugh at the same moment.
Review: Accidental Death of an Anarchist
The adage that farce is tragedy speeded up met its greatest progenitor in Dario Fo. In a ferocious new version by Tom Basden of Franca Rame’s and Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist, directed by Daniel Raggett in a stunning production now at the Haymarket, the target here is squarely the London Met. And if you slowed down Basden’s brilliant, no-holds-unbludgeoned telling, details prove tragic enough.
Review: The Taming of the Shrew
A slowly evolving, involving reading. Alex Louise can certainly develop this to a full-scale production. She just needs to take care of the script’s truth, though it seems contradictory. Confidence and imagination will soon sort that.
Review: SAD-VENTS
Eleanor Hill A fascinating, even groundbreaking show about living life in the shadow of tragedies.
Review: Potty the Plant – A New Dark Comedy Musical
A light hearted pseudo-horror story with a few jibes at current affairs
Review: The Ruffian on the Stair and Funeral Games
Joe Orton’s The Ruffian on the Stair and Funeral Games come to the Lantern Theatre for four performances. This in-house double bill of one-acters is directed by Daniel Finlay and Mark Burgess respectively. A fitting end to the Lantern’s extraordinary week
Review: NSFW
A stunning vindication of an underrated early play of Lucy Kirkwood’s. With superb direction and tech, the mostly professional and professionally-trained cast would grace any stage. NVT triumphantly prove NSFW can join the modern canon.
Review: Word-Play
Here though, Rabiah Hussain’s greatest strengths are allied to an excoriating sense of the limits of first language, how it colonises, even destroys mother tongues, and marginalises, even imprisons those who buck the monolinguistic norm. Hussain’s poised for remarkable things.
Review: Cuckoo
Michael Wynne bringing something full circle touches where the floating island of home and family might bring sanctuary, or last refuge before the cuckoos come and kick you out. A must-see, particularly for those who’ve not thought the Royal Court could rock with laughter.
Review: After All These Years
Giles Cole’s extending from one wistfully comic short to a three-act Chekhovian elegy for the dance of age, is in a defining league of its own.
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.
Review: all of it
Still the most sheerly thrilling yet intimate piece MacDowall has written, though all three pieces amplify that. A miniature classic of snatched meaning its staging too flashes by with shocking brevity. In all it lasts just 90 minutes. Catch it.
Review: The Last Night Out
Very-well written, darkly comedic, more touchingly true, writer Paul M Bradley and Georgie Banks take this just as far as it’ll go. Highly recommended.
Review: A Caravan Named Desire
Anything by Alexander and Helen Millington is worth coming for. A Caravan Named Desire isn’t yet at the level of I Love Michael Ball but by the time you see it, it almost certainly will be. This is a team to watch and queue for.
Review: I Love Michael Ball
Alexander Millington’s I Love Michael Ball is, in the words of one director, the absolute spirit of the Fringe. That is, brilliantly oddball, in fact deranged. Millington, wholly in command, is winningly able to return us to the sanity of sheer good singing. So make a date.
Review: After All These Years
Giles Cole’s extending from one wistfully comic short to a three-act Chekhovian elegy for the dance of age, is in a defining league of its own. A superb play, it will now reach the West End.
Review: The Emergence Festival
A fascinating evening of well-considered works that augur well for many with a real future in the arts.
Review: The MP, Aunty Mandy and Me
A young gay man from a small northern village gets sucked into the heady world of working for his local MP, and faces many big dilemmas.
Review: Communicating Doors
An excellent revival and the best chance to see this remarkable thriller-cum-farce-cum-meditation.
Review: The Dance of Death
Highlights the truth of its bleak laughter. Humane Strindberg. Now there’s a thing.
Review: Cock
A superb revival of Bartlett’s warmest, most ground-breaking, perhaps most enduring play so far.
Review: Double Murder: Clowns / The Fix
An extraordinary choreographic exploration of murder and hope
Review: Nathan Cassidy: Observational
With a crippling bad back, Nathan joins a gym and a big, strong man changes his life
Review: Hangmen
Assured, idiomatic performances. And Martin McDonagh’s distinction resonates in a manner peculiar to him alone.
Review: The Merchant of Venice
A reading of Adrian Schiller’s Shylock as probing as other great productions of the past decade; and of Sophie Melville’s nearly-rounded, brittle Portia.
Review: Quentin Crisp: Naked Hope
Ask yourself this. If there were no praise or blame – who would I be?
