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: Rank

A debut play by Goldie Matjas. - 'Waiting for Godot' meets 'Fleabag'


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: Bunny

Simply, adorably, absolutely, completely, utterly, gorgeous.


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: 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: Peep

very funny and has some incredible good lines


Review: FAMEHUNGRY

A bold, in-your-face piece that challenges our perceptions of social media


Review: SOS BRM

An engaging exploration of grief, loss and guilt


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: So Young

Every aspect of this production is outstanding


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: The Bounds

As it stands, this is a play with greatness seeded in it.


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: Adrift

Psychological Thriller – sci-fi at it’s finest! New writing, not to be missed!


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: Dough

Energetic, well acted play about money.


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: 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: Lie Low

A slick swirl of consent issues, insomnia and dancing to Benny Goodman


Review: BUTCHERED

The physicality of Ez Holland and Nic Lawton has to be seen to be believed.


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: Horsepower

Exceptional, both as dramatic writing, design and performance.


Review: So…

Brand new show by performance makers Jon Haynes and David Woods


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.