Review: The Tempest
Do see this Tempest, not only subtly outstanding, but pulsing with human connectivity and warmth.
Genre: Drama 0
Review: Footfalls & Rockaby
Charlotte Emmerson and Sian Phillips make their parts indelible, and add to Beckett’s stock of pity, stoicism and a window on death. Outstanding.
Review: The Cat and the Canary
If you’re a Classic Thriller Theatre Company fan, don’t hesitate. Though we can be grateful to Bill Kenwright for trying out these creaky creepies, a serious bit of thought ought to go in to just what genres they are first.
Review: Macbeth
Building out of Macbeth a recurring epic of structural violence not ended with one overthrow, sets the seal on this outstanding production.
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: Rice
Do see this work of understated virtuosity, rich in character, substance, a shape-shifting singularity.
Review: The Chalk Garden
Not quite the last drawing-room comedy. But the Janus-faced prophesy of plays that took thirty years to catch up.
Review: Di and Viv and Rose
A first-rate revival of this heartwarming play, surprising you with grief, and joy
Review: What If If Only
Churchill’s anatomy of grief is what abides. Its emotional plangency and pulling the future open is unique.
Review: Walden
Amy Berryman’s Walden is a remarkable play where the earth itself’s at the cross-planet, and travellers in space have inner and outer choices.
Review: Twelfth Night
With Michelle Terry as Viola, one of the most touching and truthful Twelfth Nights I’ve seen.
Review: Romeo and Juliet
A fleet, brilliantly upending, wholly relevant take on the Verona-ready toxicity feeding male violence and young depression
Review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Outdoors, this has grown prodigously. Some actors give transcendent performances up there with London’s finest. Out in the slant air this proves magical.
Review: Statements After an Arrest under the Immortality Act
An important, scorching revival, Statements explores the limits of love in a forcing-house of oppression and racism.
Review: Hear, Speak, See
A brilliantly dramatic examination of women’s power plays at a dinner party like no other.
Review: Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied Tunisia
A profound parable for co-existence and its sometime impossibility, perpetually skewed by others’ disruptions.
Review: Slings and Arrows
The principal reason why a stage should always be a platform for the voices unheard.
Review: Sweating the Small Stuff
An episodic call to concentrate on the big stuff rather than the wee things which hits more than it misses.
A fascinatingly delivered riff on one woman’s journey for recognition and soul which includes a brush from a smear test.
Review: This Beautiful Future
Heartstopping. There’s an absoluteness here we need. We must prove desperate for it or die ourselves.
Review: For All the Love You Lost
A fascinating portrait of the anxiety of youth, the loss of somebody close and that endings are not always assured, even in a theatre.
Review: The Return of Sherlock Holmes
The standard story set up by a highly entertaining pair who deliver a very high standard of performance.
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: Femme Ta Bouche
A melodramatic revelation and epic journey of self-discovery that is prescient and worthy of a pedestal upon which to put itself.
Review: Plasters
Two actors in a relationship, both on and offstage, struggle to find meaning for themselves.
Review: Myra’s Story
One woman, many characters, several tragedies told with the earnestness of truth and the triumph of theatre.
Review: The Merchant of Venice
This production needs a run. It’s potentially a great interpretation.
Review: Dracula
You should see this with some fine acting and a storyline making more sense of Dracula than Stoker does himself.
Review: The Mother Load
Three women, three pregnancies, three experiences, much laughter and revelation in a funny and engaging audio performance.
Review: Hindu Times
A religious text for our times, told in the language of the now with universal messages.
Review: Braw Tales
An innovative and bright response to the pandemic in cartoon and monologue that is as diverse as great to watch.
Review: and breathe…
Yomi Sode’s hybrid theatre is a compelling immersion of witness and poetry: we need more of it.
Review: Staircase
A first-rate revival of a play that with its ostensible shock-value in aspic, reveals subversions and a clever structure so unsettling we should all look in the mirror and wince.
Review: The Macbeths
A scintillating film of claustrophobic terror in the company of the most infamous fictional duo on the stage.
Review: The Girl Who Was Very Good at Lying
Andrews vividly conveys what it is to be an undone thing, someone unravelling tales to live.
Review: Branching Out
Three very fine and one outstanding work, Scratches – the best kind of play on depression, self-harm, black holes. Because it’s screamingly funny and deeply connected to why we do theatre.
Review: Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons
Think Nick Payne’s Constellations meets Zamyatin’s We. If you love new theatre, worth queuing for returns.
Review: After All These Years
A superb play, it should as one director present said, be in the West End. With these actors.
Review: Between Two Waves
A play about the Climate Crisis, family, photography and being screwed by insurance.
Review: The Vertical Hour
The definitive Fringe revival of a mainstream play this year. Absorbing, baggy, intimate. See it.
Review: The Lady in the Van
Sarah Mann and her company will surely return with this gem of transubstantiation.
Review: Shaw Shorts
A joyous, heady and oh-so-welcome return to this intimate yet high-kicking theatre. An absolute must-see.
Review: Two Horsemen
The glaring energy of this piece can’t disguise how it strikes profundity in its funny-bone.
Review: Hole
Don’t miss the chance to see this transcendent actor prove she possesses another dimension altogether.
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: Living Newspaper #7
Like all the Royal Court’s Living Newspaper series, we need this. Watch a group of young dramatists take on the future
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: Vespertilio
Vespertilio marks Barry McStay’s emergence as a writer of distinction. Anything he writes now should be looked out for.
Review: Living Newspaper #6
Like all the Royal Court’s Living Newspaper series, we need this. Watch what this does with the future
Review: Living Newspaper #5
Like all the Royal Court’s Living Newspaper series, we need this. Watch.
Review: Outside
As with Inside, Outside not only fits us, they help us to move on, and become in their modest, unassuming and utterly transcendent way, part of how we learn to.
Review: Icarus
After all the gods and their lack of choice, we come to the final instalment, the human dimension. Where we have one. A heartfelt, satisfying finish.
Review: Orpheus
A terrific reinvention, bringing gods and heroines up from the death of myth to an altered world.
Review: Living Newspaper #3 Royal Court Theatre
Hot off Sloane Square a team of writers, actors and creatives twist the news to truth
Review: Angela
A tender, beautifully pitched exploration of the individuality of a life, despite what illness may eventually steal.
Review: Scaramouche Jones
Shane Ritchie’s phenomenal energy and slidings in and out of tongues, mesmerises.
