Review: Counting Stars
Gupta’s not too likely to pay the penalty for her spectacular 2009 debut aged twenty-one in What Fatima Did. This is her third full-length, a clear-headed warm-hearted play packing much story-telling into its sixty-five minutes, a convincing portrayal of exploited lovers in Woolwich now.
Review: The Magnetic Diaries
An intelligent and challenging poetic narrative exploring modern day female depression.
Review: The Tobacco Merchant’s Lawyer
A one man treat that is both comic and satirical as a man of nae means tries to survive against those that have the means for survival
Review: The Truth
This is as good a machine for portraying infidelity as we’re likely to see. Hanson delivers frantic timing and hard-paced farce, O’Connor provides an elegant foil mixing guilt with anxiety, desire and cool pragmatism; Franks’ Laurence is always ready to spring shut on the luckless protagonist. Her counterpart in Portal conveys a flicker of reined-in menace, bluff urbanity waiting to pounce. Zeller quotes Voltaire’s scepticism about truth-telling: permanently unfashionable, perennially worth reviving
Review: Faith Healer
A supremely orchestrated production, the best we’re likely to see of Friel’s masterpiece for the play’s time-span, about twenty years. As Frank’s faith-healer character must have experienced, this production rapidly sold out, not through high-tech advertising blitzes, but word of mouth.
Review: Yoke’s Night
An evening of drugs, mayhem and macabre dealings where all is more than what it seems.
Review: Cosmic Fear or The Day Brad Pitt Got Paranoia
A frenetic romp through Global warming… with Brad Pitt
Review: Criminology 303
A taught half hour or so in the company of a former detective and the case that haunts her, and now us
Review: All Cashed In
A provocative tribute which walks the line in a story that crosses a man in black with independent thought
Review: Dirty Glitter
The 1970’s are back and funky with a cop drama that focusses on the times rather than the storylines.
Review: The Interference
A highly charged examination of what happens when one young woman cries rape on campus
Review: The Black and White Tea Room
A taut meeting between a therapist and his client reveals much more than just healing through trust
Review: A Dog’s Tale
A comic tale of doggie derring do from the Pound that strikes right at heart of the doll.
Review: Yerma
Piper’s excelled before but nothing has prepared for this devastating performance in Stone’s almost completely re-written play: a break-out wildness, a grieving as incandescent as anything in Greek Tragedy, connecting with Lorca beyond Stone.
Review: A Streetcar Named Desire
A wonderfully acted and executed production let down by poor surtitling
Review: Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
"an incredible show which authentically reproduces the novel onto the stage."
Review: A Series of Unfortunate Breakups
A bittersweet tale of 3 relationships that never quite end the way you expect
Review: The Unknown Soldier
A solo play that will stay with you long after you have left the theatre
Review: Present Laughter
Expertly-tailored, classy and for the most part surely-pitched fare: Stephen Unwin is sure-footed too and coaxes the best from his ensemble: jewel-like precision, light-footed blocking and quotable gestures makes this a production ravishingly conscious of its superiority.
Review: Agent of Influence: The Secret Life of Pamela More
Lively, beautifully crafted writing performed by a sizzling storyteller.
Review: The Seagull
Olivia Vinall provides a tremulous foil for Joshua James’ vulnerable volatile Konstanin in a fresh emphasis on youth superbly undermined by Anna Chancellor and Geoffrey Streatfeild. World-class English-speaking Chekhov.
Review: Ivanov
Geoffrey Streatfeild inhabits this most problematic Chekhovian role like a stooping question-mark, a lanky laureate of the Russian superfluous man. James McArdle’s angular self-deluding hatred and smoothed-down hair and cheeks compresses into a Caledonian hiss worthy of John Knox. Nina Sosanya’s ardent but dignified pleading and Oivia Vinall’s headlong ardour all combine an explosive mix. Outstanding.
Review: Platonov
James McArdle’s vibrant, sexy quixotically self-aware Platonov is just the star of this family of actors assembled for the three Chekhov plays at the National, with perfectly judged reactions from each other like a small repertory company. In David Hare’s vivid yet faithful version - compressed by half - it’s no small feat to have finally delivered a definitive sixth masterpiece of Chekhov’s.
Review: The Plough and the Stars
The plot’s shocking volte-faces, so perfectly realized here streaked with blood and comedy, make this O’Casey’s masterpiece. Stephen Kennedy’s dipsily detailed drunk is the great turn here in a cast where Judith Roddy, Justine Mitchell, Josie Walker, and Grainne Keenan also excel in this flawless production.
Review: Pigs and Dogs
In a quarter-hour we’re struck with a rich and head-spinning narrative of how same-sex culture’s been oppressed first by the west and now through European language. You end up stopping in outraged disbelief at this virulent legacy of colonialism. If you can’t see it, read it.
Review: Unreachable
A profoundly quizzical play about directorial and film-mogul silliness, using one liners and silliness to address these questions.
Review: Love and Information
Stunning ensemble play, Churchill’s flickering meditation on how we communicate and convey love and every other shade of being.
Review: No Villain
Superb premiere of Miller’s 1936 play showing more than glimpse of the later Miller and more autobiographically-based than any other work would be again.
Review: Sunset at the Villa Thalia
Making noise quietly, Campbell’s new play perhaps pulls a few punches because it believes in quiet. Ben Miles dominates the stage in this uneasy parable, and Elizabeth McGovern’s uproariously funny and pathos-ridden.
Review: Rehearsal for Murder
Clever piece by the Murder She Wrote team, set in 1989, mostly ingenious, mostly satisfying Whoddunit.
Review: Joan, Babs & Sheila Too
A stunning traversal of Joan Littlewood’s life by Gemskii and Conscious Theatre. Without her, there would never have been A Taste of Honey, Oh What a Lovely War, or much of postwar British theatre.
Review: The Importance of Being Ernest
Beautifully designed and sumptuous production where the palm goes to the older cast, in this fresh and vigorous production. Look out for matching buttonholes, silks and ensemble.
Review: All My Sons
Superb, pitch-perfect production from an amateur theatre renowned for the professionalism of everything from sets to acting.
Review: After Miss Julie
Provocative but absorbing take on Strindberg’s 1888 masterpiece. Fine cast led by Helen George make much of demob denouements.
Review: Blue/Orange
Thrilling revival of this absorbing still relevant 2000 play about abusing the already-abused in the name of psychiatry.
Review: The Deep Blue Sea
Helen McCrory plumbs the erotic despair of Hester Collyer’s abandoned woman in this absorbing revival of Rattigan’s masterpiece.
Review: Accidental Death of an Anarchist
In a stunning New Venture Theatre production Accidental Death of an Anarchist explodes with a cast of six. Rod Lewis directs
Review: Richard III
Whilst Ralph Fiennes reins in his Richard, making his violent misogyny all the more chilling, his demonic fun evaporates. But an exemplary cast, with Vanessa Redgrave light up Goold’s direction in a production that never drags.
Review: White Feather Boxer
Timely and fascinating play of a pacifist pugilist’s conscience, in 1967, and 1914 from the author of Hanging Hooke and Stella.
Review: Ross
Joseph Fiennes dazzles sotto-voce in his finest theatre performance to date, in this consummate revival of the troubling life of Lawrence of Arabia.
Review: Doctor Faustus
Kit-off Harington stars in this rewritten Marlowe piece, long on sex and violence but short on Marlowe. Intermittently brilliant.
Review: The Flick
Mesmerising exploration of three characters maintaining a failing cinema, heartbreakingly funny, mimetically riveting. One of the Nationals’ very finest new plays under the new regime.
Review: People Places and Things
Denise Gough’s award-winning performance centres this terrifying eddy of addiction and slipping recovery.
Review: Kenny Morgan
Superb take on Rattigan’s lover’s suicide attempts, that inspired Rattigan’s masterpiece The Deep Blue Sea.
Review: Human Animals
A thrillingly compressed dystopia crossing The Birds, and Caryl Churchill with draconian government opportunism.
Review: A View From Islington North
Intermittently thrilling plays from the urgent left, two premieres and a couple of small gems roughened by the tumble of Westminster and the Corporates that really must be seen - unless you’re Gideon.
Review: Elegy
Starring Barbara Flynn and Zoe Wannamaker, Nick Payne’s new play – a thrilling and devastating probe at our identity - picks up the threads of science, self and mortality from Constellations and The Art of Dying, marking his most ambitious play since the former.
Review: Cuttin’ It
Superb distillation of the costs of FGM to victims and victim-perpetrators, James reaches out to all in this searing two-hander.
Review: Behind the Front Lines; Warriors and Wives
A narrative piece of theatre weaving the story of a wife and a soldier under the conditions of war
Review: Brideshead Revisited
Bryony Lavery’s adaptation of Brideshead, the first for the stage dazzles with stagecraft and storyline but something’s lost tail-chasing the detail.
Review: Simon Says
A touching brief play scooped out of the air by two bright students with only a title to go on.
Review: Year Without Summer
Fascinating sideling glimpse of Romantic poets and writers through a chaise-long laced with gothic intent.
Review: Here All Night
Sam’s all night shiner, Beckett’s Wake and Cabaret. Haunting, funny, unmissable.
Review: Something Rotten
Scintillating subversive and original take on Hamlet’s unhappy uncle, weighed down by doubts and too many jokers. Beware of complicity.
Review: The Threepenny Opera
A coming-of-age for Rufus Norris, a wholly credible, cheekily interventionist Threepenny Opera with a few devastating critiques
Review: First Love
Conor Lovett lightens his pitch Becket’s exploration of lust, sexual disgust and the intolerable consequences of generation.
Review: The End
Conor Lovett rivets with a naturalistic pitch in this cut-down stand-up Beckett diminuendo of an ex-inmate’s prospects. More tour de force in a tour de farce of Beckett’s genius.
Review: And the Rope Still Tugging Her Feet
Compelling, downright funny yet tragic true narrative of the Kerry Baby affair of 1984. Caroline Burns Cooke triumphs as writer and actor.
Review: The Marlowe Papers
A diamond in Shakespeare’s or Marlowe’s ruff? Ros Barber’s novel adapted for the stage, starring vaulting Jamie Martin.
Review: A Good Jew
Keenly-anticipated new play by Jonathan Brown breaks new territory; it’s both theatrically challenging and disturbing.
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