Review: The Madness of George III
Surely the Sarah Mann Company’s finest hour, overcoming the BOAT’s wondrous yet treacherous acoustics – and weather. Alan Bennet’s 1991 The Madness of George III is their most ambitious, most jaw-dropping production. This magnificent revival poses even more urgent questions. A twitch on the thread for all of us.
Review: Karen Wong and Lance Mok Flute and Piano Recital
Karen Wong’s strong rounded tone is beautifully centred. Lance Mok's playing of Prokofiev and Hindemith is rightly celebrated, as are both artists’ curiosity and desire to probe untapped repertoire.
Review: Then, Now and Next
The Book and Lyrics are peerless for this scale, or indeed anywhere: and we can only look forward to much more from Orton and Robyns. This is a heart-rending, heart-warming piece. Laughter certainly, tears, yes those too. The must-see musical of the summer.
Review: The Accrington Pals
Actors and director can take pride in mounting this intensely moving play, especially in the sheer flow they all bring to Act Two, blazing an arc of ever-growing tensions. It could carry anywhere. ACT did it some service, and must know it.
Review: Goodbye Jolene
A gentle tribute to singing, its people and touching disabilities that affect us all (in this case one in seven), it’s a major sixth in Siobhan Nicholas’ own augmented chord of plays. If you’re attracted by any of the themes, it’s a must-see, but it’s worth anyone’s 90 minutes.
Review: The Swell
An absorbing play, as breathtaking as one of its surfing epiphanies. The Swell will break over your head. Let it. You’ll come up for air changed. A small masterpiece.
Review: Dear England
There’s a sacramental thrill as you enter the NT’s Olivier: both sci-fi and ancient Greek. James Graham Dear England, directed by Rupert Goold, is like that: tackling something seen as almost too sacred, at once transcendent for many; but so impacted by nationalist hubris it’s become sclerotic. We enter the game at a historically pivotal moment. Where English football will never be the same. Outstanding.
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: Des Kapital
Revolutionary songs sung by a lusty audience in the heart of Hove. A revolution in itself. If you’ve any sympathy, antipathy or subversive sense of humour towards a way at laughing at history’s atrocities, and thinking there must be a better way - this is the show for you.
Review: Surfing the Holyland
A profoundly joyous and a joyously profound show, touching on all those issues of assimilation, marriage drift and acceptance; as well as self-discovery. For most of all as Erin Hunter brings out with sparkling wit and straight looks, this is about women’s agency. Dive in, you’ll surface with a whoop.
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: A Brief List of Everyone Who Died
“Death is the most natural thing in the world.” Not to five—year-old Gracie, whose life of resistance as Gracie, Grace but mostly Graciela Jacob Marx Rice traces in A Brief List of Everyone Who Died. Yet again Finborough have mounted – and nurtured – a first-class work miles from larger fare that fades. Do rush to see it.
Review: Under the Kunde Tree
There’s much to learn here, and as theatrical spectacle this is the intimate intimating the epic. Clarisse Makundul has given us a powerful work, and I’d urge you to see it.
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: How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
This is certainly the best attempt yet to revive this musical with a new accent, and the way to see this musical. With such a company, see it anyway. It’ll prod you with questions and send you singing for answers.
Review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Enough questions with the child, cruelty and othering, to raise questions that don’t dissolve in a dream. Yet there’s light enough to resolve this too. A warmth between the lovers somehow drags us out from the mask of branches Terry revealingly doffs at the end. Absorbing and a must-see.
Review: Takács Quartet at Glyndebourne
Consummate performances of a poignant selection of string music
Review: The Way Old Friends Do
In a show celebrating the revival of friendship, twice, through the love of a non-binary ABBA tribute band, it’s good to know who you can rely on. You can rely on this scintillating, bittersweet play too. Absolutely recommended.
Review: Dancing at Lughnasa
A flawless cast and creative team gather to a point in Josie Rourke’s often meticulously faithful revival, and disperse. This is the only play this year I’d willingly see again soon. Outstanding.
Review: And Then They Came For Me
A multi-genre piece that can play anywhere, and needed now more than ever. Both to challenge denialists and most of all to illustrate the inhumanity of governments like ours towards refugees
Review: Sugar Coat
Essential theatre. Five singer-actors, memorably punchy music, witty and heartbreaking – most of all groundbreaking – storytelling. 90 minutes of this and you’ll know just what to do with the patriarchy.
Review: The Winter’s Tale
An enormously satisfying reading that happens to be groundbreaking. It’s Sean Holmes’ finest production yet.
Review: Heathers
Rethought, rejigged, bright with humour and shadowed with plangency, this is the Heathers we’re meant to have
Review: The Journey to Venice
Wiebke Green possesses the measure and tempo as well as delicacy of Bjorn Vik’s work. An exquisite gem worth seeing more than many larger, longer, louder shows.
Review: Titus Andronicus
One of the Globe’s most lucid recent productions; and the most consistently-realised aesthetic. It knows what it is: a stunningly thought-through, musically inspired production.
Review: Fisherman’s Friends: The Musical
A glorious night out, a wonderful cast and in Shahmir a mesmerising star in the making.
Review: Duet For One
Kempinski has crafted an enduring drama of what it’s like to lose the joy of a life worth living.
Review: Sound of the Underground
It’ll remain one of the break-out, breakthrough, certainly ground-breaking shows this year.
Review: St Nicholas Elia Stavrou Piano Recital
Stavrou’s a deliriously gifted musician with a focus on French piano, and Fauré in particular
Review: Watch on the Rhine
Hellman’s uneasy drama, reaching out to our own quandaries, has answers that stay news. A must-see.
Review: St Nicholas Oliver Nelson and Vasileios Rakitzis Violin Sonatas Recital
First-rank playing, worthy of any venue including the Wigmore
Review: Rocky Horror Show
The most lucid-voiced Rocky I’ve seen and on balance strongest cast for a long time. Two great reasons to return, or adventure for your first awakening on Planet Transexual.
Review: Hakawatis Women of the Arabian Nights
Original, bawdy, exploratory, seductive and elegaic in equal measure. A Faberge egg, continually hatching.
Review: James and the Giant Peach
With memorable music and ensemble singing added to a first-rate BLT production, there’s no better Christmas show in town.
Review: Mother Goose
This is more than panto: it’s an affirmation of something that panto here welcomes in, in our time uniquely invoking layers as only Elizabethan/Jacobean drama can.
Review: 12:37
The Finborough produces marvels, though this one, without losing its dazzling, tight DNA, deserves the widest possible transfer.
Review: Henry V
Bracing, fresh, wholly re-thought in every line, emerging with gleaming power, menace and wit. And I defy anyone not to smile at this new take on Shakespeare’s downbeat ending.
Review: David Copperfield
A paean to live theatre; soaring seasonal spirit, struck with tenderness, joy, sorrow, plangent affirmation.
Review: Dinner With Groucho
McGuinness produces one of his finest works wrought from the sawdust of others and rendered it the burst of stars that irradiate the end.
Review: From Here to Eternity
Grabs you from the towards the close of Act One and doesn’t let go: from here to curtain we’re in heart-stopping eternity.
Review: Pericles
Kelly Hunter’s team have wrought a miracle of flight, realised by an outstanding cast who here at least, make us rank Pericles with Shakespeare’s other late Romances.
Review: St Nicholas Evelyne Harrison and Zhanna Kemp Saxophone/Piano Recital
A rare line-up, and a delight.
Review: All Saints Sara Oschlag Quartet Recital
A sovereign group, with Sara Oschlag a wonderful vocalist at its core
Review: John Collins St Nicholas Organ Recital
Yet another superb Collins recital. A hidden luxury we should enjoy.
Review: Michiko Shimanuki Piano Recital at All Saints, Hove
Consummate exploratory playing by a composer-pianist wholly inside these idioms.
Review: Chapel Royal Peter Sulski and Philippa Mo in Concert Mozart Violin/Piano Recital October 18th 2022
Sulski is sovereign in the viola, and Mo proves a radiant partner. An outstanding recital.
Review: SMC Concert Unitarian October 15th 2022
I can’t remember such unalloyed delight in an SMC concert.
Review: Unitarian, Kevin Allen Piano Recital
Kevin Allen stands among other composer-pianists who essay this territory: for whom the music is essential as composer and a language to breathe in.
Review: Chapel Royal Jane Faulkner and Gary Peacock in Mozart Violin/Piano Concert
Consummate Mozart performers - with a revelatory unskeining of the Lili Boulanger.
Review: Michele Roszak and Lynda Spinney: Love – Its Depths of Joy and Despair
A terrific way to blow the autumn leaves
Review: Yoko Ono and Paul Gregory Piano/Guitar Recital
Revelatory and a spellbinding introduction than in these performers hands, couldn’t be bettered.
Review: Karen Wong Solo flute, piccolo & baroque flute
Karen Wong, solo or playing in trio, is clearly a driving force of new repertoire, often the prelude to a great career
Review: The Doctor
A triumph for all concerned. Juliet Stevenson even gains in stature. Robert Icke’s revival could hardly go better than this.
Review: I, Joan
The title role goes to Isobel Thom, making their professional debut: the greatest I’ve ever seen.
Review: Tam O’ Shanter – Tales and Whisky
Burns' and other gothic poetry and stories told with a dram of whisky
Review: Movin’ Melvin Brown: A Man, A Magic, A Music
75 minutes of music history through stories and tap dancing
Review: Fruit Flies Like a Banana
No banana could fly as fast as these three virtuoso performers in this must see show as they combine virtuoso musicianship with acrobatics and dance
Review: Rebel
You may not know where you are going, but they promise it won’t be boring… and they deliver
Review: The Tempest
A joyous production, that without its gimmicky close, could certainly furnish a way in for many
Review: Jack Absolute Flies Again
What Richard Bean and Oliver Chris manage is homage, both to Sheridan’s shade, his early bawdy, and despite anything a memorial to those who laughed at themselves to death. A must-see.
Review: Much Ado About Nothing
This isn’t the most revelatory Much Ado, but the most consummate and complete for a while.
Review: Dad’s Army
You feel you’ve been part of an invited audience at one of the original TV productions
Review: Shake the City
A real play bursting out of its hour-plus length; with complex interaction, uncertain journeys, each character developing a crisis of isolation only resolved by sisterhood
Review: Waitress
Halfpenny raises soaring music theatre, an ounce of gold in the throat and stars six inches above it.
Review: Henry VIII
A wonderful score and musicians, above all Bea Segura’s titanic act of shrivelling, make this a must-see.
Review: Now That’s What I Call A Lot Of Songs About Science
John Hinton performs hilarious songs of science from a very extensive repertoire
Review: Cocky and the Tardigrades
Bonkers brilliance. Cocky couldn’t have been premiered with two more stunning actors, and the author’s flawless stepping-in remains remarkable.
Review: Spirit of Woodstock 2 – The Sequel
There’s no greater writer/performer working in Brighton, or Sussex, and Spirit of Woodstock Parts I and 2 is Jonathan Brown’s most dazzling show to date.
Review: The Misfortune of the English
Pamela Carter’s schoolboys embody human connectedness, warmth, a final camaraderie before the chill of history. Unmissable.
Review: The Corn is Green
There’s many reasons to see Williams’ finest play. To realise our potential it’s not enough to have dreams, but for someone to show us what those dreams could be.
Review: The Rise and Fall of Little Voice
The Rise and Fall of Little Voice sings out of damage into heartbreak and redemption. Those who don’t know the play or its outcome should see this, even those who have.
Review: Michele Roszak and Lynda Spinney: Spring’s Arrival
A terrific way to blow the cherry blossom
Review: The Paradis Files
Not so much an event as a concentration of Errollyn Wallen’s genius celebrating the life of blind composer Maria Theresia van Paradis, in Graeae’s world-class production
Review: Private Lives
Private Lives can never disappoint: it plays itself and as far as it’s a work of verbal tennis this production won’t pall either
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: Beautiful
Outstanding, and outstandingly transferred as a tour that brings its stature with it.
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