Genre: Mainstream Theatre 0
Review: Inspector Morse: House of Ghosts
For Morse fans, this is still a low-yield vintage that can mature
Review: Blue/Orange
Absorbing revival – and rethinking - of this still relevant 2000 play about abusing the already-abused in the name of psychiatry.
Review: 2:22 A Ghost Story
Sharp, satisfying in itself, above all hauntingly intelligent in its questions.
Review: Hamlet
Kate Waters ensures the fight scene’s a suitable climax to Robert Hastie’s fleet production.
Review: Mistero Buffo
A thoroughly worthwhile revival, it still kicks and thrills in equal measure. Highly recommended.
Review: The Lightning Thief
There’s talents you’ll want to see and hear. And a stunning set whose production values spring surprises for the audience too. Highly recommended.
Review: Inter Alia
After 15 years away from the stage, Pike returns in a blaze of morals versus the law. Her triumph though is unequivocal.
Review: A. A. Milne The Truth About Blayds
A classic revival of a minor classic. Pacily directed and with a consummate cast, this production couldn’t be bettered
Review: David Lan The Land of the Living
The most moving and theatrically gripping new play I’ve seen for a long time, it’s also the most layered and completely realised. A world that invites ours to ask where on earth we come from.
Review: Cow/Deer
Emphatically theatre worth doing, worth attending, worth fighting to clarify and worth being changed for.
Review: Hamlet
An outstandingly thought-through Hamlet though, with more of the prince and play in it than I’ve seen. And Giles Terera’s is with the best of recent decades.
Review: Benny Ainsworth Vermin
The most riveting two-hander you’ll see this year; it’s not for the faint-hearted. Writing, acting and burned-off minimal staging draw us into hell, and its epiphanies. Outstanding.
Review: Natasha Cottriall (God Save My) Northern Soul
Time will deepen the shadows and writer/actor Natasha Cottriall shows this in the very last moment
Review: Natasha Cotriall (God Save My) Northern Soul
Time will deepen the shadows and writer/actor Natasha Cotriall shows this in the very last moment.
Review: The Chaos That Has Been and Will No Doubt Return
It’s hard not to love this exuberant 75-minute romp through Luton’s urban sprawl. It’s both exuberant and serious, warm and yet with a chill undercurrent of deprivation
Review: Deaf Republic
Its claustrophobia overwhelms and moves, whilst leaving Dead Centre room for yet another slant on Ilya Kaminsky’s imaginary.
Review: Death Comes to Pemberley
Stylishness in the fixtures, truth in the lower orders, some superb acting by the likes of Berger, Boyce, and Faulkner, as well as two couples with chemistry.
Review: Sense & Sensibility
Austen fans can feel they’re delivered the story’s heft, if not all its socially pinched circumstance. It’s a small gem.
Review: Adrian Lukis Being Mr Wickham
There’s nothing more charming or endearing in the West End this summer.
Review: Les Misérables
There’s not enough adjectives left to praise this. But there is a verb phrase: see it!
Review: John Joubert Jane Eyre, Grimeborn Opera
A gripping romantic opera premiere emerging right out of Dalston. Arcola’s Grimeborn have scored another first with a future.
Review: The Midnight Bell
An outstanding ballet by any standards. One that like its inspiration Patrick Hamilton will last.
Review: Extraordinary Women
For a bijou summer in a bottle, this can’t be beaten. Exquisite, painfully funny, and hinting at the depths Mackenzie found to his own chagrin. A gem.
Review: A Man For All Seasons
A must-see, one of the very finest plays to have reached the theatre this year.
Review: Chiara Atik Poor Clare
Sassy yet profound, probing yet exuberant, it asks all of us: No, don’t look at me. Look at you. A quiet must-see this summer.
Review: The Merry Wives of Windsor
Sean Holmes has conjured the most intelligently re-thought Merry Wives of recent years with a convincing take on Mistress Ford. The last few gestures in this show change everything that might follow.
Review: Lynn Nottage Intimate Apparel
Everything built up, like a corset, is unloosed. What we thought we knew we don’t. Outstanding.
Review: Sean Daniels The White Chip
The most entertaining life-saver you’ll see, whether you need it or not.
Review: Tim Price Nye
Through choreographic sweep, Tim Price crafts a necessary, traditional warning. A must-see with the finest last line since Good.
Review: Girl from the North Country
Girl from the North Country freights a world in a steam whistle. The sheer punch of talent doesn’t come much greater than this.
Review: Ghost Stories
Pure scary, not horror. There’s reasons Ghost Stories is on its second tour out of the West End. Here’s a convenient (and reasonable) way to see why.
Review: Claire Dowie H to He (I’m Turning into a man) Finborough
A must-see for anyone who loves breakthrough: genre-defying, then genre-defining theatre.
Review: 4.48 Psychosis
Sold out at the Court (you might queue for returns), but worth any pilgrimage to Stratford for.
Review: Claire Dowie See Primark and Die Finborough
There’s more than a touch of Ken (even more, Daisy) Campbell about the way Dowie structures her circular storytelling. Here it’s at its most consummate, most artful and repays re-reading to catch Dowie at your throat.
Review: Cruel Intentions
If ever you’ve been crossed in love, double-crossed yourself, or just crossing through, then this is for you. It’s June’s sizzle, all the way to Six, this September.
Review: Tolstoy/Phillip Breen Anna Karenina
Potentially a revelation, perhaps a classic: a fully-articulated world around Anna, and not just her ghost.
Review: Claire Dowie Why is John Lennon Wearing a Skirt?
If you see one Claire Dowie, this might be it.
Review: Claire Dowie Adult Child/Dead Child Finborough
Claire Dowie’s never mellowed, and remains essential: taut, inordinate, alone, unreconciled. In other words, see it.
Review: Mario Banushi Taverna Miresia
Not even the world theatre powerhouse of the Coronet has hosted anything like this. Mario Banushi must be seen.
Review: In Praise of Love
There’s every reason to see this rare gem, now added permanently to Rattigan’s finer plays.
Review: Billy Barrett and Ellice Stevens After The Act Royal Court Downstairs
Most of all this musical is necessary. With four outstanding multi-roling performers, a message both affirmative and defiant; and with a fierce joy that makes it a must-see.
Review: Timberlake Wertenbaker Little Brother
bsorbs and remains indelible. Stella Powell-Jones is helming a quietly radical shift in Jermyn Street. And she’s taking the audience with her.
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: Jon Fosse Einkvan
An opaque, compelling gem from Det Norske Teatret and its director Horn; and the wonderful Coronet.
Review: Jez Butterworth Parlour Song
A probing revival, James Hadrill’s production and Emily Bestow’s set inject a haunting into these people. A cooling tower about to implode: it’s Naveed Khan’s gaunt intimation of Ned’s soul that lingers.
Review: Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky The Gang of Three
The wittiest, wisest play I’ve seen this year, it deserves a long run, not least so we can absorb its lessons. Unmissable.
Review: Samuel Rees and Gabriele Uboldi Lessons on Revolution
It’s intersectional, it’s personal, it’s interactive: all great reasons to see this play: unless you’re a board member of BP, or the government.
Review: The Brightening Air
Redemption has long been a McPherson theme. Here, you have to dig as deep as that well, and bring in a lot of muck. Drinking it off isn’t always best-timed. Or by the right people. McPherson is haunted and haunter.
Review: Murder on the Orient Express
Even if you don’t like Christie it’s worth seeing not just for an exceptional – and exceptionally-acted – production, but for moral questions that now, as in 1934, need answers in the face of dictators.
Review: Heisenberg
If flawed it’s a fascinating, intimate piece given new life and with luck a new performing tradition. The most compelling two-hander now playing.
Review: The Inseparables
A transfixingly beautiful production, with often superb acting, especially from Lara Manela
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 Shark is Broken
Essential theatre for anyone who enjoys new plays with more wit than several comedies. A must-see.
Review: The Importance of Being Oscar
Alastair Whatley takes the joy of the sorrow, and makes it his own. Unmissable if you can squeeze in.
Review: Calamity Jane
See this for the onstage musicians and above all Carrie Hope Fletcher giving Calamity soul as well as heart. Highly recommended.
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: Dear England
With its nimbus of inevitability as national storytelling, it’s still groundbreaking.
Review: Playhouse Creatures
When Doll Common claims “Life’s like a storm. Don’t get in its way” one thinks of the stoicism of those in the eye of it, and their audience. A consummate revival.
Review: Men’s Business
A quietly phenomenal, ground-breaking play, blistering in sumps of silence. See it.
Review: Cry-Baby
Easily the most joyous musical we’ll see this side midsummer, Cry-Baby in this production blazes fit to set another fire in Dalston
Review: Jane Upton (the) Woman
A ground-breaking play, fully deserving of its London run. Catch it there.
Review: Macbeth
ETT’s gallimaufry stimulates, frustrates, occasionally fascinates. A more selective through-line would have revealed a mineral gleam, a new earth of tyranny.
Review: Alterations
We must be grateful for this compelling revival, and wait for more from the National’s Black archive.
Review: Peter James Picture You Dead
Twists are delicious. If you enjoy Peter James, or thrillers with a light touch, don’t hesitate. Solidly recommended.
Review: One Day When We Were Young
This grips anyone who can’t let first love go, anyone who stares homeward even now, wild with all regret. Unmissable.
Review: Teatro dei Gordi: Pandora
It begs questions: what couldn’t we do, if placed outside our own comfort station in life? Essential theatre. essential questions. A gem.
Review: Son of a Bitch
Anna Morris heightens tragedy and misogyny with gags, humour and farcical horror. Do catch this fleeting gem, running for just two more weeks before it touches down
Review: Khawla Ibraheem A Knock on the Roof
What and who can you choose is something more people are forced to decide as the century rolls. But Mariam’s plight is specific, ongoing, now far worse and essential viewing.
Review: Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey
An astonishing theatrical vision blended with a fascinating story that combines into an exceptional evening of theatre.
Review: Chekhov Three Sisters
There’s a rapt self-communing in this production of Three Sisters. A must-see, it glows long after you’ve left it.
