Review: The Dresser
The best revival we’re likely to see in a very long time, with outstanding performances from Stott and Shearsmith, with performances as strong in their way from Cadell and Thorpe, and not a weak link. It’s a masterly play from the inside, and this consummate portrayal of near-disaster ending in a successful one, is as good as it gets.
Review: Burning Bridges
Asperger-conditioned Sarah’s reels off her interests: ‘TV, One Direction, Bears, Ghandi, Oral Sex not necessarily in that order.’ This remarkable, necessary play explores the crisis provoked by Sarah’s single atypical act, and how it shows she’s improving - leaving domestic devastation. Shindler beautifully judges the pathos and development in each of her three main protagonists.
Review: A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur
A first-rate revival, the best we’re likely to see though hopefully not the last of late Williams. Oakley’s hinted there’s more to revive. Meanwhile, don’t miss this legacy-changing production.
Review: Strife
An outstanding and revelatory production of an outstanding play, whose relevance moves beyond even the tortured steel industry of today’s Wales or Britain to other professions undergoing exploitation, conflict of interest and barbaric intervention.
Review: Relatively Speaking
Not a creak in this sparkling production: Liza Goddard possesses an innate sense of how this should go: straight, elegant sang-froid touched with just the right amount of welcome; Powell inhabits the higher bluster; Antony Eden pitches it just right; Lindsey Campbell exudes recently thrown-off gawkiness. Herford knows what he’s about: pace, panache, and more than a dose of Ayckbourn’s generosity of spirit, which glows here as telling the world how it was going to be.
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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Here All Night
Sam’s all night shiner, Beckett’s Wake and Cabaret. Haunting, funny, unmissable.
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: The Bald Prima Donna
Spirited pacey revival of Ionesco’s first play, with one stand-out performance and superbly idiomatic one. A perfect introduction to the playwright.
Review: Boy
A superbly bleached-out vision of a seventeen-year-old’s prospects on a stunning conveyer-belt set. Not a comfortable but necessary seventy minutes.
Review: An Enemy of the People
Howard Davies directs a fine cast led by Hugh Bonneville in Chichester's generously human revival of the ultimate whistleblowing drama
Review: Broken Glass
Superb revival of Miller's late classic. Jerry Lyne's production is one of NVT's finest.
Review: Glengarry Glenn Ross
Riveting must-see revival of Mamet's breakthrough play at the Rialto directed by Roger Kay
Review: The Caretaker
Timothy Spall leads a strong cast in this magisterial, beautifully-orchestrated revival of Pinter's breakthrough play.
Review: King Lear
Michael Pennington triumphs in his tragedy in this superbly clear King Lear directed by Max Webster. Gavin Fowler’s Edgar rises with him.
Review: Cock
An exploration of sexuality within the 21st century confines of unconfined and ill defined relationships.
Review: A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride
" wonderful words, masterfully adapted, brilliantly brought to life"
Review: The Hampstead Murder Mystery!
Like 39 Steps, but with more actors. And more scenes. And more steps.
Review: The Andromeda Paradox
X marks the spot. Make space for Tom Neenan's latest journey into the unknown ..
Review: The Element In The Room: A Radioactive Musical Comedy About The Life And Death Of Marie Curie
The very height of (science) experimental theatre. Radium: rah-rah-radical ...
Review: An Oak Tree
From little acorns ... a story of loss, regret .. and the possibilties of roads not taken.
Review: Hard Graft
We are all part of families, with ancestors stretching back generations - giving us our identity
Review: Bloominauschwitz
The central character in James Joyce's 'Ulysses' must write his own story ...
Review: Thirst Of The Salt Mountain
A raw new staging of one of the 20th century's most surreal plays
Review: Stalin’s Daughter
Stalin's daughter has escaped to the West. But has she really broken free?
Review: A Midsummer Knight’s Dream…What?!
If you are looking for something interesting, look no further
Review: “Just let the wind untie my perfumed hair…”
Tahríríh. Persian. Feminist. Poetess. Activist. Born: 1815. Executed: 1852. Martyr.
Review: Great Detectives of Old Time Radio Live
Suspense, drama and well-timed sound effects—everything you could want from radio drama.
Review: Eleanor’s Story: An American Girl in Hitler’s Germany
A gripping story about an American girl growing up in Hitler’s Germany
Review: ODE – Voices of Gallipoli and the First World War
A rehearsed reading of selected writings from the First World War.
Review: Anatole De Latour – The Singing French Detective
Anatole De Latour is one eccentric but talented Interpol detective
Review: Rock And A Hard place
" a small scale show that fitted perfectly onto the Three In Ten stage"
Review: The Rain That Washes
The transition to black-majority rule in Zimbabwe, seen through the eyes of a teenager.
Review: Albert Einstein: Relativitively Speaking
The life and discoveries of Einstein. A lecture by the man himself - with music ...
Review: The Black Cat – The Small World of Aristide Bruant
Paris is the city of lies and spies in this tragic tale of star-crossed lovers.
Review: FOMO: The Fear Of Missing Out
You’re listening to the Zoe Show where we explore Zoe Macdonald’s ‘malaise’ of FOMO, or the Fear Of Missing Out.
Review: La Leçon
A twisted tale of what happens when an innocent student meets a bumbling, yet passionate professor…en français.
Review: Bewitching Macbeth
A deeper look into the psyche of Macbeth through the fusion of dance and text.
Review: The Umbilical Brothers: A KiDs ShoW (Not Suitable for Children)
Don't take your kids - or you will have a lot of explaining to do...
Review: A Brief History of Beer
Take a journey through time and space to learn about this ancient beverage.
Review: Season to Taste
Nine women voice our inner thoughts, fears and hopes over a nine-course meal.
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