Genre: Mainstream Theatre 0
Review: The Sound of Music
Phenomenal singing all round. A more than solid recommendation for that alone.
Review: The Two Noble Kinsmen
We’re looking at a bright Book of Hours. Barrie Rutter’s done it profound service, adding a warmth and agency that opens up this pageant. This is hopefully just the first of many such he’ll bring to the Globe.
Review: Barber Shop Chronicles
Barber Shop Chronicles is a breath-taking revelation for those of us who had small inkling of a world in miniature.
Review: Antony and Cleopatra
Supremely worth it to see a pair so famous weighing equal in their own balance, perhaps for the first time.
Review: Frankenstein (alternate version)
The acting scales cliff-edges of unreason. One remembers the scale of betrayal and loss of redemption. Benedict Cumberbatch here is Frankenstein, Jonny Lee Miller the Creature. The alternate version aired first is still available.
Review: #AIWW The Arrest of Ai WeiWei
Brenton powerfully concertinas a continent’s politics and one artist’s refraction of it. Wong is outstanding
Review: Andrew Lloyd-Webber 50th Birthday Live from the Royal Albert Hall, 1998
The great discovery was the multi-roling Marcus Lovett, sexy and lethal, able to attack several roles and convince you he was born for them, even into them.
Review: Frankenstein
The acting scales cliff-edges of unreason. One remembers the scale of betrayal and loss of redemption
Review: Romeo and Juliet
Completeness is just one reason to cherish this clean-driven clear-headed production
Review: Twelfth Night
Tamsin Greig’s extremes as Malvolia mark the first intimations of the terrible and define this production. The ground’s shifted.
Review: Tiger Country
Tells us more truthfully then any play has, the heroism that hardens, the sacrifice that endures.
Review: The Winter’s Tale
Far more than a curate’s egg, this production reveals things we’ve never seen
Review: The Phantom of the Opera
The Albert Hall’s sovereign production, unlikely to be surpassed particularly with the special encore.
Review: Treasure Island
First-rate theatre. In Joshua James’ Ben Gunn and above all Pasy Ferran’s Jim, we see stars rising quicker than Arthur Darvill’s superb Silver can point them out.
Review: Hamlet
In Michelle Terry’s quicksilver, quick-quipping Hamlet, much has been proved, from interpretive to gender fluidity in tragic action, that sets a privilege on being in at a beginning.
Review: Wonderland
Outstanding. Surely the definitive study of the dignity of physical labour, and breaking of its amity.
Review: I and You
Will leave you in a heap and wonder what else Lauren Gunderson has written that comes near this.
Review: Women Beware Women
A stylish, timely production which redefines how we experience Middleton.
Review: Afterplay
Miraculously-attuned. A wafer-thin but absolutely genuine slice of Chekhov. Do see it.
Review: Quartet
Like The French Lieutenant’s Woman, there are now two endings to Quartet. You must see this if you know the film only, or care about music, ageing, friendship and achingly lost love.
Review: Shoe Lady
Katherine Parkinson inhabits that breaking through the office crust asphyxiating us
Review: Lipstick
Performances and play that should turn us upside down. Do make a detour for this brave. tremulously beautiful coming of love.
Review: Not Quite Jerusalem
An enduring little classic of Englishness on the turn, out of the ideal-exhausted Seventies and on the edge of darkness.
Review: Far Away
Our greatest playwright since Beckett and Pinter. An outstanding revival. Hesitating?
Review: The Dog Walker
I want to know what life, not just Paul Minx will do with his characters afterwards. So will you.
Review: The Taming of the Shrew
See it and you’ll never think of the Shrew without this groundbreaking stab at the dreams of men.
Review: Death of England
This work never loses its charge, its own rapturous arrival Spall gives the performance of his career so far.
Review: Albion
Victoria Hamilton still dominates, but Albion’s a fine ensemble piece. Goold has given Albion the air it needs: an unsettling parable on forcing an identity of ourselves.
Review: Blood Brothers
The blend of definitive and new cast members in a recent classic has overwhelming impact: as story, as lyric fable, as terrible moral for these distracted times.
Review: You Stupid Darkness!
Bleakly funny, with flickers of tragedy, to make you see how redemptive kindness is
Review: Scenes with girls
Scenes with girls owns a buzz, a life, a difference about loving that gives it a sliver of unique.
Review: Three Sisters
This spectacular production beats with a fervour and purpose few adaptations achieve. Ellams has made Three Sisters new.
Review: Swive
A Hilliard rather than Holbein, it’s the velocity of Elizabeth’s survival that enthrals
Review: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
The three lead actors, divas and a superb cast give this production its beating pink heart.
Review: The Duchess of Malfi
The scalpel and scruple of class and coolness breaks into tragedy and gifts us three outstanding moments
Review: Hunger
An exemplary, scrupulous production so starkly contemporary, it makes Hunger contemporary forever
Review: #We Are Arrested
Peter Hamilton Dyer carries this celebration of the conscience to be fully human
Review: Present Laughter
The finale is grounded in silences; an almost tragic awareness of the nature of the Essendines’ love. Outstanding.
Review: Richard III
This production could draw out the poison of being dead serious in terminal bursts of laughter
Review: My Brilliant Friend Parts One and Two
Cusack and McCormack give the performances of their lives
Review: As You Like It
For Lucy Phelps and Sophie Khan Levy above all, this is a joyful As You Like It.
Review: A Letter to a Friend in Gaza
Amos Gitai’s curating hope from the ruins, impelling the audience to construct a narrative.
Review: A Day in the Death of Joe Egg
Over 50 years on, this still sets benchmarks. Its power to enthral, to appal can never date.
Review: All’s Well That Ends Well
Hannah Morrish’s Helena shines in this achingly desperate, quietly beautiful production.
Review: The Lady Vanishes
A first-class production. Crisply paced, beautifully detailed, this ensemble is flawless, the finest Bill Kenwright’s team have produced
Review: Little Baby Jesus
Anyone seeing this play will be grateful they’ll never feel quite the same way about London, young people or language again.
Review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
This surely is the greatest Dream since Peter Brook’s landmark 1970 production.
Review: Frankenstein
There’s a clean sharp fusion between these two writers that heralds something special.
Review: The Stornoway Way
An intriguing adaptation of a novel which captures the loneliness of an alcoholic man, in a beautiful landscape that only lights a fire withing him when he leaves it
