Review: Communicating Doors
An excellent revival and the best chance to see this remarkable thriller-cum-farce-cum-meditation.
Genre: Theatre
Review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
An exciting sense of being at the cusp of a new generation. There’s no knowing where this Dream might end.
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: Julius Caesar
If you’re a habitual groundling, go before this production vanishes back on tour
Review: Waitress
Halfpenny raises soaring music theatre, an ounce of gold in the throat and stars six inches above it.
Review: The Dance of Death
Highlights the truth of its bleak laughter. Humane Strindberg. Now there’s a thing.
Review: King Lear
Rarely has a Cordelia and Fool scaled such equal terms with such a Lear, rendering a kind of infinity.
Review: That Is Not Who I Am
Lucy Kirkwood prophesies what’s in store with savage fury, and no-one’s exempt, least of all her.
Review: The Southbury Child
Perfectly freighted; each character pitched with just enough choice to make us wonder what life, not Stephen Beresford will do with them. Outstanding.
Review: The False Servant
It’s not just gender-swerving but role-swerving that threatens sexual and social order. Surprises light up even the last fade.
Review: Cluedo
An object lesson in comic timing; a steep cut above the ‘real’ whodunnits we’re likely to see this year or next.
Review: Cancelling Socrates
Howard Brenton touching eighty is at the height of his powers. Tom Littler has assembled a pitch-perfect cast, reuniting two from his outstanding All’s Well. This too.
Review: Consent
Raine balances articulate ferocity with its opposite: a broken plea. Scott Roberts’ revival improves on the NT premiere. In his hands Consent’s a small classic.
Review: Henry VIII
A wonderful score and musicians, above all Bea Segura’s titanic act of shrivelling, make this a must-see.
Review: The Father and the Assassin
There’s no finer dramatisation of India’s internal conflicts. Shubham Saraf’s Gandhi-killer Godse stands out in this thrilling ensemble and storms it too.
Review: The Last
Chittenden’s done a great service not only to Mary Shelley’s novel, but to the way we imagine. And Amy Kidd’s exemplary.
Review: Straight Line Crazy
Danny Webb gives the performance of his life. Ralph Fiennes is coiled majesty. Two-and-a-half hours of such material have rarely been so thrilling.
Review: Underdogs
The latest play by Brian Mitchell (Lord God, Ministry of Biscuits) and Joseph Nixon (The Shark is Broken)
Review: Airswimming
Superb revival of Charlotte Jones’s play about two women incarcerated for fifty years for bring different. With a standing ovation of such force that convention had to be broken with the actors forced back on stage.
Review: Marys Seacole
No simple swapping of heirs and originals, but a dream of the future by Seacole, or equally present dreams raking the past. Do see this.
Review: Moral Panic
A film censor navigates turbulent times in his work and at home - a comic one-hander with some horror thrown in.
Review: Cock
A superb revival of Bartlett’s warmest, most ground-breaking, perhaps most enduring play so far.
Review: A Very Great Mischief
Winner of the Rialto New Writing Scratch 2020. Look out for this play when it returns.
Review: Room
As a condensation and enactment of Woolf’s seminal text this can’t be improved on. The outstanding one-person show I’ve seen this Fringe.
Review: Hay Fever
An exceptional production in so many ways, this Hay Fever boasts some superb acting, on occasion great aplomb
Review: God of Carnage
Acting here is tighter than any version I’ve seen. This revival of a modern classic has to be the best of the Fringe so far.
Review: Accidental Birth of an Anarchist
A thoroughly absorbing play whose polemical agency is none the less tempered by the people it’s refracted through.
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: Anne Boleyn
If it’s drama you’re after in Brighton Fringe, this is one of the two or three essential stops. Thrilling, authoritative, with Greene the jewel in a sparkling ensemble.
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 Homecoming
Simply put: go see this if you’ve any feeling for postwar drama. It’s theatre on the rack and do we need it!
Review: The Misfortune of the English
Pamela Carter’s schoolboys embody human connectedness, warmth, a final camaraderie before the chill of history. Unmissable.
Review: For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy
Turns the bleakness of six young men into a celebration of – for now – coming through
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: Hangmen
Assured, idiomatic performances. And Martin McDonagh’s distinction resonates in a manner peculiar to him alone.
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: 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: Tom Fool
Pitch-perfect and compelling. Sometimes knowing your prison walls too much can drive you mad.
Review: The Marriage of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
Such exquisite works find their time; speak to it again and again and again.
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.
Review: When We Dead Awaken
Ibsen’s elusive masterpiece is so rarely performed seeing it is an imperative. Played with such authority as here, in Norwegian and English, it’s not a luxury but a must-see.
Review: Unsanctioned/Measure 2 Measure
You must see this intriguing, ingenious and superbly acted double bill.
Review: An Hour and a Half Late
Don’t miss this authentic, touching, devastatingly comic anatomy of a marriage as soufflé, supremely served by Rhys-Jones and Dee.
Review: THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL & MR HYDE
A highly charged reframing of the age-old mystery and horror of the pursuit of pleasure.
Review: Dark Sublime
Sublime acting, light-filled production. Do see this quirky, off-beat play given its finest outing so far.
Review: The Da Vinci Code
Actually improves on Brown with theatrical humour and bold gestures; with a set that tells the story almost as much as the strong cast.
Review: Two Billion Beats
Two Billion Beats was bursting with promise before. Now it delivers with a visceral yes.
Review: Quentin Crisp: Naked Hope
Ask yourself this. If there were no praise or blame – who would I be?
Review: Measure for Measure
Immerse yourself in Blanche McIntyre’s quizzical production. You’ll come nearer to this play.
Review: The Tempest
Do see this Tempest, not only subtly outstanding, but pulsing with human connectivity and warmth.
Review: The Play That Goes Wrong
A play about amateurs no amateur company should even dare contemplate. There’s genius in the timing of all this. Outstanding.
Review: The Peabody Chronicles
A delightful piece of online drama from an enchanting bunch of actors
Review: Footfalls & Rockaby
Charlotte Emmerson and Sian Phillips make their parts indelible, and add to Beckett’s stock of pity, stoicism and a window on death. Outstanding.
Review: The Cat and the Canary
If you’re a Classic Thriller Theatre Company fan, don’t hesitate. Though we can be grateful to Bill Kenwright for trying out these creaky creepies, a serious bit of thought ought to go in to just what genres they are first.
Review: Hamlet
Jumbo’s Hamlet strips out accretions and ghosts you into asking who or what Hamlet is. See it if you possibly can.
Review: Absent Friends
If you can book, beg or otherwise snaffle a ticket, you won’t find a more satisfying production anywhere in Brighton this month. Outstanding.
Review: Macbeth
Building out of Macbeth a recurring epic of structural violence not ended with one overthrow, sets the seal on this outstanding production.
Review: Heathers
Sometimes the dark is light enough. Meanwhile enjoy an exceptional cast and talent you’ll long to see again in something finer.
Review: Little Wimmin
An adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel Little Women by all-female performance art collective Figs in Wigs
