Genre: Theatre 0
Review: Love Love Love
Epic eavesdropping casts that ultimate spell: reading ourselves by flashes of lightning.
Review: Amadeus
In the most spectacular production imaginable, Lucian Msamati’s supremely crafted lead sets off the quicksilver of his rival Adam Gillen.
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: Beauty and the Beast
Nothing so convincing has been done with this legend. It deserves many revivals.
Review: Shoe Lady
Katherine Parkinson inhabits that breaking through the office crust asphyxiating us
Review: Groomed
A scorching autobiographical tale of abuse that manages to tell us the story of the abused as well as introduce us to the teacher responsible.
Review: Contractions
A fascinating take on a fast paced modern play that truly picks apart the commercialization of our employee status.
Review: Les Blancs
A superb realization of Lorraine Hansberry's unfinished masterpiece - a classic of Ibsenite proportions
Review: The Spanish Tragedy
The OFS are taking flight with the best scratch nights the Elizabethans never had.
Review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
This surely is the greatest Dream since Peter Brook’s landmark 1970 production.
Review: The Merchant of Venice
A fleet traversal memorable for insights the company bring during and after their performance of it
Review: The Understudy
Do catch it, and match the feelgood price with nudging theatres towards opening night.
Review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
With Baum’s direction they and we discover new thresholds, new anatomies
Review: The Merry Wives of Windsor
One of the two most cogent, most fun Merry Wives of recent years.
Review: The Madness of George III
This magnificent revival poses even more urgent questions. A twitch on the thread for all of us.
Review: Coriolanus
A Coriolanus memorable for politics sinewed with personal forces: an active interrogation of democracy. And in Josie Rourke’s production Tom Hiddleston’s someone riven by intimations of his true self
Review: Waiting for Hamlet
A delight for the ears as two haunting characters of Shakespeare’s Hamlet explore things Kingly before one makes his final, and first entrance.
Review: Electrolyte
A pulsating tale of a mental breakdown in a gig theatre piece that works on all levels.
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: A Separate Peace
Stoppard looks at society’s phantom limb ethic. Even when it’s gone it aches, and it aches to have someone opting out.
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: Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
A salutary reminder of how a great musical talent and collaboration started
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: The Metamorphosis
An original, vibrant and contemporarily relevant, fantastic adaptation of a classic text.
Review: Maim
A hymnotic theatrical panic for the land, which exposes us to the language and the lyrical beauty of our own country.
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: Daddy Drag
Proof that whilst you cannot fit a person into a show, you can truly theatrically lift a lid on his behaviour, the effect he leaves behind and the void that others cannot fill
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: Whatever Happened to the Jaggy Nettles?
A glorious story of Punk, friendship and betrayal from the seventies, played out proud and loud by a fantastic addition to Scotland’s creative scene
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: The Good Dad (A Love Story)
Intricate, fiercely intelligent, this play packs far more force than some twice its length. Sarah Lawrie’s intensity is magnificent.
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: Beyond Glory
A powerful telling of the personal accounts of eight recipients of the Medal of Honour.
Review: Adrift
A powerful reminder that life really is a beautiful mystery in a theatrically impressive story of a young woman who has battled the demons of negative mental health
