Review: Katie Johnstone
Most of all you take away the sheer bravura of Georgia May Hughes’ throwing everything up in the air. She carries the energy to a cheery bleakness. And you want to cheer.
Genre: Theatre 0
Review: Romeo and Juliet
This Romeo and Juliet has all the pace and heart any production, modern-dress or period, demands. Karen Fishwick’s radiant Juliet is the soul that imprints itself on it.
Review: Summer Holiday
Stunning Ray Quinn and ensemble work their bobby-socks off with notable support from Rob Wicks and his band. Give No. 9 a proper MOT and it’ll strike gold too.
Review: Believe As You List
A work rich in a few characters and poignant recognitions touching some of Massinger’s greatest. It’s the larky stoic Berecinthius though, who adds a dimension to the Caroline stage.
Review: Megadate
A side splitting new show from Tim Key who is exploring the troubling world of dating
Review: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
It’s not shorter than before, but dare one say it, somehow Sparkier, conveying the author’s economy in a sinewy morality tale.
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: This Is Elvis
Inevitably this stands or falls by Steve Michaels, but it could only be outstanding if the whole production revs around it, and this one fires into life, never letting up. This Is Elvis. Elvis lives. End of.
Review: The Merchant of Venice
Exceptional in many things, it’s almost a classic production and definitely worth a detour for.
Review: Flesh and Bone
Warren’s East London heritage is similar to other writers, and it’s his time to re-tell it now, with new notes and a love of language that muscles in and won’t let go.
Review: As You Like It
A ripping discovery, a spontaneity and transparent skin to the process makes this thrilling. An As You Like It for the moment, certainly. But a moment of change.
Review: Sense and Sensibility
An adaptation to surprise and thrill you. Jessica Swale’s made Sense and Sensibility wholly hers, and quintessentially Austen at the same time. The cast render it a delight.
Review: Spun
The genius and universality of this play is that Hussain writes stingingly of what it’s like to be working-class as well as Asian.
Review: The Winter’s Tale
If Sicilia and its dense expressive syntax could rise elsewhere, this might be altogether remarkable. As it is, enjoy its slow burn.
Review: One For Sorrow
Cordelia Lynn’s a compelling dramatist whose political imagining is swept into musical paragraphs, landing on rhythmic details, pitches of self-betrayal.
Review: The Comedy of Errors
This is a light-footed, thump-fisted, limp-wristed and eye-poppingly uproarious production.
Review: The Case of the Frightened Lady
This is still something of a vintage treat, and a rare opportunity to see the old master in action.
Review: The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives
The genius of this production is to keep hilarity airborne whilst slipping in something poisonous. You must see this.
Review: Notes From the Field
What makes this harrowing selection work is how Smith varies, gradates and paces her interviews; and builds a climax. It renders the experience a memorial; it’s what such artistry’s for. You will experience nothing like this and leave reeling.
Review: Sir Thomas More
This the second RND this year easily maintains the bar set so high by Eastward Ho! It’s fleet, superbly characterised in major parts but inevitably John Hopkins takes the palm for centring a superbly-realized portrayal.
Review: Jumpy
You begin to wonder how life, not the playwright, will treat these playhouse creatures. De Angelis has hit a true vein. You must see this delirious state-of-the-pause play.
Review: Section 2
This is an urgent, compellingly written stunningly acted piece of naturalistic drama. It should be filmed for mental health awareness week, and acted wherever possible.
Review: No One is Coming to Save You
No One is Coming to Save You makes me want to see a lot more of Nathan Ellis.
Review: Lonely Planet
If you know Angels in America, you’ll be grateful for Dietz’s concentration and economy. Much reckoning is packed into a little room.
Review: Utility
It’s a great phase of U. S. playwrighting, driven by women, and we’re lucky to be living in the middle of it. Schwend unleashes unexpected miracles and is one reason to see this hushed superlative of a play.
Review: The Chalk Garden
Not quite the last drawing-room comedy. But the Janus-faced prophesy of plays that took thirty years to catch up. Chichester’s season of women dramatists is one of the treasurable things of 2018.
Review: Machinal
Only when we see the best of Sophie Treadwell’s other thirty-eight plays will Machinal’s lonely pinnacle be augmented. This triumphant revival by the Almeida could signal the start. You must see this.
Review: Legally Blonde
You must see this. Apart from the heroic production itself, if there’s one outstanding performer it has to be Lucie Jones with Rita Simons’ superb support. Jones' voice is stunning, stratospheric, above all characterful.
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: The Fabulous Bäckström Brothers
An operatic clown show, first performed in Helsinki in September 2014.
Review: The Daughter-in-Law
This is as pitch-perfect as we’re likely to get for a very long time. Ideas and instincts at war drive this play out of its apparent bounds but not out of Eastwood. And its aftermath is a hushed miracle.
Review: Translations
In this pitched-perfect National Theatre production in the Olivier, Translations taps as close to its power as it can. This is the version for a generation.
Review: Translations
In this pitched-perfect National Theatre production in the Olivier, Translations taps as close to its power as it can. This is the version for a generation.
Review: Fleabag
Original, raw, brilliantly funny and devastating. This production is Fleabag neat. Its harrowing streak of genius burns like a healing scar torn.
Review: Act and Terminal 3
everything – set, actors, script – come mesmerizingly and painfully together.
Review: Confidence
This is a must-see in reviving the theatrical profile of a fine dramatist for too long shrouded in the digital of radio and TV when the acoustic world is claiming her back.
Review: Tits in Space
A show with a wise sweetness at its core; a brightness to cast the growing shadows out there.
Review: Games by Henry Naylor
Two stars of the German athletics world have to deal with anti-Semitic discrimination at the 1936 Olympics
Review: Hamlet (An Experience)
This production of the Bard's famous play certainly lives up to its subtitle
Review: random/generations
In a season featuring not before time several superb women dramatists – Enid Bagnold and Charlotte Jones follow – starting with tucker green is a proud moment for Chichester.
Review: Elephant’s Graveyard
It’s in NT’s best American vein. Forget Rehearsed Reading. It’s the real thing.
Review: The Morning After The Life Before
A perfectly rendered, heart-warming, necessary light in the darkest of moments.
Review: The String Quartet’s Guide to Sex and Anxiety
A melange of music, spoken word and performance, musing on mental health.
Review: A Taco Truck on Every Corner…or Dreaming in English
One woman uses six characters to give a snapshot of the messy political divide in contemporary America
Review: Crazy For You
This is a blast of the purest kind. You have to see it. In terms of talent on display worked to a supreme ensemble pitch, this is quite simply the most stunning pure musical I’ve seen this year.
Review: Creation (Pictures for Dorian)
A Transformative Night of Voyeurism and Exploring The Nature of Beauty
Review: Falkland
It’s a work with much to tell us: of the unlooked-for consequences of a buried war. Of elective affinities and choosing to adopt the war-bereft, whatever condition they’re in.
Review: An Evolution of a Sexual Bean
The Funny and Empathetic Show Our Inner Teenagers Needed to See
Review: Blank Tiles
A heartrending tragic-comedy one-man show about memory, Scrabble and Alzheimer’s.
Review: The Tempest
A superb, fleet outdoor Tempest. What it has to lack in quiet subtlety, it more than makes up in fleet humour with dispatch, keen wit, warmth, and truth.
Review: Into the Woods
This is an outstanding first-class revival, but more, it’s intimate knowing and innocent at the same time: it sports a residual wisdom beyond its brief.
Review: My Father Held A Gun
"A passionate, storytelling show with live cinematic music about war and peace, acts of heroism, and the love for life."
Review: Blue Sky Thinking
Many arts-driven people forced into the corporate world might well see this play answers their condition like few others.
Review: Whaddya Know – We’re In Love!
There’s first-class musical entertainment here, crouched under the disguise of a schoolboy plot. Irresistible.
Review: If I Catch Alphonso, Tonight!
Jenner’s moved out of the comfort zone of his Coward years which suit him particularly, or straight acting. It’s a remarkable feat.
Review: When the Wind Blows
BLT have produced in less than two weeks two outstandingly fine full-length productions. This latest offering confirms this theatre’s confidence in producing stark contrasts: an unfashionable yet horribly topical drop of silence into a bustling city.
Review: One Woman Alien
I can predict that by the end of its run, this should be the most outstanding one-person show you’ll see in the last week.
Review: She Wolf
So what did Harvey Weinstein and the fifteenth century European ruling classes have in common? Exactly. A lot. English has achieved a phenomenal amount. She co-ordinates everything as she directs and manages her own minimal props.
Review: The Odditorium Tribute to Ken Campbell
of you and won’t let go. Most theatre makers of whatever stripe are pretty clear Ken’s a game changer.
Review: Coldstream: Critical Threat
"A poignant, contemporary, powerfully evocative play asking some uncomfortable questions"
Review: Under The Skin
An uninvited journalist knocks on the door of a Holocaust survivor, for an unexpected interview.
Review: Blaas (Blow)
Tender, otherworldly, explorative and extraordinary, this is an exquisite show that is more than worth the trip out of town.
Review: Waiting For Curry
Susanne Crosby’s Waiting for is a four-hander with a social reckoning, and very unexpected plot point. The audience was packed. There’s a quietly sad magic to this low-key play; people recognize themselves in it. It speaks.
Review: Dial M for Murder
This production of Dial M for Murder is in the best traditions of the house. A superb entertainment, suavely and consummately executed with some depth, it must feel reassuring to tread in such a solidly realised black and white world.
Review: Pigspurt’s Daughter
Guardian obituary, 2008. ‘Ken Campbell was one of the most original and unclassifiable talents in British theatre of the past half-century.’ It just happens that his daughter Daisy is both that and far more. She’s one of the most cunning crafters of comedy and storytelling in the anti-business
Review: Not Talking
Not Talking is a superb, affirmative debut play, up there with Bartlett’s finest, prophetic of much later work.
Review: Eastward Ho!
This is one of the most exuberant and superbly orchestrated Read Not Deads I’ve seen.
