Review: In Memory of Leaves
On a moored barge Natasha Langridge re-enacts her own In Memory of Leaves updated from a run last year to include this year’s tumultuous events. This is a fine, necessary work inevitably in progress. Let it settle in the water a bit more, and glitter.
Review: Wings
Stevenson’s performance mesmerises, appals, thrills and re-asserts her unique straddling of classic and unquiet modernist in a few dizzying months. Poised somewhere between Happy Days and inevitably Peter Pan, here she’s immobilised everywhere she flies, imprisoned far more than Winnie with her vectors of sand and invisibility. There’s no doubt Wings proves its life in the theatre here. It breaks new air.
Review: Dreamboats and Petticoats
It’s back again. Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran’s nine-year dream Dreamboats and Petticoats returns to Theatre Royal, Brighton with a cast and creatives deserving high praise for creating the lightest touch out of slight narrative. Those who’ve seen it should start marvelling at the musicianship, and those who haven’t will increasingly join in.
Review: The Custom of the Country
Like the recently-mounted The Elder Brother, though far more complex, The Custom of the Country is a work crying out for production. It’s had one or two, though this spirited, superbly idiomatic, wacky and unfailingly inventive company ought to be proud their efforts lifted this heavy-texted work to the pitch of laughter. Even when occasionally it wasn’t at first intended, they made sure it soon was.
Review: Summer’s Last Will and Testament
It might be Summer’s Last Will and Testament, but whether Summer’s or Will Summers Henry VIII’s fool, is a riddling not only Nashe but the superb Edward’s Boys from King Edward VI School Stratford determine on our guessing. An extraordinary production. It’s good to know these Edward’s Boys are preserved on DVD.
Review: The March on Russia
There’s a current trend in American playwrighting, post-Mamet, that favours hyper-naturalism. David Storey though got there before anyone, in this and other plays. Storey has much to tell us of distress and how it’s denied, displaced, coped with. He’s got as much to say about the slag-heaps of social history too, and refuses the obvious. It’s time he was more thoroughly revived. We need more of this.
Review: A Little Murder Never Hurt Anybody
With BLT there’s never anything less than carat quality production and as usual some treasurable performances. Do see this rarity and you’ll end up agreeing with playwright Ron Bernas, and the team here.
Review: The Best Man
It’s a cruel joke Vidal died shortly before the era of Trump. How cruelly he’d have joked about it. But we have this classic political thriller. It’ll last, horribly.
Review: Trouble in Mind
This is a thrillingly layered play with each character so well-caught that it beg questions and resolutions beyond its scope. Tanya Moodie is outstanding. In the best sense, the work’s almost too big for itself. May it remain so. We need it.
Review: Thebes Land
It’s good to welcome the return of this cage. Franco-Uruguayan Sergio Blanco’s Thebes Land drops back into Arcola’s Studio 1 after its acclaimed run in 2016. It’s where this will go, what both prisoner Martin and writer T are left with, that begins to shine out of this extraordinary, ground-breaking work.
Review: The Cocoon
Finding, keeping, rediscovering and losing love in this magnificent immersive physical and metaphorical web
Review: Driving Miss Daisy
This production of the 1987 small classic full of wondrous pathos furnishes theatre gold, as Griffiths’ tenderness and Phillips’ motions of trust produce a riveting diminuendo. It’s the version to see.
Review: The Elder Brother
Like Shakespeare and as we now know with Middleton in Measure for Measure, Fletcher and Massinger enjoyed a posthumous collaboration. It’s powerful, stellar in imagery and reach, something rare in comedy and perhaps only found in Shakespeare.
Review: TRAPS: a romantic comedy for the modern sociopath
Searching for love in all the wrong places (well especially where a 400kg saltwater crocodile lives)
Review: Boudica
Do see this, a magnificent and largely successful attempt to revive History plays, with an energy and on occasion subtlety that with justice should bring us more large-scale Tristan Bernays.
Review: Oslo
Oslo is the kind of recent-history thriller to place with Michael Frayn’s Democracy, the riven vagaries of Copenhagen, or more distantly, of a scope not so far removed from Rona Munro’s James Plays trilogy. You’ll soon see why it won a Tony.
Review: Deathtrap
Levin’s fiendish cleverness tightropes between real thriller and comedy. Paul Bradley’s a tour-de-force of jocular unpleasantness. Beverley Klein’s turn as psychic ten Dorp steals the show and wraps it in nebulous wails of ‘danger’. The production’s a triumph of tone too. Be very – entertained.
Review: Follies
It took a visit into past and pastiche to propel Sondheim’s language into a modernity no-one foresaw. This is the finest realisation of this Janus-faced masterpiece, ringing with towering performances: Staunton, Bennett, Dee, Quast and Forbes simply at the head. This must be the definitive production.
Review: Against
Starring Ben Whishaw as rocket-billionaire-turned-visionary Luke, Christopher Shinn’s Against furnishes a brave sad update to Simon and Garfunkel’s 1960s refrain: They’ve All Come to Look for America. Luke looks for answers in the heart of violence. The ballad of Luke and helpmeet Sheila though haunts its refrain.
Review: The Stepmother
Again and again you regret what indifference did to Githa Sowerby. It silenced one of most original early 20th century dramatists. It also retarded our dramatic development. To have plays like this running in the 1920s might have blown the genteel three-acter into emotional maturity.
Review: Fiddler on the Roof
Evans allows this musical theatre to breathe on his own big-hearted terms whilst allowing the bones to show, as it does with a breath-taking diminuendo that seems to raise and settle the dust of emigration as we watch. For sheer penetration, heart and balance it’s as definitive as we’re likely to see for many years.
Review: Borders
A beautifully articulated piece of theatre that moves heart and mind as it tells the story of a Syrian refugee from converging perspectives
Review: The Wedding Singer
This is an outstandingly-conceived show, generous to cast and audience alike, superbly choreographed and performed in what might seem challenging spaces. The last blast of summer’s breath: enjoy.
Review: Cathy
Challenging theatre that asks big questions about the current state of housing and homelessness in the UK
Review: Sappho and Phao
It’s the conversations that make this courtly piece delectable. It’s Selina Cadell though who seals the quality of this revival. Her magically inflected words occasion a running benediction; it’s fitting she centres the curtain-call.
Review: Jess and Joe Forever
Theatre at its best – story, form and performance in an engaging and sublime blend.
Review: Princes of Main: New Year’s Eve
A fantastic set piece of sketches and games that are a party of choice for the actors, and a party of desire for the rest of us
Review: Prison Psychologist
A dark, intense and intimate story of love and tragedy. Worth getting up early for...
Review: Cosmic Scallies
A two hander that effectively and sensitively explores the nature of childhood friendships when one of those friends may not suit the expected norms
Review: Tinder Tales
Social Media stories well told episodically as a warning and celebration of liberation
Review: Half Breed
An astounding solo performance that covers all sorts of prejudice and leaves you the better for it
Review: Cult – Ure
A fascinating tale that has a beginning, an end like its beginning and an intriguing middle
Review: Earthquakes in London
Cast and crew are beyond praise. It’s quite possibly the finest production of this huge, skirling ride of a play that’s ever been mounted. Outstanding.
Review: FAG/STAG
Heartfelt, funny and direct – what does it mean to have your best mate stand by you when you’re stuck being your worst self.
Review: Maklena
A world premiere: excellent English translation of Ukrainian playwright Mykola Kulish's 1933 play.
Review: Deadly Dialogues
A challenging and riveting dramatisation of jihad (struggle) and how it is experienced by young muslims today.
Review: The Testament of Mary
A powerful and challenging reimagining of a story you thought you knew.
Review: Goody
1934, Dustbowl America. Backstage at the travelling circus, we discover the complex relationship between one man and his performing chimpanzee.
Review: Sorry I Killed Your Cat
“‘Abigail’s Party’ urbanised, sexualised and amplified into oblivion”
Review: Mary Go Nowhere
An acerbic take on living the modern suburban American ‘dream’ with lovely ensemble performances and laugh out loud dialogue.
Review: Seven
A stylish ensemble piece with a bold premise, that playfully explores the issues that face women in a very near future
Review: Edison
Clash of the electricity titans, in a clash of theatrical conventions. Sparks will fly.
Review: Border Tales
Brilliant - creatively devised, provocative, well performed, poignant and moving!
Review: So You Say
Dramatist Sam Chittenden asks a profound question: just what we can choose to experience of our experiences? It’s a small gem of inward acrobatics, and makes one eager to see even more ambitious work from this rising dramatist.
Review: Ingo’s War
Delightful and meaningful story - imaginative, creative, moving and extremely well done!
Review: F*ck Boys for Freedom
Late night comedy that saws the knuckle off rather than comes near it.
Review: Places
A one woman show, that takes us through the disgrace and grace of a silent film star, long gone but revived for us here in an engaging performance
Review: Out of the Bad
A touching tale of the morning after the night before, commemorating 103 days of yesteryear that thankfully avoids nostalgia but still make us think of the past
Review: La Cage aux Folles
La Cage aux Folles one might say comes home to Brighton’s Theatre Royal in this revival by Bill Kenwright Productions directed by Martin Connor. There’s no mystery why Brighton gets two weeks of this.
Review: Shell Shock
And astounding performance in both a measured and frantic performance that brings PTSD from Tommy's living room into your conscience.
Review: The Edelweiss Pirates
A very theatrical and competent account of a highly brave movement in counter activities to the Hitler Youth that ended tragically for some of their number.
Review: Chips and Cheese
A popular Glaswegian snack turns into a funny comic journey round yer nan and yer papa meeting yer English boyfreend.
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