Not tuned in
When Winston Went to War with the Wireless is the clumsy and misleading title of a new play about John…
Rocky peaks
One of the earliest jukebox musicals has returned to the West End. When the show opened in 2002 the author,…
Weird and wonderful
A puzzle at Hampstead Theatre. Literally, a brain teaser. Its new production, Re-member Me, is a one-man show written and…
The ex factor
Mrs Doubtfire is a social comedy about divorce. We meet Miranda, a talentless, bitter mother, who tires of her caring…
Brief encounters
Brokeback Mountain, a play with music, opens in a scruffy bedroom where a snowy-haired tramp finds a lumberjack’s shirt and…
What’s this? A good joke from Sir Keir?
Strange tactics by Sir Keir at PMQs. He raised the issue of broken promises on immigration, which gave Rishi Sunak…
How do I hate thee?
A new play, The Misandrist, looks at modern dating habits. Rachel is a smart, self-confident woman whose partner is a…
Primer time
The Motive and the Cue breaches the inviolable sanctity of the rehearsal room. The play, set in New York in…
Sins of the father
Dixon and Daughters is a family drama that opens on a note of sour mistrust. We’re in a working-class home…
Deadbeats, halfwits and losers
Snowflakes, an excellent title, rehashes The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter. A guest in a hotel room is visited by…
The war on the audience
Lloyd Evans bemoans theatre’s new hostility towards paying punters
The sting in the tale
The Secret Life of Bees is a fairy-tale set in the Deep South in 1964. Lily, a bullied white girl,…
This will hurt
A Little Life, based on Hanya Yanagihara’s novel, is set in a New York apartment shared by four mega-successful yuppies:…
Callous to the core
Berlusconi: A New Musical, an excellent title, has opened at a new venue in south London, Southwark Playhouse Elephant. The…
Divine comedy
Accidental Death of an Anarchist has been performed all over the world with varying degrees of success. Written by Dario…
A pulse but no heart
The murderous odyssey of Bonnie and Clyde is a tricky subject for a musical because the characters are such loathsome…
PMQs proved that we have too many politicians
PMQs drove up a cul-de-sac today. Sir Keir’s team of researchers have discovered a crime blackspot where ten houses have…
Anything goes
Further than the Furthest Thing is an allegorical play set on a remote island populated by English-speakers from all over…
Jeremy Hunt’s crafty Budget spells trouble for Labour
Jeremy Hunt was designed to exclude unnecessary body movements. Tall and gaunt, his demeanour faintly bird-like, he worked through his…
Cumbersome muddle
Rupert Goold’s new show, Women, Beware the Devil, has great costumes, sumptuous sets and an intriguing chessboard stage like a…
The art of the deal
Winner’s Curse is a hybrid drama by Dan Patterson and Daniel Taub which opens as a lecture by a fictional…
The secret truth about Dom: The Play
‘Who wrote it?’ asks the Times, of Dom: The Play. I’ll let you in on a secret: it was me.…
Three hours of tripe
Standing at the Sky’s Edge is an ode to a monstrous carbuncle. The atrocity in question is a concrete gulag,…
Small boats are Rishi’s big problem
Small boats are becoming a big problem for Rishi. Four Tory backbenchers raised the issue at PMQs. Andrew Selous asked…
Megaphonic honks
Simon Stone claims that his new comedy, Phaedra, draws on the work of Euripides, Seneca and Racine. In fact, the…
