Boris’s crazy defence
‘I was very busy. The party was crap. I’m sorry you’re angry. Now leave me alone.’ That was the gist…
Changing of the Bard
The NT has rejigged Hamlet for 8- to 12-year-old children. It’s a decent attempt to cover the highlights at a…
Shaw thing
It’s good of Nicholas Hytner to let Londoners see David Hare’s new play before it travels to Broadway where it…
Sheer torture
Cock was written by Mike Bartlett in 2009 while he was in Mexico at a drama conference. The title suggests…
‘I had no interest in the theatre whatsoever’
Lloyd Evans talks to Keith Allen about Max Bygraves, how he fell into acting and the sensitivities of contemporary audiences
Miller’s crossing
Bloody Difficult Women is a documentary drama by the popular journalist Tim Walker, which looks at the similarities between Gina…
Is Boris a Russian agent?
Is Boris a Russian agent? That bizarre question occupied most of PMQs where Dominic Raab deputised for the PM while…
Wonder woman
Shedding a Skin opens with an office nightmare. Amanda is a mixed-race employee in a predominantly white firm who gets…
Zelensky’s address was strange, but sensational
This afternoon, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the House of Commons. A single flat-screen TV broadcast his speech to…
The philosopher and the philistine
The Collaboration is set in the 1980s when Andy Warhol teamed up with the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat to create bad…
Boris is back
Boris looks quite the statesman as he deals with the Ukraine crisis. MPs have spotted this and they want to…
Threadbare brain-teaser
The Forest is the latest thriller from the French dramatist Florian Zeller, translated by Oscar winner Christopher Hampton. It’s a…
Clown prince
Never Not Once has a cold and forbidding title but it starts as an amusing tale set in an LA…
Double trouble
A Number, by Caryl Churchill, is a sci-fi drama of impenetrable complexity. It’s set in a future society where cloning…
PMQs: Boris looks chipper for a man on the brink
And still they try. MPs are desperate to get the Prime Minister to quit, live on TV, during PMQs. As…
Fraudulent tripe
It’s getting silly now. London’s subsidised theatres aren’t just competing to put on the worst play of the year but…
Starmer knows that Boris is safe – for now
Calm returned to the bridge. Big Dog looked comfortable in the chamber as Sir Keir Starmer quizzed him at PMQs.…
Boom and bust
Moulin Rouge wins no marks for its storyline. A struggling Parisian theatre is bought out by an evil financier who…
Watching the detective
Producers are getting jittery again. Large-scale shows look risky when a single infection can postpone an entire show. Hence Poirot…
PMQs: Pantomime Starmer wasted his chance
Does Boris lie? Well, yes, of course, he’s a politician. That’s the standard response to the honesty question. And in…
Love letter to a titan
Hampstead Theatre has revived a play about Peggy Ramsay, the legendary West End agent who shaped the careers of Joe…
Why Boris might still survive
Haunted. Ashen. Defeated. That’s how the PM looked in parliament this afternoon as he faced the flamethrowers of the opposition.…
His thuggish materials
Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust has been adapted at the Bridge. The yarn is set in Oxford, and the…
Jacinda Ardern to Alastair Campbell: My 2021 ‘naughty list’
Merry Christmas – but not for those who have earned a place on my naughty list. From Jacinda Ardern to…
Grand Dame
Jack and the Beanstalk is a big, sprawling family show that opens with a baffling gesture. A booming voiceover announces…
