One for pauper-gawpers: Faith, Hope and Charity at the National reviewed
Tony Hawks’s musical, Midlife Cowboy, has transferred from Edinburgh to the Pleasance, Islington. At press night, the comedy elite showed…
How refreshing to see a show about prejudice that barely mentions white people
Lynette Linton opens her stewardship of the Bush with a drama about racial and sexual bigotry. Four British women decide…
Funny, short and cheap to stage, Hansard is an excellent bet for a transfer
Hansard is the debut play by actor Simon Woods, who enjoys a deep knowledge of his subject. The characters are…
A decorative pageant that would appeal to civic grandees: The Secret River reviewed
The Secret River opens in a fertile corner of New South Wales in the early 1800s. William, a cockney pauper…
What does Totnes think of Sarah Wollaston, its defecting MP?
‘Totnes? It’s hippie central.’ A friend warned me what to expect when I visited the affluent, left-leaning town in south-east…
Watching Stephen Fry was like being in the presence of a god
Stephen Fry lies prone on an empty stage. A red ball rolls in from the wings and bashes him in…
Tony Slattery is still a miraculously gifted comedian
Some of the marketing efforts by amateur impresarios up in Edinburgh are extraordinary. I was handed a leaflet for a…
‘I’ll miss Brexit when it’s solved’: Frank Skinner interviewed
Only one thing makes Frank Skinner nervous. ‘Water. Water scares me. I don’t get nervous on stage. Just in swimming…
Lap-dancing with ISIS, the real Monica Lewinsky and one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen: Edinburgh Fringe roundup
Clive Anderson’s show about Macbeth, ‘the greatest drama ever written’, offers us an hour of polished comedy loosely themed around…
Woke gurus, capitalist communists and a future film star: Edinburgh Fringe roundup
The locals probably can’t bear the Edinburgh festival. Their solid, handsome streets are suddenly packed with needy thesps waving and…
Will John McDonnell lock Tories up if Labour wins the next election?
Smiley, fluent and softly spoken, John McDonnell sometimes comes across as a bit cuddly. Yesterday Labour’s shadow chancellor was interviewed…
These obscure Tennessee Williams scripts are classics of the future: Southern Belles reviewed
Games for Lovers feels like a smart, sexy TV comedy. Martha is still in love with her old flame Logan…
The play’s dated badly – but the horse is exquisite: Equus at Trafalgar Studios reviewed
Equus is a psychological thriller from 1973 which opens with a revolting discovery. An unbalanced stable-lad, Alan, spends his evenings…
Boris Johnson will soon be the most popular leader in the world
Only one person in Britain now believes that Boris might deprive us of a Jeremy Hunt premiership. That person is…
The greatest actor in the world couldn’t salvage David Hare’s batty adaptation: Peer Gynt reviewed
The National Theatre’s boss, Rufus Norris, has confessed that he ‘took his eye off the ball’ when it came to…
A cartoonish look at migration: Europe at the Donmar reviewed
Europe. Big word. Big theme. It was used by David Greig as the title of his 1994 play about frontiers…
A crowd-pleasing pantomime: Present Laughter at the Old Vic reviewed
Present Laughter introduces us to a chic, louche and highly successful theatrical globetrotter, Garry Essendine, whose riotous social life is…
A captivating freak-show: Bitter Wheat reviewed
Bitter Wheat, David Mamet’s latest play, features a loathsome Hollywood hotshot, Barney Fein, who offers to turn an actress into…
Oodles of fun – but unfair on climate sceptics: Kill Climate Deniers reviewed
Kill Climate Deniers is a provocative satire by Australian theatre-activist David Finnigan. The title sounds misanthropic and faintly deranged but…
Angry, cold, self-centred, opaque, disconnected and brutalising: Bronx Gothic reviewed
Sometimes it’s hard to describe a play without appearing to defame the writer, the performer and the theatre responsible for…
Poetic and profound: The Starry Messenger reviewed
Kenneth Lonergan, who wrote the movie Manchester by the Sea, shapes his work from loss, disillusionment, small-mindedness, hesitation and superficiality,…
Bog-standard spy mystery with a gimmicky appeal: Anna at the Dorfman Theatre reviewed
Arts Council England takes money from almost all of us and spends it on culture for almost none of us.…
This Boris play only gets it half-right
The opening of Jonathan Maitland’s new play about Boris purports to be based on real events. Just before the referendum,…
Willy Loman would have been fine if he’d worked in a laundry: Death of a Salesman reviewed
Colour-blind casting is a denial of history. The Young Vic’s all-black version of Death of a Salesman asks us to…
A magnificent work of art (but don’t worry if you miss the first half-hour): Small Island reviewed
Small Island, based on Andrea Levy’s novel about Jamaican migrants in Britain, feels like the world’s longest book review. We…
