One of the best plays about the 1980s ever staged
Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty has been turned into a stage show directed by Michael Grandage. We’re in the…
Perfection: Hampstead Theatre’s The Assembled Parties reviewed
The Assembled Parties, by Richard Greenberg, is a rich, warm family comedy that received three Tony nominations in 2013 following…
Why was the 19th century so full of bigots and weirdos?
Da Vinci’s Laundry is based on an art world rumour. In 2017, Leonardo’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ sold at Christie’s for $450…
Dominic Cummings: why the elites keep getting politics wrong
Last night, Dominic Cummings was interviewed at the O2 by the activist start-up, Looking for Growth. Cummings walked on stage…
Yoga is slow-motion pole-dancing for grannies
It’s hard work being rich. I gave up trying years ago. You must waste money on everything, even the basics,…
Tracy Letts’s magic touch
Tracy Letts’s Mary Page Marlowe is a biographical portrait of an emotionally damaged mother struggling with romantic and family problems.…
Stephen Fry is the perfect Lady Bracknell
Hamlet at the National opens like a John Lewis Christmas advert. Elegant celebrations are in progress. The stage is full…
Obsolete message: Led By Donkeys in conversation, reviewed
The founding members of Led By Donkeys granted a public interview last Thursday at a theatre in Walthamstow. They were questioned by Guardian columnist…
A dazzling musical celebration of the 1970s
Clarkston is an American-backed production featuring a Netflix star, Joe Locke. He plays a young graduate with a terminal illness,…
Nutrition is a bogus creed
Time to think about my diet. A test kit arrives from the NHS screening team who want to inspect a…
An amazing piece of entertainment: Reunion, at the Kiln Theatre, reviewed
What a coincidence. Two plays running in London have the same storyline: an obsessed lover bursts into a family gathering…
When Freud met Hitler
A new play by Lawrence Marks and Maurice Gran, the writers of Birds of a Feather, feels like a major…
Inside Zarah Sultana’s ‘Your Party’ rally
The ‘nonce party.’ That’s how Zarah Sultana described the Labour party at a rally in Brixton last night where the…
Shallow and silly: Born With Teeth, at Wyndham’s Theatre, reviewed
Born With Teeth is a camp two-hander starring a pair of TV luminaries, Ncuti Gatwa and Edward Bluemel, as Marlowe…
Mercifully short: Interview at Riverside Studios reviewed
Interview is a blind-date play. Only it’s not a blind date but a showbiz interview for a journal called the…
Nicola Sturgeon on J.K. Rowling, Farage and Trump
Last night, Nicola Sturgeon appeared at the Queen Elizabeth Hall to promote her autobiography Frankly. On stage she was questioned by…
Death was easier when I was a kid
Somebody dies and his friends say ‘he passed’. Passed what? He didn’t pass. He failed. He took the most basic…
An English Chekhov: The Gathered Leaves at Park200 reviewed
Chekhov with an English accent. That’s how Andrew Keatley’s play, The Gathered Leaves, begins. The setting is a country house…
Glorious: Good Night, Oscar, at the Barbican, reviewed
Good Night, Oscar is a biographical play about Oscar Levant, a famous pianist who was also a noted wit and…
The problem with psychiatrists? They’re all depressed
Edinburgh seems underpopulated this year. The whisky bars are half full and the throngs of tourists who usually crowd the…
What a slippery, hateful toad Fred Goodwin was
Make It Happen is a portrait of a bullying control freak, Fred Goodwin, who turned RBS into the largest bank…
Jess Phillips: ‘I’m being controlled by aggression and violence’
Jess Phillips begins her interview with Iain Dale at the Edinburgh Fringe with a meandering homage to her hometown, Birmingham,…
Rachel Reeves couldn’t be prouder of crippling the economy
Rachel Reeves strode onto the stage at the Edinburgh festival in a black jumpsuit and an orange scarf. Iain Dale,…
Edinburgh Fringe’s war on comedy
Every day my inbox fills with stories of panic, madness and despair. The Edinburgh Fringe is upon us and the…
Wonderfully corny: Burlesque, at the Savoy, reviewed
Inter Alia, a new play from the creators of Prima Facie, follows the hectic double life of Jess, a crown…
