Theatre
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,…
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…
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…
The time Spike Milligan tried to kill me
The theatre impresario Michael White rang me one day in 1964, and said he was presenting a play at the…
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…
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…
The National have bungled their Rishi Sunak satire
The Estate begins with a typical NHS story. An elderly Sikh arrives in A&E after a six-hour wait for an…
A bland, reverential portrait of a socialist martyr: Nye at the Olivier Theatre reviewed
The memory of Nye Bevan is being honoured at the National Theatre. Having made his name as a Marxist firebrand,…
More drama-school showcase than epic human tragedy: Evita reviewed
Evita, directed by Jamie Lloyd, is a catwalk version of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. The actors perform on the…
Scooby-Doo has better plots: Almeida’s A Moon for the Misbegotten reviewed
A Moon for the Misbegotten is a dream-like tragedy by Eugene O’Neill set on a barren farm in Connecticut. Phil…
The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs is as sweet and comforting as a knickerbocker glory
The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs is a comedy that feels as sweet and comforting as a knickerbocker glory. The show…
Superb: Stereophonic, at Duke of York’s Theatre, reviewed
Stereophonic is a slow-burning drama set in an American recording studio in 1976. A collection of hugely successful musicians, loosely…
Ingenious: the Globe’s Romeo & Juliet reviewed
Cul-de-Sac feels like an ersatz sitcom of a kind that’s increasingly common on the fringe. Audiences are eager to see…
Why disaffected actors often make excellent playwrights
Actors are easily bored on long runs. Phoebe Waller-Bridge once revealed that she staged distractions in the wings to amuse…
Provocative, verbose and humourless: Mrs Warren’s Profession reviewed
George Bernard Shaw’s provocative play Mrs Warren’s Profession examines the moral hypocrisy of the moneyed classes. It opens with a…
Everyone should see the Globe’s brilliant new production of The Crucible
Sanity returns to the Globe. Recent modern-dress productions have failed to make use of the theatre’s virtues as a historical…
Magnificent: The Deep Blue Sea, at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, reviewed
Richard Bean appears to be Hampstead Theatre’s in-house dramatist, and his new effort, House of Games, is based on a…
Two hours of yakking about Israel: Giant, at the Harold Pinter Theatre, reviewed
Two hours of yakking about Israel. That’s all you get from Giant at the Harold Pinter Theatre. Endless wittering laced…
Delightful nostalgia for political wonks: The Gang of Three, at the King’s Head Theatre, reviewed
The Gang of Three gets into the nitty-gritty of Labour politics in the 1970s. It opens with the resignation of…
How tech ruined theatre
Poor John Dennis. In 1709, the playwright devised a novel technology to simulate thunder to accompany his drama Appius and…
