Theatre
The babyishness of Hunger Games on Stage
The Hunger Games is based on a 2008 novel about a despotic regime where brainwashed citizens are entertained with televised…
This Othello is almost flawless
Othello directed by Tom Morris opens with a stately display of scarlet costumes and gilded doorways arranged against a backdrop…
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…
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.…
What does it feel like to perform the same show 355 times in one year?
I have my routine down to a science. At 6.59, I’m sitting in the stairwell, typing on my laptop or…
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…
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…
