Theatre
How do I hate thee?
A new play, The Misandrist, looks at modern dating habits. Rachel is a smart, self-confident woman whose partner is a…
Primer time
The Motive and the Cue breaches the inviolable sanctity of the rehearsal room. The play, set in New York in…
Upstart Crow without the jokes
The Swan Theatre has reopened after an overhaul and praise god: they’ve replaced the seats. The Swan is a likeable…
Sins of the father
Dixon and Daughters is a family drama that opens on a note of sour mistrust. We’re in a working-class home…
Deadbeats, halfwits and losers
Snowflakes, an excellent title, rehashes The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter. A guest in a hotel room is visited by…
The sting in the tale
The Secret Life of Bees is a fairy-tale set in the Deep South in 1964. Lily, a bullied white girl,…
This will hurt
A Little Life, based on Hanya Yanagihara’s novel, is set in a New York apartment shared by four mega-successful yuppies:…
Callous to the core
Berlusconi: A New Musical, an excellent title, has opened at a new venue in south London, Southwark Playhouse Elephant. The…
Divine comedy
Accidental Death of an Anarchist has been performed all over the world with varying degrees of success. Written by Dario…
A pulse but no heart
The murderous odyssey of Bonnie and Clyde is a tricky subject for a musical because the characters are such loathsome…
Anything goes
Further than the Furthest Thing is an allegorical play set on a remote island populated by English-speakers from all over…
Cumbersome muddle
Rupert Goold’s new show, Women, Beware the Devil, has great costumes, sumptuous sets and an intriguing chessboard stage like a…
The art of the deal
Winner’s Curse is a hybrid drama by Dan Patterson and Daniel Taub which opens as a lecture by a fictional…
Three hours of tripe
Standing at the Sky’s Edge is an ode to a monstrous carbuncle. The atrocity in question is a concrete gulag,…
Megaphonic honks
Simon Stone claims that his new comedy, Phaedra, draws on the work of Euripides, Seneca and Racine. In fact, the…
Chatterbox crackdown
A romcom with an irritating title, Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons, has opened at the HP Theatre starring Jenna Coleman…
What a drag
Sound of the Underground is a drag show involving a handful of cross-dressers who spend the opening 15 minutes telling…
Pure, heavenly escapism
The Unfriend is a smart new family comedy which opens on the sunlit deck of a cruise ship. Peter and…
Close to perfection
Watch on the Rhine is the curiously misleading title chosen by Lillian Hellman for a wartime family drama that became…
Polar exploration
The National’s new comedy by April De Angelis is a clever and amusing attempt to deliver that most elusive artefact,…
Pre-Raphaelite Tintin
Orlando opens with a pack of Virginia Woolfs on stage. All wear the same costume of horn-rimmed spectacles, long tweed…
Going like the clappers
A dank Tuesday evening in a West End theatre. The auditorium is barely two thirds full. The play is nothing…
Pitched battle
The Wagatha Christie affair began in 2019 when Coleen Rooney accused Rebekah Vardy of selling stories from her private Instagram…
Oh yes she is!
There is nothing more panto than a dame. The grandmother of today’s dames is Dan Leno (1860–1904), a champion clog…
Manhattan transfer
Crude eccentricities damage the potential brilliance of Othello at the National. Some of the visual gestures seem to have been…
