Almeida Theatre
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…
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…
Those behind this fabulous new comedy are destined for big things
Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco is a period piece from 1959. It opens with the invasion of a French village by…
How is Arnold Wesker’s Roots, which resembles an Archers episode, considered a classic?
The Almeida wants to examine the ‘Angry Young Man’ phenomenon of the 1950s but the term ‘man’ seems to create…
Unmissable – for professors of gender studies: Alma Mater, at the Almeida Theatre, reviewed
Alma Mater is a topical melodrama set on a university campus. The new principal, Jo, (amusingly played by Justine Mitchell)…
Cheesy remake of Our Mutual Friend: London Tide, at the Lyttelton Theatre, reviewed
Our Mutual Friend has been turned into a musical with a new title, London Tide, which sounds duller and more…
Cheesy skit
The playwright Sam Holcroft likes to toy with dramatic conventions and to tease her audiences by withholding key information about…
Fall from grace
Robert Gore-Langton explores the remarkable life of televangelist Tammy Faye, and its descent into chaos
Worthy of Wilde
Eureka Day is a topical satire set in a woke school in America. An outbreak of mumps has led to…
Divine comedy
Patriots, by Peter Morgan, is a drama documentary about recent Russian history. And though it’s a topical show it’s not…
Absolute beginner
The House of Shades is a state-of-the nation play that covers the past six decades of grinding poverty in Nottingham.…
Soused in bilge
The Fever Syndrome is a dramatised lecture set in a New York brownstone occupied by the super-brainy Myers family. The…
People expecting punishment won’t be disappointed: Almeida’s Duchess of Malfi reviewed
The Duchess of Malfi is one of those classics that everyone knows by name but not many have witnessed on…
One of the great whodunnits: Old Vic’s All My Sons reviewed
It starts on a beautiful summer’s morning in the suburbs of America. A prosperous middle-aged dad is chatting with his…
A torpid seminar on why Trump is the Antichrist: Shipwreck reviewed
When reviewers call a work ‘important’ they mean ‘boring’ and ‘earnest’. And in those terms Shipwreck is one of the…
A masterpiece of pro-Trump propaganda: Sweat at the Donmar Warehouse reviewed
Sweat, set in the Pennsylvanian rust belt, looks at a blue-collar community threatened by a factory closure. The script uses…
Mean-spirited, muddled, idiotic and puerile: Martin McDonagh’s A Very Very Very Dark Matter reviewed
In the year since it opened, the Bridge has given us the following: a harmless Karl Marx comedy by Richard…
Its producers should tape a cyanide pill to the programme: The Humans reviewed
Hampstead’s boss Ed Hall was so impressed by Stephen Karam’s play The Humans that he wanted to direct it himself.…
This adaptation of Miss Julie is a textbook lesson in how to kill a classic
Polly Stenham starts her overhaul of Strindberg’s Miss Julie with the title. She gives the ‘Miss’ a miss and calls…
A dated and remote two-hour polemic basking in #MeToo topicality: The Writer reviewed
Ella Hickson’s last play at the Almeida was a sketch show about oil. Her new effort uses the same episodic…
Family planning
Beginning starts at the end. A Crouch End party has just finished and the sitting room is a waste tip…
Animal or vegetable?
Against by Christopher Shinn sets out to unlock the secrets of America’s spiritual malaise. Two main settings represent the wealthy…
