Southwark Playhouse
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…
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…
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…
The case for replacing nurses with robots
Tending is a work of activism on behalf of the NHS. The script brings together the testimony of 70 nurses…
This Muslim playwright believes Yorkshire is headed for civil war
Expendable, at the Royal Court, is an urgent bulletin from the front line of the grooming gang scandal in the…
Is Coogan’s Dr Strangelove as good as Sellars’s? Of course not
Stanley Kubrick’s surreal movie Dr Strangelove is a response to the fear of nuclear annihilation which obsessed every citizen in…
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)…
Germ of an idea
Bleach and germs are the central themes of Dr Semmelweis, written by Mark Rylance and Stephen Brown. The opening scene,…
The script is the star
Southwark Playhouse has a reputation for small musicals with big ambitions. Tasting Notes is set in a wine bar run…
Location, location, location
Roy Williams’s new play is a wonky beast. It has two dense and cumbersome storylines that aren’t properly developed. Dawn…
The philosopher and the philistine
The Collaboration is set in the 1980s when Andy Warhol teamed up with the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat to create bad…
Tiger feat
Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi is a complicated organism. The action starts in southern India where we meet a…
Rottweilers in frocks
It’s a rum beast the new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Cinderella is set in Belleville, a European city of 18th-century…
High-minded vs heartbreaking
It can be difficult to remember that Tennessee Williams, the great songster of the Deep South during the 1950s, was…
This will hurt
Before the National Theatre produced Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood they had to make a decision. How could they stuff…
Monkey business
Money is a new internet play about financial corruption starring Mel Giedroyc. She appears on-screen for less time than it…
Sky news
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a musical fantasy set in a Nordic town near the Arctic circle. Johan is a magician…
Into the jaws of hell
Southwark Playhouse is beating the latest lockdown with a zingy new musical about social media. The performers, Francesca Forristal and…
Lloyd Evans
Sasha is angry. He’s a gay artist on his way to his niece’s birthday party and he keeps popping codeine…
A conspiracy against art
Southwark Playhouse has revived an American show, The Last Five Years, whose run was cancelled in March. In advance, I…
No q for the toilet
‘Enjoy world-class theatre online for free,’ announces the National Theatre. Every Thursday at 7 p.m. a play from the archive…
Heavy-handed
Oliver Cotton is an RSC stalwart who looks like a man born to greatness. Google him. He has the fearless…
Time out of mind
The Maids is a fascinating document. Written in 1947, Jean Genet’s drama portrays a pair of serving girls who enact…
Pride and prejudice
Paul Minx ventures boldly into Tennessee Williams country with The Long Road South. It’s 1965 and the Price family are…
Night at the circus
Easy playwright to get on with, Ben Jonson. His world is simple, his tastes endearing. He likes golden-hearted swindlers and…
