Southwark Playhouse
Nothing to write home about
Philip Ridley is best known as the screenwriter of The Krays, in which Gary and Martin Kemp played Ronnie and…
Audience participation
Torben Betts is much admired by his near-namesake Quentin Letts for socking it to London trendies. Letts is one of…
Beauty without brains
The Young Vic produces shows that please many but rarely me. Its big hit of 2014, A Streetcar Named Desire,…
Sin city
When to launch? For impresarios, this is the eternal dilemma. Autumn is so crowded with press nights that producers are…
Sister act
First, a bit of background. Conquering Agamemnon slew his daughter, Iphigenia, in return for a fair wind to Troy. This…
Bent bureaucrats and bakers
Eye of a Needle, by newcomer Chris MacDonald, looks at homosexuality and asylum. Gays from the Third World, who’ve suppressed…
Dolts, doormats and FGM
Wow. What an experience. A 1991 movie named Dogfight has spawned a romantic musical. We’re in San Francisco in 1963.…
In a spin
Streetcar. One word is enough to conjure an icon. Tennessee Williams’s finest play, written in the 1940s, is about a…
Talking shop
Nice one, Roy. Across the West End secret toasts are being drunk to the England supremo for his exquisitely crafted…
Tangled up in blue
Off to the Gate for a special treat: a pious anti-war monologue from the prize-winning American George Brant. Curtain up.…
Sweet talk
Tracy Letts, of the Chicago company Steppenwolf, has written one of the best plays of the past ten years. August:…
Lear for masochists
Directors appear to have two design options when approaching a Shakespeare tragedy. Woodstock or jackboot. Woodstock means papal robes, shoulder-length…
Decline and fall
It’s an unlovely venue, for sure. Charing Cross Theatre, underneath the arches, likes to welcome vagrant plays that can’t find…
Without motive
There are many pleasures in The Light Princess, a new musical by Tori Amos. George MacDonald’s fairy story introduces us…
A noo era
Hats off for theatrical recklessness. The producer Danielle Tarento has taken a $10-million Broadway mega-musical and staged it in the…
Young blood
Dominic Cooke did it at the Royal Court. Now Ed Hall is having crack as well. Cooke’s crazy decision to…
