Theatre
Bloated waffle: Jitney at the Old Vic reviewed
The Old Vic’s new show, Jitney, has a mystifying YouTube advert which gives no information about the play or the…
Three cheers for booing in the theatre
Are modern theatre-goers too polite?
Joyously liberating: Tony! [The Tony Blair Rock Opera] reviewed
Harry Hill’s latest musical traces Tony Blair’s bizarre career from student pacifist to war-mongering plaything of the United States. With…
Newcomers will need to read the play in advance: Julius Caesar, at the Globe, reviewed
Some things are done well in the Globe’s new Julius Caesar. The assassination is a thrilling spectacle. Ketchup pouches concealed…
Hard to believe this rambling apprentice-piece ever made it to the stage: Almeida's The House of Shades reviewed
The House of Shades is a state-of-the nation play that covers the past six decades of grinding poverty in Nottingham.…
The playwright seems curiously detached about rape: The Breach, at Hampstead Theatre, reviewed
Hampstead’s latest play is a knotty rape drama by Naomi Wallace set in Kentucky. Four teenagers with weird names meet…
Lviv diary: ballet, bomb shelters – and everyone loves Boris
It is a glorious spring evening in Lviv and what could be better than a ballet gala at one of…
Two hours of bickering from a couple of doughnut-shaped crybabies: Middle, at the Dorfman Theatre, reviewed
‘I fink I doan luv yew any maw.’ A marital bust-up drama at the National Theatre opens with a whining…
Angry diatribes and amusing pranks: Donmar Warehouse's Marys Seacole reviewed
The title of the Donmar’s new effort, Marys Seacole, appears to be a misprint and that makes the reader look…
Muddled, tricksy and cheap: The Corn is Green at the Lyttelton Theatre reviewed
The Corn is Green by Emlyn Williams is a sociology essay written in 1938 about a prickly tyrant, Miss Moffat,…
Boy wonder: The Young Pretender, by Michael Arditti, reviewed
During his brief stage career Master Betty, or the Young Roscius, was no stranger to superlatives: genius, unparalleled, superior, Albion’s…
This Trump satire is too soft on Sleepy Joe and Cackling Kamala: The 47th at the Old Vic reviewed
Trump is said to be a gift for bad satirists and a problem for good ones. He dominates Mike Bartlett’s…
Jonathan Bate weaves a memoir around madness in English literature
There is a trend for books in which academics write personally about their engagement with literature. Examples include Lara Feigel’s…
Could the Arts Council pay Americans to keep this stuff in America? Daddy and The Fever Syndrome reviewed
The Fever Syndrome is a dramatised lecture set in a New York brownstone occupied by the super-brainy Myers family. The…
A play for bureaucrats: David Hare's Straight Line Crazy reviewed
It’s good of Nicholas Hytner to let Londoners see David Hare’s new play before it travels to Broadway where it…
It’s years since I saw anything as nasty as this: Cock at the Ambassadors Theatre reviewed
Cock was written by Mike Bartlett in 2009 while he was in Mexico at a drama conference. The title suggests…
Keith Allen discusses Pinter, Max Bygraves and the sensitivities of contemporary audiences
Lloyd Evans talks to Keith Allen about Max Bygraves, how he fell into acting and the sensitivities of contemporary audiences
The psychopath who wrecked New York
Robert Gore-Langton on the man who wrecked New York
A must-see for Westminster obsessives: Riverside Studios' Bloody Difficult Women reviewed
Bloody Difficult Women is a documentary drama by the popular journalist Tim Walker, which looks at the similarities between Gina…
Stands alongside Under Milk Wood: Shedding a Skin, at Soho Theatre, reviewed
Shedding a Skin opens with an office nightmare. Amanda is a mixed-race employee in a predominantly white firm who gets…
Paul Bettany's Warhol is a tour de force: The Collaboration, at the Young Vic, reviewed
The Collaboration is set in the 1980s when Andy Warhol teamed up with the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat to create bad…
A beautiful, frustrating bore: Florian Zeller's The Forest, at Hampstead Theatre, reviewed
The Forest is the latest thriller from the French dramatist Florian Zeller, translated by Oscar winner Christopher Hampton. It’s a…
All a bit Blackadder: Hamlet, at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, reviewed
Never Not Once has a cold and forbidding title but it starts as an amusing tale set in an LA…
A tangle of nonsense from the sloppy Caryl Churchill: A Number, at the Old Vic, reviewed
A Number, by Caryl Churchill, is a sci-fi drama of impenetrable complexity. It’s set in a future society where cloning…
The joy of the Great War memoir
Harley Granville-Barker, actor, director, playwright, manager and critic, was a pasha of the Edwardian London stage. As a director, his…
