Theatre
Shock and awe
‘Astonish me!’ was the celebrated demand that the impresario Sergei Diaghilev made of Jean Cocteau when he was devising Erik…
Three roled into one
Good, starring David Tennant, needs more dosh spent on it. The former Doctor Who plays John, a literary academic living…
Farrago of jabber
The Doctor is an acclaimed drama from the pen of writer-director Robert Icke. We’re in a hospital run by a…
End of play
Zoe Strimpel on how identity politics is killing theatre
After the fall
Clunk, clunk, clunk. John Gabriel Borkman opens with the obsessive footfalls of a disgraced banker as he prowls the attic…
Worthy of Wilde
Eureka Day is a topical satire set in a woke school in America. An outbreak of mumps has led to…
The sound of silence
Look at this line. ‘I’m 80 years old. I find that unforgivable.’ Could an actor get a laugh on ‘unforgivable’?…
Redemption songs
Rehab: The Musical opens with a boyband star, Kid Pop, getting busted for possession of cocaine. The judge sentences him…
Rhapsodic banalities
‘Trans people are sacred. We are divine.’ The first line of I, Joan at the Globe establishes the tone of…
Cell division
The Angel of Prisons dramatises the life of the penal reformer Elizabeth Fry, who lived near Canning Town. She married…
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…
Doctor doctor
In a new hour-long monologue, Burn, Alan Cumming examines the life and work of Robert Burns. The biographical material is…
Missing in action
Someone in the Guardian wrote that Boris Johnson had his ‘out of office’ on, and the Chancellor was ‘missing in…
Send in the clowns
Ian McKellen’s Hamlet is the highlight of Edinburgh’s opening week. In this experimental ballet, Sir Ian speaks roughly 5 per…
All the world’s a stage
A neglected little town in Merseyside is the natural home for Shakespeare North, says Robert Gore-Langton
Catcalls
‘A law against catcalls?’ asked my husband sceptically. ‘What next, criminalising booing and hissing?’ He often gets the wrong end…
All that jazz
Simon Godwin’s Much Ado About Nothing is set in a steamy Italian holiday resort, the Hotel Messina, in the 1920s.…
Divine comedy
Patriots, by Peter Morgan, is a drama documentary about recent Russian history. And though it’s a topical show it’s not…
Chekhov in a straitjacket
The Southbury Child is a comedy drama set in east Devon featuring a distressed vicar, Fr David, with a complex…
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…
How to get it all wrong
The Glass Menagerie directed by Jeremy Herrin is a bit of an eyeball-scrambler. The action takes place on a huge…
Actor’s notebook
I’m on the road, a very proper place for an actor to be. Never mind all those jokes about some…
The play’s the thing
Last week Lloyd Evans was wondering whether it was about time audiences started booing dramatic productions of which they disapproved.…
Bloated waffle
The Old Vic’s new show, Jitney, has a mystifying YouTube advert which gives no information about the play or the…
To boo or not to boo
Are modern theatre-goers too polite?
