Theatre
Unicorn, Garrick Theatre review - wordy and emotionless desireMonday, 17 February 2025
Since when has new writing become so passionless? Mike Bartlett is one of the country’s premiere playwrights and his new play, Unicorn, is about radical sexuality and desire. It’s already made a big splash by being put straight on in the West End,... Read more... |
More Life, Royal Court review - posthuman tragedy fails to come aliveSaturday, 15 February 2025
I always advocate in favour of more sci-fi plays, and over the past decade there have been a gratifying number of them. But one essential element of any futuristic fantasy must be its power to convince. And it is precisely this that is missing from... Read more... |
Three Sisters, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - Chekhov's anatomy lesson on the human conditionFriday, 14 February 2025
Russia.It’s impossible to be ambivalent towards that word, that country, indeed that idea, one so very similar to our own, yet so very different. You feel it in Moscow, where I spent a week exactly 40 years ago. Like London, it is a vast city,... Read more... |
Churchill in Moscow, Orange Tree Theatre review - thought-provoking language and power gamesThursday, 13 February 2025
Playwrights who work for decades often acquire a moniker. In the case of Howard Brenton, who began his career as a left-winger in the turbulent 1970s, the name is The History Man. Over the past decade, or so, he has written brilliantly about... Read more... |
The Years, Harold Pinter Theatre review - a bravura, joyous feat of storytellingMonday, 10 February 2025
Annie Ernaux’s semi-autobiographical book Les Années charts a woman’s life across time and space, history and memory, through what the author describes as a collective consciousness. Perhaps the most satisfying thing about Eline Arbo’s... Read more... |
Elektra, Duke of York's Theatre review - Brie Larson's London stage debut is angry but inertFriday, 07 February 2025
We live in tragic times given over to cataclysmic events that require outsized emotions in return. That may be one reason to account for the uptick, therefore, in Greek drama, which includes not one but two Oedipi, various adaptations of Antigone,... Read more... |
First Person: writer Lauren Mooney on bringing bodies together in the new Royal Court play, 'More Life'Thursday, 06 February 2025
It started with a Guardian long-read. I’m ashamed to admit it since so many shows could say the same, but that was the beginning.It was the summer of 2022, and James [Yeatman] and I had just finished making two shows back-to-back with our company,... Read more... |
Oedipus, Old Vic review - disappointing leads in a production of two halvesThursday, 06 February 2025
The opening scene of the Old Vic’s Oedipus is dominated by a giant backdrop of a skull-like face, eyes shut and rock-like. It belongs to the actor playing Oedipus, presumably, Rami Malek. This is as near to a close-up of the title character as we... Read more... |
Second Best, Riverside Studios review - Asa Butterfield brings the magicWednesday, 05 February 2025
Your response to Barney Norris’s one-man play, based on David Foenkinos’s bestselling novel as translated by Megan Jones, probably depends on which of the Gens is yours. The Gen Zs might turn a nose up, Joanne Rowling something of a discredited... Read more... |
Mrs President, Charing Cross Theatre review - Mary Todd Lincoln on her life aloneWednesday, 05 February 2025
The phenomenal global success of Six began when two young writers decided to give voices to the wives of a powerful man, bringing them out of their silent tombs and energising them and, by extension, doing the same for the women of today. Its... Read more... |
… Blackbird Hour, Bush Theatre review - an unrelentingly tough watchTuesday, 04 February 2025
In a world tainted with racism and homophobia, the Bush Theatre is something of a refuge from prejudice. As one of the most queer friendly venues in London, it’s no surprise that this theatre is now staging babirye bukilwa’s … Blackbird Hour, a play... Read more... |
Play On!, Lyric Hammersmith review - and give me excess of it!Monday, 03 February 2025
If you saw Upstart Crow on television or on stage in the West End, you’ll know the schtick of Sheldon Epps’ dazzling show Play On! Take a Shakespearean play’s underlying plot and characters and relocate them for wit and giggles. “Make it a musical... Read more... |
