Donmar Warehouse, London " until 25 March 2023 With the fast-approaching anniversary of the latest war in Europe, our culture's continued fascination with the second world war gets a contemp…
Is new writing becoming increasingly literary? Recently, some of the language being used by younger playwrights seems to me to be becoming too subtle, something to be savoured on the page ra…
The female monologue is a well-established contemporary theatre form, but often the content is predictable and sometimes clichéd. No such doubts come to mind with Laura Horton's latest play…
With the total loss of its Arts Council funding, Hampstead Theatre's future as a specialist new writing venue is in doubt. But before anything drastically changes, the playwrights and plays …
Culture which arrives from the margins to the mainstream is a classic phenomenon. In the case of Sam Steiner's Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons it has taken almost a decade for this two-ha…
Willy Hudson is a writer and performer from Exeter " his Willy Hudson Ltd theatre company advertises itself as making "fabulous queer theatrical extravaganzas to make you go ooh, argh and oh…
Ever been to a queer club? You know, drag cabaret night at Madame Jojo's, or the Black Cap or Her Upstairs. No? Well, not to worry " the Royal Court's latest provides a fabulously extravagan…
Billed as an examination of gentrification, Kerry Jackson at the National Theatre has disappointingly little to say about this subject. Its main characters have clichéd opinions and stereot…
How many plays pass the Bechdel Test? Originally featured in a comic strip, and popularised in film criticism, it simply states that to pass this test your story has to have: 1) at least two…
In his award-winning play, which premiered in Boston in 2011, American playwright Stephen Karam examines the issues in a thoroughly original, brilliantly constructed and thematically compell…
What is the best way of talking about the Middle East? Should plays take a documentary or verbatim approach, all the better to educate and inform, or is there another path, which includes en…
Julia Pascal is a resourceful theatre-maker who is unafraid of controversy. Her interest in the relationship between the personal and the political, and sympathy with both the victims of the…
Julia Pascal is a resourceful theatre-maker who is unafraid of being controversial. Her interest in the relationship between the personal and the political, and sympathy with both the victim…
In his latest, Blackout Songs, a powerful 95-minute two-hander, Joe White uses a flexible structure to represent some excruciating emotional material, and the result gives an almost overwhel…
Joe White is great at staging fraught emotions. His Mayfly in 2018 vividly showed a family whose members were at the end of their tethers; it also had an intriguingly intelligent form. In hi…
At best Baghdaddy at the Royal Court Theatre is a surreal trip into traumatic memory, at its worst it's a self-indulgent mess. If you think that American crime are worse than Saddam's you'll…
Last night, at the Arcola, I witnessed the return of The Poltergeist, Philip Ridley's blazing one-man show from 2020. It is a terrific piece of writing, a text which is a masterpiece of stor…
Martin Crimp's Not One of These People at the Royal Court: radical investigation of presence and absence in fiction
Sudha Bhuchar's Evening Conversations at the Soho Theatre: a calmly intelligent exploration of family identity
Nica Burns' choice of an opening production for @sohoplace is Marvellous, a celebratory bio-drama about Newcastle-under-Lyme's local legend, the irrepressible Neil "Nello" Baldwin, whose ama…
Therapy is inherently dramatic. After all, it's all about character " and it has the aim of producing a recognizable change. But who is most affected by the process: client or therapist? Geo…
Therapy is inherently dramatic. After all, it's all about character " and it has the aim of producing a recognisable change. But who is most affected by the process: client or therapist? Geo…
If you accept the documentary verbatim style of Jews. In Their Own Words at the Royal Court, and don't mind the lack of any real drama, this is an intelligently crafted and committed piece o…
Identity is the sum of the stories we tell ourselves. Some of these are personal, and some political. Sometimes they blend, sometimes clash. In Aaron Kilercioglu and Bilal Hasna's excellentl…
Identity is the sum of the stories we tell ourselves. Some of these are personal, and some political. Sometimes they blend, sometimes clash. In Aaron Kilercioglu and Bilal Hasna's excellentl…