1,377 stories by "Aleks Sierz"
Few anniversaries have got off to such a strong start in our current culture as that of the outbreak of the First World War. This new play by Peter Gill, which opened last night, is original…
Soho Theatre, London: The winner of last year's prestigious Verity Bargate award for best new play, The One is an explicit, sometimes excruciating, often hilarious debut play about an e…
Another week, another postwar classic. Hot on the heels of last week's revival of Oh What a Lovely War comes another legendary play from the Joan Littlewood museum of great one-offs. This ti…
The trend of celebrating anniversaries by digging out old classics might suggest that no good new plays are being written, but at least it gives us the chance to re-assess their worth. Theat…
Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Royal Court, London: Writer Abi Morgan makes her Royal Court debut with this adaptation of The Mistress Contract, a short memoir, published last year, of a sexual…
What exactly is unconventional about an unconventional couple? In Abi Morgan's new two-hander, an adaptation of last year's book of the same name by She and He (a West Coast American couple …
Feminism suddenly seems to be all the rage in London theatre. Yesterday, I reviewed Nick Payne's Blurred Lines, and tonight I saw this show by American provocateur Gina Gionfriddo, whose Bec…
You can't accuse Nick Payne of being fainthearted. His new play explores what it means to be a woman and it features a wonderful all-woman cast. But wait a minute: isn't he a man? And what d…
Gate Theatre, London: The third show in this venue's These American Lives season, this multi-award-winning play by New York playwright Dan O'Brien features two actors playing more …
Unlike television, with its series of Spooks and Homeland, theatre has more or less ignored the secret services. For reasons of snobbery (thrillers are somehow beneath the interest of young …
There are few things as depressing as whinge drama. But the Anglo-Irish have a reasonable claim to be considered the Republic of Ireland's forgotten losers. The term means the wealthy Protes…
The Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 is one of those epoch-making events that are so huge as to be almost beyond our comprehension. It affected the lives of literally millions of peop…
Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Royal Court, London: In its tradition of alternative Christmas shows, the Royal Court is hosting an adaptation of Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist's nove…
Vampire romance is a genre which has a mysterious tendency. Every time it migrates from one art form (say novel) to another (say film) it loses some of its darkness and acquires a strange sw…
Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, London: Vicky Featherstone's new regime at the Royal Court not only upholds this venue's traditions as a playwright's theatre, but also …
You can see why sport makes for good drama: it has competition, conflict and clashes of egos. It delivers a result, and it has a touch of glory. At its best, it can send you out of the theat…
Is there a danger that a show can be oversold? Sarah Ruhl's In the Next Room sounds innocuous enough " until you read its subtitle: The Vibrator Play. Marketed as the most provocative drama …
The Shed, National Theatre, London: Debbie Tucker Green makes her National Theatre debut in the venue's successful temporary space, which is dedicated to adventurous and experimental wo…
One of the best kept secrets about contemporary theatre is that audiences rather like short plays. Of course, there's nothing wrong with epic classics, but sometimes it makes a change to wit…
The comedy of manners is not dead. It's alive and kicking, often literally, at this north London venue in actor Simon Paisley Day's new play. Although the title suggests a group of teenagers…
Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, London: The fact that you can find good actors for a large-cast play set in Kashmir sends a positive message about our multicultural society. This play…
The Royal Court is justly proud of being the home of British new writing, but it is also a venue which has a great tradition of staging work from abroad. From bringing Brecht and Beckett her…
Is this the year's most controversial play? When it opened at Edinburgh in August, David Greig's The Events created a stir because its depiction of the aftermath of an atrocity is reminiscen…
British theatre is obsessed with the new, with novelty. And one of the obvious casualties of this is old plays that are not by Ibsen or Chekhov. Plays that feature in every history of Britis…
The life of Margaret Thatcher seems to draw sympathetic writers like wasps to a particularly sweet jam. In 2011, playwright and screenwriter Abi Morgan gave us a portrait of the first female…
