History is a prison. Often, you can't escape. It imprints its mark on people, environments and language. And nowhere is this more true that in Northern Ireland.
The National Theatre has a good record in staging classic American drama by black playwrights. James Baldwin's The Amen Corner, August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and Lorraine Hansberr…
It's a sign of the times that one of my last trips of the year, to Ella Road's Fair Play at the Bush Theatre, was cancelled because of COVID. Not that much of a surprise really: it's o…
At the end of the 1960s, American soul poet Gil Scott-Heron said that the revolution will not be televised. Maybe that's right, but a lot of other things were being broadcast in that decade,…
A couple of days ago, I watched a live stream of Milk and Gall, an American-based playwright and screenwriter Mathilde Dratwa's new play at Theatre 503. Set in a Brooklyn apartment, the plot…
Is the Bosnian conflict of 1992"95 the war that Europe forgot? Maybe, although most fans of new writing for the British stage will remember its massacres as the inciting incident for Sarah K…
James Graham's latest history play has an eye on the present but a messy staging.
After lockdown, the stage monologue saved British theatre. At venue after venue, cash-strapped companies put single actors into simple playing spaces to deliver good stories for audiences th…
Race, rage and relevance: sensitive revival of American writer Alice Childress' 1955 anti-racist play shines bright.
The National Theatre has a good record in staging classic American drama by black playwrights. James Baldwin's The Amen Corner, August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and Lorraine…
Moira Buffini's ambitious state-of-the-nation, climate-change play runs straight into the doldrums.
After lockdown, the stage monologue saved British theatre. At venue after venue, cash-strapped companies put single actors into simple playing spaces to deliver good stories for audiences th…
One of the absolute highpoints of new writing in the past couple of years has been the Death of England trilogy.
Why are we indifferent to anti-Semitism? In the past few weeks the Royal Court, a proud citadel of wokeness, has been embroiled in an appalling case of prejudice by allowing a character, who…
Al Smith's new play was jinxed before it started - and, bogged down in cartoonish detail, it never really recovers.
Intense, but inconclusive: this powerful new play about black men's mental health fails to reach a satisfying resolution.
I had a mind-expanding experience this week. And, listen, there's still a chance for you to have one too.
Powerful, poetic and profound: this well-deserved winner of the 2020 Papatango New Writing Prize now gets a cracking production on the main stage at the Bush Theatre.
Hypocrisy. Is this the right word? I don't mean the play, but the audience. Of course, in the middle of the current COVID-19 crisis, there's bound to be a certain amount of discomfort whe…
Saoirse Ronan makes her UK stage debut in Yael Farber's testosterone-fest, which is vivid, but much too long.
Remembering the months of lockdown, I can't be the only person to thrill to this play's opening lines, "When shall we three meet again?", a phrase evocative enough to be borrowed for the fir…
This new coproduction between Graeae and Tamasha is not perfect, but it offers a moving insight into ritual and belief.
This is a labour of love. Hilary Mantel has adapted The Mirror and the Light, the third novel of her Tudor trilogy, in collaboration with actor Ben Miles.
Since 9/11 there has been considerable interest in staging stories about British Muslims, and the best of these avoid the stereotypes of arranged marriage and terrorism. Although religious o…
Bess Wohl's history play is an imaginatively-written, brilliantly chilling and resonant account of life at a Nazi summer camp, starring Patsy Ferran and Luke Thallon.