Monsters of ego clash in David Ireland's demolition of posturing theatre types David Ireland's Edinburgh Fringe hit Ulster American is essentially a play about a play that a Hollywood big…
Beautiful Elvis Costello songs and stirring music underpin a fine adaptation There's a touch of Dr Zhivago about director PaweÅ‚ Pawlikowski's screenplay for his 2018 film Cold War. It…
Terrific showcase for writer-director Kwame Owusu and his performer Kwame Owusu's 55-minute one-hander does just what it says on the tin: it features a young student who dreams he is drowni…
Annie Baker delivers a richly satisfying piece about hungry women A sun deck with seven pale-green padded loungers is the latest setting for the latest National Theatre premiere from Ame…
Mischief Theatre's sight gags are faultlessly timed, though the verbals need a trim Mischief Theatre set themselves a big challenge when they evolved their brand of knowing slapstick. And n…
Lynn Nottage and Lynette Linton reunite to deliver a rollicking evening Lynn Nottage's second London opening this year, the Donmar premiere of Clyde's, is a comedy about a sandwich, the p…
Alexander Zeldin creates a complex portrait of a woman's struggle for self-esteem How to describe Alexander Zeldin's latest, The Confessions? It is almost a kitchen-sink drama, but also a pi…
James Graham's play works like a big joke that a whole nation is in on It was interesting, in the same week that the England football team trounced Italy 3-1 in a Euros qualifier, to see Dea…
Mustapha Matura's 1981 play set in modern Trinidad is superbly served up Mustapha Matura's 1981 play, Meetings, is still a knockout. Supply the characters with mobile phones and it could be…
Maggie O'Farrell's inventive retelling of the Shakespeares' love story needs a more inventive production The RSC apparently has a hit on its hands with its West End transfer of Hamnet. Box o…
Big Broadway show with a pleasing British accent The Sondheim gala show Old Friends is a must for fans of the master, naturally, but its quality would knock anybody who loves musical theatre…
Ben Elton has written an odd musical-documentary, part comic-strip, part lecture The Biba dresses are way too colourful, the shop's interior about 10 times too bright… and did anybody real…
Adrian Edmondson and Nigel Planer have muddled aims for a tale of warring actors An impressive performance by Samuel West as one of two warring hams stuck on-set in a trailer over a not-so-d…
Lynn Nottage's 2018 play gets an exquisite staging with moving performances The work of the double Pulitzer-winning Black American dramatist Lynn Nottage has thankfully become a fixture in t…
The affable American humourist proves death becomes him Few comedians are such good company that you never want them to stop. The young Billy Connolly was one such; affable American Mike Bi…
Yasmin Reza's savage study of the middle-classes becomes a farce lacking in danger Yasmin Reza's God of Carnage (2008), like her British megahit, 1994's ART, is not strictly a comedy. The Fr…
Twin miseries of bipolar disorder and grief are given an unusual treatment The journey from off-Broadway to central London has taken 15 years, but the multi-award-winning musical Next to…
The Public Acts project creates a model mix of high and low for a modern ensemble One of the great wonders of Western literary history is one of the earliest, Homer's The Odyssey, an epic po…
Gillian Slovo's incendiary play points a finger at the bureaucrats at the heart of the tragedy The shadow of Grenfell Tower has already produced Nick Kent and Richard Norton-Taylor's dispass…
Two students clash over changing the world with a playlist The revolution in the title of AJ Yi's new play at the Bush is the one activists hoped to set in motion in Hong Kong in 2019, when …
Will Young brings sweetness to a thin scenario Lucky Will Young: the production of the Simon Stephens monologue Song from Far Away that he is delivering at the Hampstead Theatre is directed…
Michael R Jackson's writing talent finds a claustrophobic outlet If you are going to see A Strange Loop, the new American musical trailing a Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize that has arrived …
A star turn from Gabriel Vick powers a lively but loud adaptation The heart sinks (mine does, anyway) as the latest film-to-musical adaptation rolls into town, all with similar sound-worlds,…
Pupils at an elite Ghanaian school learn home truths about their country The alternative title of Jocelyn Bioh's 2017 play School Girls, The African Mean Girls Play, might indicate that it's…
Easy targets and predictable jibes let down an ambitious production There are flashes during Idiots Assemble: Spitting Image The Musical of the old mordant humour from the show's…