Theatre Royal Stratford East, LondonA black dancer meets police prejudice and industry stereotyping as she bids to make it on Broadway in a lively, inventive storyIt has taken 17 years for t…
Stage and screen actor known for his role as the assiduous sleuth in the Hitchcock film FrenzyAlec McCowen, who has died aged 91, was an actor of dazzling technical brilliance whose career e…
Southwark Playhouse, LondonAlex MacKeith's debut play deals with the nuts and bolts of a test-driven education system and acts as a metaphor for other hard-pressed professionsPlays about sch…
Finborough, LondonTitas Halder's strange one-man play, starring Ben Aldridge, looks to the urban fox to illustrate a life in free-fallA fascination with foxes runs through our literature, fr…
Hampstead theatre, LondonEmilia Fox and Theo James star in Laura Eason's two-hander about an implausible relationship between writers in a Michigan B&BThe title is certainly titillating.…
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, LondonGemma Arterton brings beauty, determination and moral goodness to one of the great female rolesA new theatre is often a challenge. Until weathered and worn by …
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, LondonAnnie Ryan's production does full justice to the sinewy, aphoristic language in Webster's sinister portrait of corruptionWebster's dark Jacobean tragedies sit …
Theatre 503, LondonMichael McLean gets under the skin of his characters' lives in Skelmersdale but his play skimps on the bigger pictureWhat happened to the social utopias of the 1960s, buil…
The NT usually manages a balance between revivals and new work. Now, classic plays are disappearing from its stages " and from regional reps tooDavid Hare has made the headlines with a damni…
Hurt, who has died aged 77, was a superb, if too infrequent, stage actor. In plays by Beckett, Pinter and Stoppard, he had an intuitive understanding of outsidersI last saw John Hurt six mon…
Arts theatre, LondonRichard Marsh and Katie Bonna's verse romcom is a wry, sweet-natured account of a totally believable relationshipHaving started out as a 10-minute pub poetry duet in 2010…
Dorfman, London Emmet Kirwan stars in his play about rave-addicted Dublin youths, which displays a lust for language but offers little more than a sensory impressionWords, words, words. That…
Young Vic, LondonCarrie Cracknell's production certainly puts a new spin on Ibsen's 1879 classic. As if to remind us that this is a play about domestic revolution, Ian MacNeil's design revol…
Charing Cross theatre, LondonThom Southerland gracefully directs this strange musical, but the delightful songs and touching performances merely decorate a story that lacks biteLove is as st…
Gate theatre, LondonChristopher Haydon ends his Gate reign on a high note with gripping story of a young African woman's conversion to CatholicismChristopher Haydon's final production at the…
Royal Court, LondonAs someone who bemoans the dearth of political drama, I welcome the arrival of Anders Lustgarten's polemical bombshell. But while the play has bags of vigour and offers a …
Orange Tree, LondonA middle-class family accept a stranger for Christmas, but is he what he seems? This radical, transfixing play is about Germany but has universal relevanceThe timing is pe…
Royal Court theatre, LondonTim Crouch's show explores our obsession with artists' lives, but occasionally lets the form get in the way of its message' Playwright Tim Crouch: 'Avoiding the st…
Southwark Playhouse, London A revival of Neil Simon's adaptation of the Billy Wilder classic, with songs by Bacharach and Hal David, is well performed but gratingly anachronisticThis musical…
Arcola, London A cast of 18 bring the Russian writer's drifters and derelicts vividly to life in a production that captures his blend of compassion and crueltyMaxim Gorky's 1902 play is one …
Theatro Technis, LondonTayo Aluko's tribute to Tunji Sowande mixes politics, music and cricket for a tuneful portrait of a legal pioneerTayo Aluko wrote and performed the remarkable Call Mr …
Trafalgar Studios, LondonStuart Slade's play about a survivors' group recalling a horrific incident is a thoughtful, arresting and blackly funny study of how we cope with tragedyHow would we…
Finborough, LondonA Vietnam vet plots to kill the US president in a tense three-hander that trains a spotlight on human rights abuses and ex-soldiers' mental healthDonald Freed's play was la…
Wyndham's, LondonMatthew Spangler's workmanlike adaptation of the bestselling novel about Afghanistan does a decent job but reduces it to a series of chronological eventsIt's an old problem:…
Royal Court, LondonEcstatically received on the Edinburgh fringe, Fiona Evans's play has been expanded here. First, we get a close-up study of a female teacher-boy pupil relationship during …