A production that revels in the joyously absurd while hinting at the play's darker edges A little less than two years after Sean Holmes's kick-ass Latin American carnival-style A Midsummer N…
A vivid and credible production that is also limited by its form To accept or not accept a donation: that's certainly the burning political question of the moment.
Co-production with Manchester International Festival, Marshmallow Laser Feast and Philharmonia Orchestra brings Shakespeare's metaphor to life Which of Shakespeare's plays is most plagued by…
Celie learns how to live from the strong, rebellious women she encounters This production of The Color Purple is an extraordinary testimony to the fact that many of the twentieth century's m…
The tilt between our actual selves and our idealised selves will never cease to be an existential tension This stunningly delivered online monologue from a bereaved widow to her husband feel…
Skilfully interwoven accounts of a life in which togetherness is forbidden How do you create a secular version of the Nine Lessons and Carols? The original can feel like a formulaic trot thr…
An ingenious depiction of the artist's gravity-defying love One of Marc Chagall's last commissions was for a stained-glass window in Chichester Cathedral, which channelled his characteristic…
It's a true achievement to feel the chemistry of a cast whirring into action again The Prohibition-era setting of The Great Gatsby brings an appropriately illicit feel to this bold dec…
Alan Bennett's monologues make us reflect on our own little worlds For some of us, it doesn't take a lockdown to imprison us in our own hellish little world. Since his first series of dramat…
Theatre itself become an act of rebellion against the microbe For a riveting, cathartic " and often surprisingly humorous " 50 minutes Ralph Fiennes paces the stage at the Bridge Theatre to …
As Mozart, Adam Gillen erupts onto the stage as a Tourette's tornado It is 41 years since Peter Shaffer ripped off Mozart's respectable façade to reveal a foul-mouthed verbally incontinen…
Helen McCrory is the broken, irreparable heart of this production Helen McCrory is an actor who can inject a world of feeling into one syllable that many actors would struggle to muster in a…
Food crimes of the Sixties and Seventies are revealed here as Michelin-starred memories I knew what a Howard Hodgkin painting would look like before I ever saw one because of Nigel Slater. T…
A story told with the wit and elegance of a tune played on a harpsichord It has been the fate of George III " who on many levels was a visionary and accomplished monarch " to go down in hist…
The power of the mob still resonates in a production that speaks powerfully to our times An arrogant leader contemptuous of his people. Could there be a more perfect timing for Josie Rourke'…
James Graham acutely perceives the obsessions and motivations of our times There is a line of argument that " unfairly " blames playwright James Graham for Dominic Cummings. Would Cummings, …
Barbershop banter and the place it occupies in black male identity Barber shops " as we are all starting to appreciate in this time of lockdown " fulfil an emotional as much as a cosmetic ro…
Robert Lepage seizes on the fragments of human lives to build an epic If you want to pinpoint the genius of Robert Lepage's multi-faceted seven-hour epic, that has returned to the National T…
Paul Kember's play doesn't sing convincingly any more It may seem strange to watch a play about four English people on a kibbutz in the Seventies, and find yourself thinking about Brexit, bu…
In the #Metoo era, the exploitation of the female characters is particularly resonant This raunchy, gleefully cynical production takes one of Thomas Middleton's most famous tragedies and tur…
Joe Crilly believed in skewering the romance surrounding sectarian violence The news that the Continuity IRA created a bomb destined for England on Brexit Day has added to the timeliness of …
Raw depiction of a community where dreams go to die Despair hangs like mildew over the small iron-ore mining town of Duluth, Minnesota, where dreams go to die, and the living haunt the clapp…
An interrogation of power, womanhood and the mythologies with which we surround ourselves History has corseted Elizabeth I with the title of "Virgin Queen" for centuries, but in Ella Hickson…
A stunning tribute to the wild and wonderful life of the mind This scary, electrically beautiful adaptation of Neil Gaiman's book about living on the faultline between imagination and realit…
An electric interpretation in which the White Witch " like the devil " has all the best tunes We all remember that moment when we walked through the back of the wardrobe: the heaviness of th…