4000 MILES, CHICHESTER Brilliant Eileen Atkins at 88 in a tender, classy play A classy evening with authentic characters and Dame Eileen in a transparent blouse Of all the theatrical dames, …
★★★★ THE CIRCLE, ORANGE TREE THEATRE Acerbic reflections on the price paid for love Jane Asher leads an ensemble cast in Somerset Maugham's comedy of manners Tom Lit…
Five actors plus loads of silly hats and accents add up to a hilarious evening It's back yet again, Operation Mincemeat, a gift of a story that goes on giving. It surfaced as the 1956 film T…
Cathy Belton's devastating economy steers Mark O'Rowe's quietly stunning Ibsen Church and law are enemies of promise in Ibsen's tragedy-without-catharis. You can see why this devastating att…
Australian circus troupe combine high art presentation with a few laughs With acrobatics at this level, they make it all look so easy, it's possible for an audience to become complacent.
Play about a onetime Broadway smash surely has Broadway in its sights Plays about the theatre are many and varied, from Gypsy and Noises Off to the numerous Shakespeare works that absorb the…
The Windrush scandal embodied with wrenching power Reggae hits are already playing over the speaker system at the Bush when the audience enters, some jigging to the sounds as they find their…
★★THE VORTEX, CHICHESTER Coward's drama about damaged mother and son needs Dyno-rodding Noel Coward's play about damaged mother and son needs Dyno-rodding Sometimes I go outsi…
FlawBored's meta-theatrical show comforts and then goes in for the kill Just when you've relaxed a little, privileged duly checked and confident that you won't be guilt-tripped for nipping i…
Bizarre directorial choices derail the play's serious content There was a jolting eco-themed work onstage in London recently, but sadly A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction, a Headl…
Classy new stage adaptation of 1950s French novel proves intellectually rewarding It's apt that this new play, with characters moving in and out of Paris either side of World War I, is stag…
Trauma play about domestic abuse raises questions about the role of theatre Men are bastards. Okay, not all of us, but enough to make the lives of millions of women a misery. This we know, …
Lynn Nottage and a faultless cast offer a story that's a hymn to hope The cast of The Secret Life of Bees first parade onto the Almeida stage hefting big glass storage jars full of a golden …
Frenetic take on Brecht's tale of doing good in a bad world loses focus As the UK undergoes yet another political convulsion, this time concerning the threshold for ministers being shitty to…
Modern-day classic returns to the building where it was first seen in London It's saying a lot when a production lives up to its gasp-inducing set. That's the happy case with Josie Rourke's …
Giles Terera delivers a dramatic lecture on the legacy of slavery There's a moment in the opening stretch of Giles Terera's The Meaning of Zong where you think the former Hamilton star has …
American show is lost in the West End with only the hits to save it Ain't Too Proud? Ain't too good either I'm afraid. Which is a shame as there's plenty of the raw material here that powers…
Comedy classic plays up the pain that comes with pleasure It's not often with Private Lives that you feel Amanda and Elyot are one step away from a visit to A&E. But such is the startli…
A suitably phantasmagoical vision in strong teamwork by Calderón's compatriots Dream versus reality, fate and free will, love and death, nature versus nurture: they're all here in Calder�…
Sparky adaptation of legal spat "Wagatha Christie" " I salute the bright spark who coined the term " describes, for those who don't follow such fripperies, the social media spat between foot…
Eugene O'Hare treads familiar ground with his confessional about alcoholism Eugene O'Hare's The Dry House is the kind of spare but oddly lyrical three-hander that would have made a good Wedn…
New production of the West End show based on the Alan Bennett film is perhaps near its sell-by date People can't find the food they want in the shops. Nobody has enough money. Public service…
Olivier-nominated two-hander resumes performances at the Hampstead, this time promoted to the mainstage Before I knew " or realised " I wanted to write about alcoholism in my pl…
New play about family trauma and loss is an experiment in poetic drama Is it possible to successfully challenge naturalism in British theatre today? At a time when audiences crave feelgood d…
Ivo van Hove's stage version of Hanya Yanagihara's bestseller is a real misery fest Wow! James Norton naked! Wow! New play by Ivo van Hove. Wow! It's four hours long. Wow! Wow! Wow! The much…