Simon Russell Beale is the unapologetically corrupt banker, in Ibsen's chilly tragicomedy It always feels special when a play speaks so directly to an audience that you feel and hear the rip…
After its antisemitic blunder a year ago, this venue makes amends What is the Royal Court theatre for? Is it a space that stages innovative new writing, or does it prefer to do documentary t…
Dissent in the ranks in uber-timely American comedy Can a play peak too soon? That's the quandary that attends the Old Vic airing of Eureka Day, Jonathan Spector's on-point if overextend…
★★★★ THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF DISSOCIA, THEATRE ROYAL STRATFORD EAST The landscape of mental health explored in surreal comedy A woman confronts her neuroses in a ph…
An interview with the novelist the morning after she won the Man Booker Prize for the first time Hilary Mantel, who has died at the age of 70, was a maker of literary history. Wolf Hall, …
★★★ CLUTCH Odd couple in a Corsa drive in fourth gear for comedy but second gear for pathos After a strong start, newly commissioned play takes a wrong exit from the rounda…
Tanya Barfield reconstructs a simple plot as an absorbing puzzle A tender love story has arrived at the Kings Head theatre from the US, where its author, Tanya Barfield, is an award-winning…
Mrs Thatcher and Elizabeth II slug it out again in this 2013 classic It's only nine years since Moira Buffini's Handbagged had its premiere at Kilburn's Tricycle theatre (renamed the Kiln i…
Two-hander about a contrasting pair of gay Pakistanis is beautifully wrought Britain is a divided nation, but one of the divisions that we don't hear that much about is that between Pakistan…
The central character is put in the dock but has ample evidence to get out Hell hath no fury like a teenager scorned. In this perplexing play, we see a highly successful doctor put on trial …
Funny, poignant and stimulating, a delightfully welcome piece of intellectual escapism It can't have been an easy pitch. "Popes. Both foreign, yes. German and Argentinian " sorry, can't cha…
Dipo Baruwa-Etti pits a fiery outsider activist against the British-Nigerian middle-class As Dipa Baruwa-Etti's latest play, The Clinic, reminds us, the Tory party has a strong showing of B…
Inua Ellams adds contemporary political thrust to a well-loved classic Antigone, the forceful young woman who takes on the male establishment, has long resonated with idealists; Sophocles' p…
The acclaimed Irish actor adapts his memoir into a stirring one-man show Gabriel Byrne isn't a typical film star. From his breakthrough as the lustful and doomed Uther Pendragon in Excali…
Édouard Louis's book is brought to life in a fierce performance A bare interior with tarnished walls, a single bed, and an oxygen tube. The stage seems to have been set for a Beckett pla…
Dramatization of Kavita Puri's Partition Voices is moving and compelling Partition equals trauma. It cannot have escaped anyone's attention that the British Empire's solution to intractable …
The fact is that Joan of Arc was, by anyone's standards, unique This raw, joyous, irreverent take on Joan of Arc made headlines before opening night for its depiction of the fifteenth-centur…
★★★★ RIDE New musical about a difficult, charismatic, barrier-breaking woman freewheels into the West End New musical about a barrier-breaking woman freewhe…
★★★★★  INTO THE WOODS Breathtaking production captures the unease at the heart of this fairytale musical Prepare to be dazzled and disoriented in a phanta…
★★★  TREASON THE MUSICAL IN CONCERT Semi-staged production shows promise - and problems Semi-staged production shows promise - and problems A semi-staged concert perform…
An energetic, lithe gig-theatre adaptation of Édouard Louis's 2014 trauma memoir can't escape the book's limitations Those working-class people really are appalling, aren't they? Racist,…
A slow-burn gothic horror plays with our sense of reality to intelligently creepy effect In many ways, The Stones is what the Fringe is all about: a new theatre company (London-based Signal …
Two plays by Scottish writer James Ley set out to shock, provoke " and provide belly laughs too Ode to Joy (How Gordon Got to Go to the Nasty Pig Party), Summerhall ★★★★
Masha Gessen, Shostakovich and Shakespeare's Prospero wrestle order from chaos Essay-writing can be a great art, at least when executed by Hubert Butler of Kilkenny, on a par - whether you k…
A jury of young people hold their elders to account for climate change Dystopian theatre takes many forms " but this is the first which is a jury-room drama. Dawn King has previously explor…