A brilliant balance of raucous comedy and immense pathos Where should Leila live " Ilford or Kent? It doesn't sound like an earth-shattering decision for a 15-year-old to make, but the stake…
How physical transition is etched into the story of our world Pinocchio is one of our most irreverent metamorphosis stories, and in this visually ingenious blend of film and stage performanc…
Claudia Rankine's 2018 play insists on raising difficult questions Art and race intersect to provocative effect We're in New York City, in an upscale loft apartment, with that absence of…
Roy Williams's latest is a tribute to the children of the Windrush generation I live in Brixton, south London. A few days ago, the borough's aptly named Windrush Square hosted events which c…
While bravado support from Bill Pullman practically steals the show For sheer extremes of family dysfunction Theresa Rebeck's Mad House must be aiming to set new records in American drama. T…
Broadway entry from 2017 is the rare sequel that richly delivers Slamming the door on experience comes with repercussions in A Doll's House, Part 2, the thrilling Broadway entry from Americ…
Loving account of two couples is perceptive, but a bit slender Is gig theatre the latest sugar rush? Okay, it ups the brain's serotonin levels and charges around your body like a crazy elec…
The disconnect between rhetoric and genuine meaning feels very contemporary Kathryn Hunter's performance as Lear forges its heat from contradictions. She is as frail as she is strong, as det…
Lucy Kirkwood's new play is depressingly cynical in form and content What is the shelf life of a theatre gimmick? In April, the Royal Court announced that they were going to stage a debut pl…
The first in his 'Century Cycle' catches the fabric of life that August Wilson made his own It's great to see August Wilson's early play " the first of his "Century Cycle", that remarkable d…
Barry McGovern is odyssey master, while fine performers sag under awful script A pot plant on a stand, two tables with glasses of water, two chairs " one plush, one high " are all the props …
An entertaining but not quite convincing makeover for a tricky play There probably isn't a more able translator of vintage drama than Martin Crimp, the playwright whose 2004 version of Pierr…
Gecko boldly sculpts surreal alternative realities to our predicted worlds You never forget your first Gecko production. I experienced mine almost 20 years ago at the Battersea Arts Centre, …
A classic play can still collapse time and space with its heartrending relevance The stage is cluttered with objects; a pianola sits stage left; a large cabinet, soon to be revealed as a di…
 Marina Carr's angry, poetic take on Clytemnestra's story is delivered in all its gory glory Playwrights return to classical myths for two main reasons " to shine a light on how we live …
A ten-foot golden phallus is launched from the musicians' gallery Boris Johnson was of course not the first British leader to engineer a split with Europe for personal gain. This strikes you…
Lucy Moss puts the 'camp' into campus with her riotous, inclusive revival The 2001 Reese Witherspoon-starring film Legally Blonde, upon which Heather Hatch, Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjami…
Fraser Grace adapts a Russian story of love and survival in a world turned upside-down When Bliss, a new play adapted from an Andrei Platonov short story by Fraser Grace, made its debut in R…
Tamasha play about a Punjabi family-run salon could do with a makeover Theatre is slowly recovering from the effects of the pandemic " and many shows which were cancelled because of the fir…
Bartlett Sher's Broadway production comes to London with aplomb First staged in 2018, Bartlett Sher's Lincoln Center Theater production of My Fair Lady is London's latest import from B…
Anupama Chandrasekhar argues, with humour and invention, against political extremism The young Indian man stepping towards us on the vast Olivier stage is unremarkable enough, slight and boy…
★★★★ GREASE, Dominion Theatre Nostalgia for the late 1950s and late 1970s underpins an entertaining show Crowdpleaser pleases crowd: this High School musical deliv…
Inter-generational story from a Northern mining town melds naturalism and tragedy Anne-Marie Duff blazes across the stage like a meteorite in Beth Steel's excoriating drama about the changes…
Naomi Wallace's writing is brave and uncompromising Jude is the kind of girl that no-one would want to mess with " she can dance like a demon to Eric Clapton, skewer an ego in seconds and hi…
Laying bare the authority and entitlement of misogyny The psychology of female desire in 1960s California, was a field awash with voyeurism and exploitation. This brilliant play uncovers not…