A triumphant musical about teenage angst When Berliners sat down to watch Franz Wedekind's debut play Fruhlings Erwachen " Spring Awakening " in 1906, they had little inkling of the kind of…
★★★★ THE TIGER LILLIES' CHRISTMAS CAROL: A VICTORIAN GUTTER, SOUTHBANK CENTRE Melancholy musical retelling laced with wit and political venom  The Tiger…
Has director Patrick Marber boobed this time? In his 1973 play Habeas Corpus, now revived at the Menier Chocolate Factory under the direction of Patrick Marber, Alan Bennett had his way with…
Clive Rowe dons the frocks, while Rob Rinder and Anton Du Beke slap their thighs Jack and the Beanstalk, Hackney Empire ★★★
A vivid and witty recreation of politics in the late Sixties No playwright has a scalpel as sharp as James Graham's when it comes to dissecting politics; he has a brilliance and edge that st…
Jessie Buckley and Eddie Redmayne constantly surprise in multilayered production Turning a theatre into the Kit Kat Club, Berlin, early 1930s, is nothing new: the Edinburgh University Theatr…
Revival of American writer Alice Childress's 1955 anti-racist play shines bright The National Theatre has a good record in staging classic American drama by black playwrights. James Baldwin…
Gentle spoofing turns to something much more earthy and traditional This is a story of an innocent who finds herself unexpectedly in a strange, unknown world. The same could be true for tho…
The stage magic is both ingenious and beguiling It's been seventeen years since Nicholas Hytner first directed Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials at the National Theatre, ambitiously whirli…
Blanche McIntyre regenders the Duke and relishes the London low-life Measure for Measure may be the quintessential Shakespearean "problem" play, but just what has earned it that epithet rem…
Remembering the brilliant actor knight who revealed himself both on stage and in pioneering performance diaries The energy of Antony Sher, who has died at the age of 72, was prodigious. He n…
Despite its deceptive lightness, at heart this is a dark terrifying story When the Canadian Yann Patel went to India as a young adult backpacker he fell in love " not with one person but wit…
The master of musicals remembered, and revered
★★★ THE GOOD LIFE Nostalgic comedy with a surprising resonance 45 years on Tom, Barbara, Jerry and Margo are back in the '70s, but with a message for today "Off-grid…
★★★ A Christmas Carol - Immersive Dickens production not quite a Christmas cracker Stephen Mangan's Scrooge learns his lesson in imbalanced Dickens adaptation Four year…
His earthy informality instantly anchors the philosophy Words flow like water in TS Eliot's Four Quartets, shimmering with allusion, swirling and eddying with the ideas and fractured philoso…
A noisy, busy comedy that loses its anchor somewhere in the chaos "Am I myself?" At the tangled centre of Shakespeare's comedy of two pairs of identical twins, servant Dromio asks the quest…
Moira Buffini's state-of-the-nation, climate-change play runs into the doldrums After all the tides of monologue plays have ebbed, British new writing is now paddling in the pools of state-o…
Roy Williams and Clint Dyer bring their monologue sequence to a triumphant conclusion One of the absolute highpoints of new writing in the past couple of years has been the Death of England …
Musical adaptation of Louisa May Alcott classic is enjoyable but undemanding Louisa May Alcott did not think she could write a successful book for girls. After her publisher suggested this …
Zadie Smith's updated Chaucerian tale has a spring in its step and a twinkle in its eye Zadie Smith might not be the only writer who can rhyme "tandem" with "galdem", but she's the only one…
Al Smith's new play was jinxed before it started " and it never really recovers Why are we indifferent to anti-Semitism? In the past few weeks the Royal Court, a proud citadel of wokeness, h…
The intensity of studio theatre only fitful in Bill Alexander's updated adaptation What's in an article? Director Bill Alexander has titled his new production A Merchant of Venice, leaving u…
Hilarious and probing satire from Young Jean Lee The Korean-American writer Young Jean Lee's Straight White Men, currently enjoying its UK debut at Southwark Playhouse, is presented wi…
★★★★ VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE Comedy mines Chekhov for laughs and finds some rich seams Super London debut for Russian-inspired Broadway comedy Van…