Kara Tointon leads a concept-heavy, Victorian-era Shakespeare update Twelfth Night is rarely long-absent from the British stage and nor is it in our current climate of streaming aplenty. Th…
Howard Brenton's play offers a lucid account of the Partition of India This week's gem from the Hampstead's vaults is Howard Brenton's political drama from 2013, telling the extraordinary, s…
Emma Rice's version of Angela Carter's last novel is a celebration of alternative families Reviewing theatre now means reviewing film. Knowing that Emma Rice's Old Vic 2018 production of Wis…
Musical adaptation celebrates British pluck, coupled with luck 18 months or so after it opened in Chichester, Flowers for Mrs Harris launches a sequence of streamed productions from the Wes…
Sally Cookson's take on Brontë is innately theatrical and ferociously resonant The National Theatre's online broadcasts got off to a storming start with One Man, Two Guvnors " watched by …
Gloriously surreal monologue about everyday anxieties in extraordinary circumstances She's an ordinary young woman, and she really doesn't know what to think. After all, things are way out o…
Beth Steel award-winner makes for muscular, eerily apposite fare The talk is of an "economy in ruin [with] unemployment through the roof": a précis of Britain in lockdown? In fact, this is…
Stephen Rea rivets once again in David Ireland play One of the most blistering stage performances in recent memory gets a renewed lease on life with the streaming of the 2019 screen version…
BBC film version of a Renaissance rape trial is powerfully resonant and completely relevant Artemisia Gentileschi has definitely had a hard time. Although she was an outstanding Renaissance …
NT Live version of this masterpiece of farce is now available for free Armchair theatre-lovers rejoice. During the lockdown, the National Theatre is streaming a selection of its past hits fo…
Mike Bartlett's 2016 play chimes with our topsy-turvy times "The whole world is just tilting at the moment," we're told near the end of Wild, the Mike Bartlett play from summer 2016 that…
Original Theatre's tartan gothic thriller is complex but also a bit overwrought With everyone in lockdown, observing physical if not social distancing, a story about isolation can have a pa…
A stinging duet from 'A Little Night Music' has a savagely funny power "Whipped cream with knives" is how Harold Prince, who directed the Broadway premiere of A Little Night Music in 1973, …
Brilliant lyrics from the young composer offer a definitive take on migration Ever since I heard the quintessential prog rock group The Nice do a psychedelic instrumental version of "America…
Sublime ensemble number from Act Two of 'Sweeney Todd' Along with many others, my first exposure to Stephen Sondheim's art was through watching the film of Bernstein's West Side Story as …
Head to Instagram for a 2018 production with plenty of 2020 shutdown wisdom The way that theatres and other arts institutions have leapt into action over the past week, providing a wealth of…
Is there a better climax to a musical first act than the terror-plus-wit in 'Sweeney Todd'? Two numbers, one hair-raising slice of music-theatre. When Sondheim's paying homage to the older, …
Theatre Uncut's streamed play about social media and the woke generation is clear but slender It's only been a week since London's West End went dark, and theatres closed all over the UK, bu…
We're celebrating the great man's birthday with favourite numbers - mine's from 'Follies' Surely there's never been a more apt time for Sondheim's great cry of defiance? "I'm Still Here" is …
The composer-lyricist has left an indelible legacy Here's an irony worthy of the work of Stephen Sondheim, an artist who clearly knows a thing or two about the multiple manifestations of th…
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…
Mike Bartlett play remains as buoyant and biting as ever The Beatles lyric that gives Mike Bartlett's terrific play its title dates to 1967, which also happens to be the year in which the f…
Sebastian Barry two-hander offers rich acting opportunities for two of Ireland's finest Some wondrous acting is sacrificed on the altar of an increasingly wonky plot in On Blueberry Hill, t…
Re-gendered Brecht proves a chore If there's one certainty about the Edinburgh Lyceum's production of Mrs Puntila And Her Man Matti " and there aren't many in this unsatisfying, overlon…
Thoughtful revival of Coward classic has all the ingredients - except the laughs Jennifer Saunders is a one-woman tickle machine. As her countless appearances in television shows such as Fre…