An interrogation of power, womanhood and the mythologies with which we surround ourselves History has corseted Elizabeth I with the title of "Virgin Queen" for centuries, but in Ella Hickson…
Mike Lew's riff on Shakespeare needs more art to go with its heart If good intentions were everything, Teenage Dick would be the play of the year. As it is, this British premiere at the Donm…
A stunning tribute to the wild and wonderful life of the mind This scary, electrically beautiful adaptation of Neil Gaiman's book about living on the faultline between imagination and realit…
Purists may quibble at circus-themed show When Qdos brought back pantomime to the Palladium three years ago after an absence of nearly 30 years, it set the bar high with superb production v…
Family tragedy is emotionally powerful but incomplete and unsatisfying The trouble with prejudice is that you can't control how other people see you. At the start of her career, playwright G…
Relocation from the Russian provinces to Sixties Biafra brings insight and immediacy Inua Ellams' Three Sisters plays Chekhov in the shadow of war, specifically the Nigerian-Biafran seces…
Rebecca Frecknall directs a production which ultimately finds its heart This play can be a challenge for modern audiences: a woman who is ostensibly in a position of power, "a prince" in Ren…
New American drama directs a rapier wit at black stereotypes Jackie Sibblies Drury's Fairview comes to the Young Vic with the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama under its belt, and a reputation …
Magnificent makeover of the French classic - a jaw-dropping success Actor James McAvoy is much in demand: in the BBC's His Dark Materials he is busy saving a parallel world, while in the poe…
The Cold War 'Match of the Century' fails to translate into compelling drama We've had Chess the musical; now, here's Chess the play. Tom Morton-Smith, who has form wrestling recent history …
A vigorous Paterson Joseph meets the Christmas spirits "Dickensian" commonly means both sentimental Victorian, apple-cheeked family perfection (especially at Christmas) and abject poverty. …
Period confection in three acts could use pruning There's slight (White Christmas, to name but one) and then there's The Boy Friend, a period musical so unabashedly vaporous that if you …
New autobiographical play about night thoughts on bodies real and digital Eve Leigh is an experimental playwright who has tackled difficult issues for more than a decade. Yet most members of…
Welsh parable of the second coming makes unusual seasonal fare This is the third Emlyn Williams piece to be presented here in a decade: The Druid's Rest in 2009 was followed by the enormous …
Jordan Belfort memoirs translate unpleasantly, even unnecessarily, to the stage Of all the groups you probably wouldn't want to be part of, surely the hyper-adrenalised, hardscrabble popula…
Seasonal entertainment is cheerful if essentially dull Nostalgia for things that probably never were is an animating theme in politics these days.
Four complex novels squeezed into a big, bold show with strong performances It took no time for Elena Ferrante's two Neapolitan friends to join the ranks of great literary creations: Lenù…
Director Bijan Sheibani turns playwright in a fine two-hander about family Family dramas are a staple of British new writing, but as well as talking about our nearest and dearest, can they …
An electric interpretation in which the White Witch " like the devil " has all the best tunes We all remember that moment when we walked through the back of the wardrobe: the heaviness of th…
Close-knit company keeps the York and Lancaster clashes as clear and lively as it can No Joan of Arc means no Henry VI Part One. France, where we left the victorious Henry V - the superb Sar…
The heroine seizes the mic in this Shakespeare-inspired jukebox musical It's bright, it's brash, it's a gazillion times camper than Christmas: but is it such stuff as theatrical hits are mad…
A stirring new musical tackles missed connections in the internet age Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul's Tony and Grammy Award-winning musical Dear Evan Hansen is an institu…
Stratford transfer makes much of contemporary resonance but fails to deliver Because he dramatised power, Shakespeare never really goes out of fashion. Treatments of his plays do though, and…
The script misses all that was distinctive about Berlin and Akhmatova's meeting How do you begin to dramatise one of the most extraordinary conversations of the 20th century between two of i…
The story of Touching the Void has been told and retold. Its author explores its appeal In Peru in 1985, Joe Simpson - then 25 - and his 21-year-old climbing partner Simon Yates were descend…