A rich epistolary stage biography, 'The Lives and Letters of the National Theatre'Dramatic Exchanges is a dazzling array of correspondence, stretching over more than a century, between …
Girls just wanna have fun in the sun - smart, funny but slender debut playBecause of the #MeToo movement, and the revival of feminist protest, the theme of sisterhood now has a much stronger…
RSC transfer presents a crowd-pleasing mix of metatheatrical comedy and music with, ultimately, a touch of melancholy Don Quixote and his paunchy sidekick long ago escaped the pages of Migue…
Erica Whyman's RSC production finds youthful energy but not clarityIt's clear from the start " from a Prologue that quickly dissolves familiar rhythms and words into a Babel of clamour …
The RSC's stage version reaches the West End, while Terry Gilliam's film is stuck in a legal vortexIt's a story of a mad old man who imagines himself to be a knight errant. On his …
Imaginative adaptation of Zadie Smith's 2000 classic let down by unnecessary musicYou can see why artistic director Indhu Rubasingham chose to stage this version of Zadie Smith's classi…
Disability-themed two-hander suggests that little has changed in eight years To the recent spate of shows that put their own narrative-building first, we can now add Still No Idea, with the …
This scalpel-sharp drama anatomises marital breakdown with cold-eyed clarityAdultery seldom looks less adult than in the form of the mild-life crisis " that much-satirised condition in which…
New epic compares the experience of black people in the US and the UKTwo countries; two histories. Being black in the US; being black in the UK. Compare and contrast. Which is exactly what d…
Two-hander with a Walt Whitman poem and a clever twistHere's a good pub quiz question: after Shakespeare, who was the most performed playwright in America last year? Arthur Miller? Tennessee…
ELYSE DODGSON RIP The unsung heroine of new theatre in translation talks about her unique careerRemembering the unsung heroine of new theatre in translation, who has died aged 73 The Royal C…
Robert Icke reaches a new career plateau with his Ibsen adaptation Beware the smile that Edward Hogg wears like a shield in the opening scenes of The Wild Duck, the Ibsen play refashioned in…
Martin McDonagh's latest is poorly written and lacking in imagination It's all in the title, isn't it? Martin McDonagh's surreal new play comes with a warning that not only screams its …
Horror flick echoes fail to meet all the play's challengesIt has been said before: Macbeth's reputation for bad luck has more to do with the difficulty of bringing off a successful prod…
Angela Carter adaptation strains to sustain its high spirits"What could possibly go wrong?" The question ends the first act of Wise Children, the debut venture from the new company birthed b…
Ken Urban's play is a psychological thriller crossed with a love storyThis blisteringly intense evening at Trafalgar Studios begins with two strangers in an Amsterdam hotel bedroom and …
Marianne Elliott's gender-swapped Sondheim is a revelationThe most thrilling revivals interrogate a classic work, while revealing its fundamental soul anew. Marianne Elliott's female…
Nina Raine's follow-up to her very big hit Consent is often funny but rarely deepIn 2017, playwright Nina Raine's Consent, an excellent National Theatre play about lawyers and rape vict…
Shakespeare at the Donmar, in double visionShakespeare exists to be refracted and filtered through the age in which he is presented. So there's every good reason for the Donmar's artistic di…
A virtuoso ensemble justifies this youthful baggy monster's West End transferIts roots are in truth: 15-year-old Matthew Lopez saw the film, then read the book, of Howards End and 11 ye…
A disappointing portrait of middle-class hypocrisyThe playwright Bathsheba Doran has blazed a stellar trail ever since graduating from Cambridge at the same time as David Mitchell and Robert…
Florian Zeller puzzle-play benefits from two potent starsIf you're going to write a play that traffics in bafflement, it's not a bad idea to have on hand one of the most beady-eyed actresses…
David Hare's latest is set in an alternative reality that is more 2008 than 2018Whatever you might think about Brexit, the dreaded B word, the current climate certainly seems to be reinvigor…
Shakespeare sings in buoyant if sometimes strenuous UK premiere What better way to celebrate a homecoming than with a party? That is the capacious-hearted thinking behind this new musical ve…
Victorian pugilistic drama: thoroughly heartfelt, highly original and completely timelyThere are not that many plays about sport, but, whether you gamble on results or not, you can bet that …