Claire van Kampen's production is big and bold, but her husband's Iago misses the mark Claire van Kampen has a history of providing roles for her husband, Mark Rylance. He starred …
Laura Wade play needs trimming but offers a bravura acting opportunity Add Katherine Parkinson to the top rank of theatre performers in a town where talent abounds. As Judy, the retro-minded…
Ian McKellen gives a towering performance as Shakespeare's capricious monarch Jonathan Munby's production, first seen last year in Chichester, reflects our everyday anxieties, emphasisi…
Gerard Alessandrini's latest is smart but needs streamliningIf it's possible to have somewhat too much of a good thing, that would seem to be the case with the British premiere at the M…
As the manic, self-obsessed king, Rhys Ifans cuts an extraordinary presenceThe image of a raging, narcissistic tyrant, convinced that he can crush even death into oblivion, has all too many …
A celebration of the Northern Irish stage craftsman whose play Aristocrats is revived at the Donmar Warehouse Brian Friel, who died in 2015 at the age of 86, was a shy man who shunned interv…
Collegiate-style Armageddon takes over the Court mainstage The apocalypse arrives as a series of collegiate sketches in the aptly-named Pity, the Rory Mullarkey play that may well prompt sym…
Alan Bennett's black comedy is a howl against the privatization of deathThe NHS is us. For decades our national identity has been bandaged together with the idea, and reality, of a heal…
A fearlessly experimental, physically ingenious exploration of the textA raw pagan vitality animates this extraordinary story about a teenage boy wrestling with tumultuous emotions in the fa…
Les Dennis is superb as a washed-up comicLes Dennis was once a marquee name on Saturday night television as host of Family Fortunes, but since giving up the light entertainment lark he now p…
A newly-minimalist Sam Mendes guides an expert cast to sublime heights There's surprising and then there's The Lehman Trilogy, the National Theatre premiere in which a long-established direc…
Female friendship comedy drama is occasionally bright, but lacks plot and depth Britain is rightly proud of its record on multiculturalism, but whenever cross-cultural couples are shown on f…
Earnest environmental messages underpin a celebratory, musically gleeful revival of Shakespeare's cross-dressing favouriteIt's been raining in Regent's Park. On a balmy summer evening d…
Our writers pick their favourites in prospectLet's be honest, this is the least interesting Proms season on paper for years, at least in terms of adventurous repertoire choices, following on…
The playwright introduces 'The Meeting', her new play for Chichester Festival TheatreI think it's always a dangerous sport to try and consciously unravel where your ideas come from…
How many deaths would you survive for a second chance?"I am dead," declares Okot (pictured below, right) before recounting the horrors he survived to reach Calais. Each time, he says, "I die…
Martin McDonagh revival brings Poldark to the London stage, guns blazing Aidan Turner may not reveal those famously bronzed pecs that have made TV's Poldark box office catnip in his West End…
The RSC's adaptation of Robert Harris's Cicero books reaches the West EndHistory repeats itself. This much we know. In the 1980s, under a Tory government obsessed with cuts, the big new thin…
Infectious fun delivered by a cast bursting with boisterous talentGender-bending, confused identities, and hedonistic anarchy go together as naturally in summer Shakespeare as strawberries a…
A golden production helmed by the incomparable Kelli O'HaraShall we dodge? (One, two, three) No, the brilliance of Bartlett Sher's Tony-winning Lincoln Center revival " first seen on Br…
Blanche McIntyre finds coherence in this uneven play but at what cost?"A sad tale's best for winter," Leontes' young son Mamillius tells us. By that logic the current summer heatwave should …
The Faction brings fire and gumption to ShakespeareThe Faction's A Midsummer Night's Dream is a production in which women are more likely to kick ass than sleep with one " a muscular, mischi…
Huge new play about the fertility industry is rather crudely conceived We are now pretty familiar with the idea that human reproduction (making babies) has been turned into big business, and…
Smart and powerful new play about fear, terror and prejudice runs out of steamIt's the stuff of nightmares. There's a massive explosion, the sound of smashing glass, falling debris and polic…
Alison Bechdel's graphic novel becomes achingly intimate theatreIt seems only too fitting that David Lan's luminous reign at the Young Vic should draw to a close with this bold, creativ…