The bad sex award
Simon Stephens gives his plays misleading titles. Nuclear War, Pornography and Punk Rock contained little trace of their advertised ingredients.…
Perishable goods
Labour of Love is the new play by James Graham, the poet laureate of politics. We’re in a derelict…
Verbal diarrhoea
In Beckett’s Happy Days a prattling Irish granny is buried waist-deep, and later neck-deep, in a refuse tip whose detritus…
Bloody minded
Tristan Bernays loves Hollywood blockbusters. His new play, Boudica, is an attempt to put the blood-and-guts vibe of the action…
Speech therapy
Oslo opened in the spring of 2016 at a modest venue in New York. It moved to Broadway and this…
Age concern
Stephen Sondheim’s Follies takes a huge leap into the past. It’s 1971 and we meet two middle-aged couples who knew…
Keeping it in the family
A new orthodoxy governs the casting process in Hollywood. An actor’s ethnicity must match the character’s. If you extend this…
Animal or vegetable?
Against by Christopher Shinn sets out to unlock the secrets of America’s spiritual malaise. Two main settings represent the wealthy…
The many sides of satire
Brexit the Musical is a peppy satire written by Chris Bryant (not the MP, he’s a lawyer). Musically the show…
London calling
What is the Edinburgh Fringe? It’s a sabbatical, a pit stop, a pause-and-check-the-map opportunity for actors who don’t quite know…
Whither Ukip?
‘Some wine? How about a beer? Shall we settle into a good old pub?’ I make these suggestions to Ukip’s…
Starting block
Conor McPherson’s new play is set in dust-bowl Minnesota in 1934. We’re in a fly-blown boarding house owned by skint,…
Derek Jacobi as Mercutio is half-genius, half-prank: Romeo and Juliet at the Garrick reviewed
Out come the stars in Kenneth Branagh’s Romeo and Juliet. He musters a well-drilled, celebrity-ridden crew but they can’t quite…
I came out feeling euphoric and disorientated: Young Vic’s Blue/Orange reviewed
Blue/Orange by Joe Penhall enjoys the dubious status of a modern classic. A black mental-health patient, Christopher, is about to…
The Royal Court is the Eddie the Eagle of theatre
If there were an Eddie the Eagle award for theatre — to recognise large reputations built on minuscule achievements —…
What an extraordinary debut for Emma Rice: Globe's Midsummer Night's Dream reviewed
The Globe’s new chatelaine, Emma Rice, has certainly shaken the old place up. It’s almost unrecognisable. Huge white plastic orbs…
Wasn’t Lawrence of Arabia more annoying than this new play suggests?
T.E. Lawrence is like the gap-year student from hell. He visits a country full of exotic barbarians and after a…
A literary lap dance: Doctor Faustus reviewed
Great excitement for play-goers as a rare version of a theological masterpiece arrives in the West End. Doctor Faustus stars…
Down and Out in Paris and London is a chav safari
Down and Out in Paris and London is a brilliant specimen from a disreputable branch of writing: the chav safari,…
Was there a cover-up over Shakespeare’s death?
How did Shakespeare kick the bucket? Lloyd Evans considers the evidence
The time when Putin seduced Corbyn in an East Berlin nightclub
Corbyn the Musical feels like it comes from the heart. Did the writers live through the 1970s when the hard-left…
Les Blancs at the Olivier is good-ish, but it won't be a classic
Les Blancs had a troubled birth. In 1965 several unfinished drafts of the play were entrusted by its dying author,…
I didn’t enjoy it but I couldn’t help loving it: Sunset Boulevard reviewed
Sunset Boulevard is a tale of fractured glory with Homeric dimensions. The movie presents Hollywood as a never-ending Trojan War…
Slapstick enthusiasts will love this Branagh and Brydon farce: The Painkillers reviewed
Sir Ken’s excellent West End residency continues with a sugar-rich confection. Sean Foley has adapted and updated an elderly French farce…
Catherine Tate’s talents are wasted on this meandering musical about nuclear fallout
Miss Atomic Bomb celebrates the sub-culture that grew up around nuclear tests in 1950s America. The citizens of Nevada would…
