Muswell Hill reviewed: a guide on how to sock it to London trendies
Torben Betts is much admired by his near-namesake Quentin Letts for socking it to London trendies. Letts is one of…
How to Hold Your Breath, Royal Court, review: yet more state-funded misanthropy
‘We hate the system and we want the system to pay us to say we hate the system.’ The oratorio…
A tatty new theatre offers up a comic gem that’s sure to be snapped up by the BBC
New venue. New enticement. In the undercroft of a vast but disregarded Bloomsbury church nestles the Museum of Comedy. The…
Tom Stoppard’s The Hard Problem review: too clever by half
Big event. A new play from Sir Tom. And he tackles one of philosophy’s oldest and crunchiest issues, which varsity…
My Night With Reg at the Apollo Theatre reviewed: a great play that will go under without an interval
Gay plays crowd the theatrical canon. There are the necessary enigmas of Noël Coward, like The Vortex or Design For…
Young Vic’s Bull, review: a new Mike Bartlett play to bore you into catalepsy
A knockout show at the Young Vic. Literally. The stage has been reconfigured as a boxing ring to make Mike…
Old Vic’s Tree: Beckett plus Seinfeld - plus swearing
‘Fucking hell. You twat. Fuck off. Fuck. Fuck.’ These dispiriting words are the opening line of Tree, a newish play…
Young Vic's Golem: its status as a cult hit fills me with troubled wonder
The Young Vic produces shows that please many but rarely me. Its big hit of 2014, A Streetcar Named Desire,…
National Theatre’s 3 Winters: a hideous Balkans ballyhoo
A masterpiece at the National. A masterpiece of persuasion and bewitchment. Croatian word-athlete Tena Stivicic has miraculously convinced director Howard…
Panto season has arrived - and even the kids are turning their nose up at it
‘What is a panto?’ I asked my companion at the Hackney Empire’s Saturday matinee. ‘It’s basically a really bad play,’…
The recruitment company to go to if you've got no arms or legs
When to launch? For impresarios, this is the eternal dilemma. Autumn is so crowded with press nights that producers are…
The National’s latest attempt to cheer us up: three hours of poverty porn
Bombay is now called Mumbai by everyone bar its residents, whose historic name (from the Portuguese for ‘beautiful cove’) has…
Norman Mailer’s wife comes out of the shadows
‘It’s not as bad as I thought it would be,’ said Norman Mailer to his wife, Norris Church, after reading…
Yanks buy stacks of tickets in the West End. Why is Made in Dagenham so rude to them?
Go slow at Dagenham. The musical based on the film about a pay dispute in the 1960s starts as a…
An inept dud penetrates the Park Theatre’s dross-filters - and I blame Beckett
Jonah and Otto is a lost-soul melodrama that keeps its audience guessing. Where are we? The Channel coast somewhere. Indoors…
Neville's Island: a play from the era of Men Behaving Badly - when women were seen as exotic excrescences
Start with a joke. Neville’s Island. Get it? Laughing yet? Are your ribs splitting into pieces? It’s a cracker, isn’t…
Is London's West End Jewish enough for David Baddiel’s musical The Infidel?
David Baddiel has turned his movie, The Infidel, into a musical. The set-up is so contrived and clumsy that it…
Donmar’s Henry IV: Phyllida Lloyd has nothing but contempt for her audience
The age of ‘ladies first’ is back. Phyllida Lloyd reserves all the roles for the weaker sex, as I imagine…
Were the cast of the Old Vic’s Electra clothed by Oxfam?
First, a bit of background. Conquering Agamemnon slew his daughter, Iphigenia, in return for a fair wind to Troy. This…
Will Marti Pellow attract enough tipsy hen parties to Evita to flog all 18,000 seats?
Tim and Andy are back. Their monster hit Evita opens the fully refurbed and re-primped Dominion Theatre, which is built…
Charles III is made for numbskulls by numbskulls
Suppose Charles were to reign as a meddlesome, self-pitying, indecisive plonker. It’s a thought. It’s now a play, too, by…
If you have teenage boys who loathe the very idea of theatre, send them to The Play That Goes Wrong
It’s taken a while but here it is. The Play That Goes Wrong is like Noises Off, but simpler. Michael…
Can the Scots really be as small-minded, mistrustful and chippy as Spoiling suggests?
Referendum fever reaches Stratford East. Spoiling, by John McCann, takes us into the corridors of power in Holyrood shortly after…
Bent bureaucrats, ‘fake dykes’ and bad bakers — this week’s theatre
Eye of a Needle, by newcomer Chris MacDonald, looks at homosexuality and asylum. Gays from the Third World, who’ve suppressed…
Dolts, Doormats and FGM: theatre to make you physically sick
Wow. What an experience. A 1991 movie named Dogfight has spawned a romantic musical. We’re in San Francisco in 1963.…
