Theatre
An overrated news satire directed by an inexplicably popular director: Network reviewed
The inexplicable popularity of Ivo Van Hove continues. The director’s latest visit to the fairies involves an updated version of…
Christian Slater is mesmerising: Glengarry Glen Ross reviewed
David Mamet’s plays are tough to pull off because his dialogue lacks the predictable shapeliness of traditional dramatic speech. He…
Rarely has the West End seen such a draining and nasty experience: The Exorcist reviewed
The Exorcist opened in 1973 accompanied by much hoo-ha in the press. Scenes of panic, nausea and fainting were recorded…
Why has the Bridge Theatre opened with this lightweight new play? Young Marx reviewed
Bang! A brand new theatre has opened on the South Bank managed by the two Nicks, Hytner and Starr, who…
Family planning
Beginning starts at the end. A Crouch End party has just finished and the sitting room is a waste tip…
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…
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,…
Heavy-handed
Oliver Cotton is an RSC stalwart who looks like a man born to greatness. Google him. He has the fearless…
Out of sorts at the RSC
The RSC’s summer blockbuster is about Queen Anne. It’s called Queen Anne. It opens at the Inns of Court where…
The good Palestinian
Shubbak, meaning ‘window’ in Arabic, is a biennial festival taking place in various venues across London. The brochure reads like…
Animal crackers
The Vaults at Waterloo are gallantly trying to pose as the party spot for hipsters in the world’s coolest city.…
Hyped to death
Hand it to the Americans. They know how to hype a young talent to death. The latest to be asphyxiated…
Here comes the Sun
It was most odd. Four decades after I’d walked into the Sun to start my first shift as a news…
Hymn to self-slaughter
Anatomy of a Suicide looks at three generations of women in various phases of mental collapse. They line up on…
Party piece
The National Theatre could hardly resist Barber Shop Chronicles. The play shines a light on a disregarded ethnic community, black…
Fantastic Mr Fox
Sand in the Sandwiches is the perfect show for those who feel the West End should be an intellectual funfair.…
Army surplus
Georg Büchner, a justly neglected German playwright, died at the age of 23 leaving a half-finished script about a mad…
