Park Theatre
Two very long hours: The Effect, at the Lyttelton Theatre, reviewed
Lucy Prebble belongs to the posse of scribblers responsible for the HBO hit, Succession. Perhaps in honour of this distinction,…
A masterpiece: P Word, at Park Theatre, reviewed
Look at this line. ‘I’m 80 years old. I find that unforgivable.’ Could an actor get a laugh on ‘unforgivable’?…
Joyously liberating: Tony! [The Tony Blair Rock Opera] reviewed
Harry Hill’s latest musical traces Tony Blair’s bizarre career from student pacifist to war-mongering plaything of the United States. With…
Two hours of bickering from a couple of doughnut-shaped crybabies: Middle, at the Dorfman Theatre, reviewed
‘I fink I doan luv yew any maw.’ A marital bust-up drama at the National Theatre opens with a whining…
All a bit Blackadder: Hamlet, at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, reviewed
Never Not Once has a cold and forbidding title but it starts as an amusing tale set in an LA…
Suchet makes Poirot sound like craft beer: Poirot and More, at Harold Pinter Theatre, reviewed
Producers are getting jittery again. Large-scale shows look risky when a single infection can postpone an entire show. Hence Poirot…
A gem that should be released online: Park Theatre’s Abigail’s Party reviewed
Mike Leigh’s classic, Abigail’s Party, has been revived under the direction of Vivienne Garnett. The script is a guilty secret…
Homeric levels of misery: Paradise, at the Olivier Theatre, reviewed
The National Theatre has given Sophocles’s Philoctetes a makeover and a new title, Paradise. This must be ironic because the…
The script’s a dud: Antipodes at the Dorfman Theatre reviewed
The Antipodes, by the acclaimed dramatist Annie Baker, is set in a Hollywood writers’ room. Seven hired scribblers are brainstorming…
‘It could be a disaster’: Jim Broadbent talks to Stuart Jeffries about his latest role
‘I live completely anonymously,’ whispers Jim Broadbent down the phone from Lincolnshire. Nonsense, I counter. You’re one of the most…
A captivating freak-show: Bitter Wheat reviewed
Bitter Wheat, David Mamet’s latest play, features a loathsome Hollywood hotshot, Barney Fein, who offers to turn an actress into…
Cost of Living at Hampstead Theatre isn’t a bad show – and it contains a star in the making
Hampstead has become quite a hit-factory since Ed Hall took over. His foreign policy is admirably simple. He scours New…
Pinter comes across as an eccentric lightweight scribbler: Pinter Two reviewed
Pinter Two, the second leg of the Pinter season, offers us a pair of one-act comedies. The Lover is a…
Rarely have I sat through such a chaotic and whimsical script: Describe the Night reviewed
Describe the Night opens in Poland in 1920 where two Russian soldiers, Isaac and Nikolai, discuss truth and falsehood. Next…
A gripping new play with a Michael Fish-y narrative: Pressure reviewed
David Haig’s play Pressure looks at the Scottish meteorologist, James Stagg, who advised Eisenhower about the weather in the week…
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…
Perishable goods
Labour of Love is the new play by James Graham, the poet laureate of politics. We’re in a derelict…
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…
Heavy-handed
Oliver Cotton is an RSC stalwart who looks like a man born to greatness. Google him. He has the fearless…
Turn this play into a film and it’ll win Oscars – Hollywood can’t resist a posh Brit battling disability
God, what a title. The Gathered Leaves. It sounds like a tremulous weepie about grief and endurance with a closing…
We’ve forgotten just how attractive Jimmy Savile once was
Ho hum. Bit icky. Not bad. Hardly dazzling. The lukewarm response to An Audience With Jimmy Savile has astonished me.…
Even those who reviled Thatcher will be moved, appalled and astonished: Dead Sheep at the Park reviewed
Dead Sheep is a curious dramatic half-breed that examines Geoffrey Howe’s troubled relationship with Margaret Thatcher. Structurally it’s a Mexican…
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…
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…
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…
