Theatre

Hytner hits the bull's eye: The Southbury Child, at the Bridge Theatre, reviewed

16 July 2022 9:00 am

The Southbury Child is a comedy drama set in east Devon featuring a distressed vicar, Fr David, with a complex…

Right play, wrong place: The Fellowship, at Hampstead Theatre, reviewed

9 July 2022 9:00 am

Roy Williams’s new play is a wonky beast. It has two dense and cumbersome storylines that aren’t properly developed. Dawn…

If you see this show you’ll want to see it again – directed properly: The Glass Menagerie, at the Duke of York's Theatre, reviewed

2 July 2022 9:00 am

The Glass Menagerie directed by Jeremy Herrin is a bit of an eyeball-scrambler. The action takes place on a huge…

An actor’s recipe for insanity

2 July 2022 9:00 am

I’m on the road, a very proper place for an actor to be. Never mind all those jokes about some…

The ancient Greek art of theatre criticism

2 July 2022 9:00 am

Last week Lloyd Evans was wondering whether it was about time audiences started booing dramatic productions of which they disapproved.…

Bloated waffle: Jitney at the Old Vic reviewed

25 June 2022 9:00 am

The Old Vic’s new show, Jitney, has a mystifying YouTube advert which gives no information about the play or the…

Three cheers for booing in the theatre

25 June 2022 9:00 am

Are modern theatre-goers too polite?

Joyously liberating: Tony! [The Tony Blair Rock Opera] reviewed

18 June 2022 9:00 am

Harry Hill’s latest musical traces Tony Blair’s bizarre career from student pacifist to war-mongering plaything of the United States. With…

Newcomers will need to read the play in advance: Julius Caesar, at the Globe, reviewed

4 June 2022 9:00 am

Some things are done well in the Globe’s new Julius Caesar. The assassination is a thrilling spectacle. Ketchup pouches concealed…

Hard to believe this rambling apprentice-piece ever made it to the stage: Almeida's The House of Shades reviewed

28 May 2022 9:00 am

The House of Shades is a state-of-the nation play that covers the past six decades of grinding poverty in Nottingham.…

The playwright seems curiously detached about rape: The Breach, at Hampstead Theatre, reviewed

21 May 2022 9:00 am

Hampstead’s latest play is a knotty rape drama by Naomi Wallace set in Kentucky. Four teenagers with weird names meet…

Lviv diary: ballet, bomb shelters – and everyone loves Boris

21 May 2022 9:00 am

It is a glorious spring evening in Lviv and what could be better than a ballet gala at one of…

Two hours of bickering from a couple of doughnut-shaped crybabies: Middle, at the Dorfman Theatre, reviewed

14 May 2022 9:00 am

‘I fink I doan luv yew any maw.’ A marital bust-up drama at the National Theatre opens with a whining…

Angry diatribes and amusing pranks: Donmar Warehouse's Marys Seacole reviewed

7 May 2022 9:00 am

The title of the Donmar’s new effort, Marys Seacole, appears to be a misprint and that makes the reader look…

Muddled, tricksy and cheap: The Corn is Green at the Lyttelton Theatre reviewed

30 April 2022 9:00 am

The Corn is Green by Emlyn Williams is a sociology essay written in 1938 about a prickly tyrant, Miss Moffat,…

Boy wonder: The Young Pretender, by Michael Arditti, reviewed

30 April 2022 9:00 am

During his brief stage career Master Betty, or the Young Roscius, was no stranger to superlatives: genius, unparalleled, superior, Albion’s…

This Trump satire is too soft on Sleepy Joe and Cackling Kamala: The 47th at the Old Vic reviewed

23 April 2022 9:00 am

Trump is said to be a gift for bad satirists and a problem for good ones. He dominates Mike Bartlett’s…

Jonathan Bate weaves a memoir around madness in English literature

23 April 2022 9:00 am

There is a trend for books in which academics write personally about their engagement with literature. Examples include Lara Feigel’s…

Could the Arts Council pay Americans to keep this stuff in America? Daddy and The Fever Syndrome reviewed

16 April 2022 9:00 am

The Fever Syndrome is a dramatised lecture set in a New York brownstone occupied by the super-brainy Myers family. The…

A play for bureaucrats: David Hare's Straight Line Crazy reviewed

2 April 2022 9:00 am

It’s good of Nicholas Hytner to let Londoners see David Hare’s new play before it travels to Broadway where it…

It’s years since I saw anything as nasty as this: Cock at the Ambassadors Theatre reviewed

26 March 2022 9:00 am

Cock was written by Mike Bartlett in 2009 while he was in Mexico at a drama conference. The title suggests…

Keith Allen discusses Pinter, Max Bygraves and the sensitivities of contemporary audiences

26 March 2022 9:00 am

Lloyd Evans talks to Keith Allen about Max Bygraves, how he fell into acting and the sensitivities of contemporary audiences

The psychopath who wrecked New York

19 March 2022 9:00 am

Robert Gore-Langton on the man who wrecked New York

A must-see for Westminster obsessives: Riverside Studios' Bloody Difficult Women reviewed

19 March 2022 9:00 am

Bloody Difficult Women is a documentary drama by the popular journalist Tim Walker, which looks at the similarities between Gina…

Stands alongside Under Milk Wood: Shedding a Skin, at Soho Theatre, reviewed

12 March 2022 9:00 am

Shedding a Skin opens with an office nightmare. Amanda is a mixed-race employee in a predominantly white firm who gets…