playwrights
Two Ladies, Bridge Theatre review - Cvitešić and Wanamaker really rockThursday, 26 September 2019
Are first ladies second-class citizens? Do they always have to stand behind their husbands? What are they really like as people? Questions such as these have inspired Irish playwright Nancy Harris to explore the relationship between two fictional... Read more... |
The King of Hell’s Palace, Hampstead Theatre review - Chinese scandal freezes the bloodFriday, 13 September 2019
New artistic directors are popping up all over British theatre. Every week seems to usher in a refreshingly versatile talent taking the reins of a major theatre. Tonight, veteran new writing advocate Roxana Silbert, the new head of Hampstead Theatre... Read more... |
For Services Rendered, Jermyn Street Theatre review – uneven revival of 1930s dramaThursday, 12 September 2019
“I don’t think I have the right to influence her,” says an older character of her daughter in For Services Rendered, W Somerset Maugham’s 1932 anti-war drama. If only all elder statesmen and women felt the same about the youth. Tom Littler’s revival... Read more... |
Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial Salvation, Royal Court review - brilliant meta-theatrical experienceFriday, 06 September 2019
Playwright and performer Tim Crouch is one of Britain's most innovative creatives, with a big back catalogue of challenging and stimulating stage work. Typically he tells stories about profound loss, while simultaneously questioning the basis of... Read more... |
Appropriate, Donmar Warehouse review - fraught family reunion blisteringly toldFriday, 23 August 2019
You can’t fail to feel the ghosts in Appropriate at the Donmar Warehouse: they are there in the very timbers of the ancient Southern plantation house that is the setting for Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s fraught – and often very funny – family... Read more... |
Go Bang Your Tambourine, Finborough Theatre review - out-dated and long-windedThursday, 08 August 2019
Theatre legends die hard. Playwright Philip King, who passed away in 1979, was once hailed as the monarch of the farceurs, and his best-know play, See How They Run (1944), features the immortal line: "Sergeant, arrest most of these vicars!". Like so... Read more... |
Equus, Trafalgar Studios review - passionate intensityTuesday, 16 July 2019
When he gave Martin Dysart, the troubled psychiatrist protagonist of Equus, a line in which he speaks about “moments of experience” being “magnetised”, Peter Shaffer might almost have been talking about theatre itself. It’s a phrase that comes close... Read more... |
Jellyfish, National Theatre review - Ben Weatherill's play hits the right notesThursday, 11 July 2019
The intense relationship between a single parent and a single child is ramped up to its highest level when it involves a mother whose daughter has learning disabilities. From that dynamic, writer Ben Weatherill has crafted a warm, engaging and... Read more... |
Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner, Royal Court review - memes, memories and meaningsTuesday, 09 July 2019
Few theatres have done as much to promote new young talent as the Royal Court; few theatres have done as much to stage plays about the pains and pleasures of the digital world; few venues have tackled the themes of race and gender in contemporary... Read more... |
Rust, Bush Theatre review - slender yet invigoratingTuesday, 02 July 2019
The best kind of two-hander is the play about couples. And the most dramatic way of saying something about relationships is to show a couple who are in trouble, bad trouble. Crisis. Especially if they start off well together. Kenny Emson's smart,... Read more... |
Europe, Donmar Warehouse review - timely, tender, brutal and brilliantFriday, 28 June 2019
In the middle of the current decade, there was a mild vogue for reviving a handful of the great plays of the 1990s, such as Mark Ravenhill's Shopping and Fucking and Patrick Marber's Closer. Now the Donmar Warehouse's new artistic director, the... Read more... |
Citysong, Soho Theatre review - big writing, big heartWednesday, 19 June 2019
Irish playwright Dylan Coburn Gray's new play won the Verity Bargate Award in 2017, and his reward is a fine production of this beautifully written account of one Dublin family over several decades. It is a light-touch epic which is partly a... Read more... |
