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Review: REYKJAVIK, Hampstead Theatre
Review: REYKJAVIK, Hampstead Theatre
October 25, 2024

There’s a whiff of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem about Richard Bean’s Reykjavík. Come and raise a melancholic glass to the old world of superstition, mythic tales of magic and monsters, fated to be swallowed by the bloodless age of bureaucracy. It’s like spending an evening with that old man in the pub the light of whose eyes fades as he recounts tales of yonder realising that things ain’t what they used to be.

Review: THE DUCHESS (OF MALFI), Trafalgar Theatre
Review: THE DUCHESS (OF MALFI), Trafalgar Theatre
October 17, 2024

Zinnie Harris’s 2019 incarnation of The Duchess of Malfi, matter-of-factly titled The Duchess (of Malfi), desperately yearns to conjure the sexy metatheatrical cunning of Van Hove, Mitchell, Ostermeier. It stumbles toe-curlingly at every hurdle.

Review: THE FEAR OF 13, Donmar Warehouse
Review: THE FEAR OF 13, Donmar Warehouse
October 11, 2024

There’s a ghost of a good show lingering beneath the surface but it never materialises

Review: FIDELIO, Royal Ballet and Opera
Review: FIDELIO, Royal Ballet and Opera
October 10, 2024

Tobias Kratzer’s production pulls the rug from underneath you.

Review: LEAR, Barbican
Review: LEAR, Barbican
October 4, 2024

A must for Shakespeare completionists

Review: LOOK BACK IN ANGER, Almeida Theatre
Review: LOOK BACK IN ANGER, Almeida Theatre
October 2, 2024

If Roots is the demure first part of the Almeida’s “Angry and Young” season, Look Back in Anger is the explosive finale. How could it not be when the human flamethrower Jimmy Porter is the burning star at the centre of its orbit?

Review: ROOTS, Almeida Theatre
Review: ROOTS, Almeida Theatre
October 2, 2024

The Almeida’s ”Angry and Young” season is a stroke of curatorial brilliance. Arnold Wesker’s 1958 Roots and John Osborne’s 1956 Look back in Anger face off, a roaring lion in one corner, a growling tiger in the other.

Review: HOUSE, Barbican
Review: HOUSE, Barbican
September 27, 2024

A single house in the Middle East is the focal point in this stage adaption of the Israeli-French filmmaker’s documentary trilogy from La Colline - Théâtre National. Borders, identities, geographies, cultures and people change, and yet its four walls remain the same.

Review: CORIOLANUS, National Theatre
Review: CORIOLANUS, National Theatre
September 25, 2024

Confluences of history weave together in Lyndsey Turner’s pulsating new production

Review: THE LIGHTEST ELEMENT, Hampstead Theatre
Review: THE LIGHTEST ELEMENT, Hampstead Theatre
September 17, 2024

Stella Feehily's new play examines the life of pioneering astronomer Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

Review: OUR COUNTRY'S GOOD, Lyric Hammersmith
Review: OUR COUNTRY'S GOOD, Lyric Hammersmith
September 12, 2024

Is it serendipity or a testament to good writing? A day after the government mandate two thousand prisoners to enjoy an early release a new production of Our Country’s Good premieres: a play about deported British convicts forging a new life in newly colonised Australia couldn’t be timelier.

Review: LA TRAVIATA, Royal Ballet And Opera
Review: LA TRAVIATA, Royal Ballet And Opera
September 9, 2024

Heavily reliant on strong vocals

Review: DEATH OF ENGLAND: CLOSING TIME, @sohoplace
Review: DEATH OF ENGLAND: CLOSING TIME, @sohoplace
August 29, 2024

It only premiered last October, but Death of England: Closing Time, the final chapter in Roy Williams and Clint Dyer’s state of the nation triptych, not only retains its spine-frosting freshness, but feels more dangerous than ever.

Review: BBC PROMS: PROM 31: ANNE-SOPHIE MUTTER PLAYS BRAHMS, Royal Albert Hall
Review: BBC PROMS: PROM 31: ANNE-SOPHIE MUTTER PLAYS BRAHMS, Royal Albert Hall
August 13, 2024

What is there to be said about the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra that hasn’t already been said? For twenty-five years it has united Arab and Israeli musicians under the baton of Jewish co-founder Daniel Barenboim (late Palestinian Critical Theorist Edward Said is the other co-founder); their declaration of unity and of humanity, in the face of growing darkness echoes disarmingly loudly as they return to the Royal Albert Hall with a sensuous romantic double bill of Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D major and Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 9.

Review: DEATH OF ENGLAND: DELROY, @sohoplace
Review: DEATH OF ENGLAND: DELROY, @sohoplace
July 31, 2024

Some actors can play a role. Sure. Only a handful can inhabit it living and breathing. Even fewer are so convincing that you can’t imagine anyone else in their shoes. Paapa Essiedu is the latter. Without a doubt. Not even a second of doubt.

Review: DEATH OF ENGLAND: MICHAEL, @sohoplace
Review: DEATH OF ENGLAND: MICHAEL, @sohoplace
July 31, 2024

The guns fire loud and sonorous for the opening salvos of Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’s Death of England trilogy. A staggered premiere over four years at The National Theatre from 2020, new kid on the theatreland block @sohoplace (it’s really called that) have collated the trilogy (Michael, Delroy, and Closing Time) in rep in the West End.

Review: THE HOT WING KING, National Theatre
Review: THE HOT WING KING, National Theatre
July 19, 2024

When food takes centre stage, it is usually as a conduit for humanity. Somewhere in the pseudo religiosity of ritual and the flurry of flavours we summon stories of cultures, families, histories across time and geography.

Review: VISIT FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN, Hampstead Theatre
Review: VISIT FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN, Hampstead Theatre
July 12, 2024

The lights flash on, a writer stumbles into his scantly decorated flat. A woman follows, champagne on her breath, flirtatious glances smuggled between them. It’s late at night and the inevitability of retiring to the bedroom looms. But it is not what it seems.

Review: SLAVE PLAY, Noël Coward Theatre
Review: SLAVE PLAY, Noël Coward Theatre
July 10, 2024

For a play that wears controversy as a badge of honour the last thing I expected to feel was slightly bored

Interview: 'From The Outside, It Looks Impossible': Director Tinuke Craig on Rep Theatre, Genre-Jumping and THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL at the RSC
Interview: 'From The Outside, It Looks Impossible': Director Tinuke Craig on Rep Theatre, Genre-Jumping and THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL at the RSC
July 8, 2024

Few directors are as comfortable helming a sparkly winter panto as they are a psychologically gruelling Sarah Kane play. But few directors have credits as varied as Tinuke Craig. A former Bayliss Associate at The Old Vic, she is now making her RSC directorial debut with Richard Sheridan’s The School for Scandal, a restoration comedy written in 1777. 247 years later – what can it tell us today?



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