Trafalgar Studios, LondonPatsy Ferran shines in Stephen Karam's shapeshifting off-Broadway hit about teenage dilemmas and predatory adults set around a school rhetoric contestFirst seen off-…
Young Vic, London Simmering hatred, lust and violence are never far away in a disturbing production that delves deep into the collective unconsciousRomantic Victorian versions of Shakespeare…
Olivier, LondonSimon Godwin's inventive gender-fluid production of Shakespeare's most perfect comedy has a vital elan and some great performancesThe casting of Tamsin Greig as Malvolia is bo…
Arcola, London Trevor Griffiths' version of the masterpiece is staged in London for the first time in a modern-dress production implying we too are on the brink of changeThis enterprising th…
Phoenix theatre, London The Take That star and Tim Firth have collaborated seamlessly on a show that is far superior to its predecessors on stage and screenIt might be fair to assume that th…
The Other Palace, LondonThis musical adaptation, based on Joseph Moncure March's racy 1928 poem, is so frenzied it leaves you exhausted Andrew Lloyd Webber acquired what used to be the St Ja…
Arcola, LondonOladipo Agboluaje hits close to home as he shows the darkly comic side of the fight for revolutionary changeDriving home after the play, I caught an item on Radio 4's The World…
Shedding his clothes and seducing the audience, Lars Eidinger's Gloucester is the classic charming narcissist " but why soften the play's political bite at such a crucial time?I have a high …
Crucible, SheffieldDan Gillespie Sells has a lot to offer musical theatre, but this Billy Elliot-style story about a northern teen drag queen lacks dramaA northern working-class lad strikes …
Finborough, LondonThis new play heightens our awareness of the city as a sterile Shangri-La, but the arguments would carry greater weight if it was more balancedAlongside all the promotional…
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, LondonThis superbly performed production of Pearl Cleage's drama gives a fierce sense of the conflict between belonging and the desire to escape Given the big …
National, LondonEvery 20 years or so we rediscover Harley Granville Barker's astonishing play. Following revivals at the Royal Court in 1965 and the National itself in 1989, we now have Pete…
Duchess, LondonLenny Henry has won his spurs as a Shakespearean actor in Othello and The Comedy of Errors. Now he takes on the titanic role of Troy Maxson in August Wilson's Fences which won…
Barbican, London With dazzling virtuosity, this Complicite/Schaubühne staging of Stefan Zweig's novel brilliantly evokes a doomed romance and the imminent horror of warBalzac, about whom St…
Royal Court, LondonLinda Bassett, Kika Markham, June Watson and Deborah Findlay deliver pitch-perfect performances in Churchill's apocalyptic conversation piece Related: Here We Go review " …
Theatre Royal Stratford East, LondonA black dancer meets police prejudice and industry stereotyping as she bids to make it on Broadway in a lively, inventive storyIt has taken 17 years for t…
Stage and screen actor known for his role as the assiduous sleuth in the Hitchcock film FrenzyAlec McCowen, who has died aged 91, was an actor of dazzling technical brilliance whose career e…
Southwark Playhouse, LondonAlex MacKeith's debut play deals with the nuts and bolts of a test-driven education system and acts as a metaphor for other hard-pressed professionsPlays about sch…
Finborough, LondonTitas Halder's strange one-man play, starring Ben Aldridge, looks to the urban fox to illustrate a life in free-fallA fascination with foxes runs through our literature, fr…
Hampstead theatre, LondonEmilia Fox and Theo James star in Laura Eason's two-hander about an implausible relationship between writers in a Michigan B&BThe title is certainly titillating.…
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, LondonGemma Arterton brings beauty, determination and moral goodness to one of the great female rolesA new theatre is often a challenge. Until weathered and worn by …
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, LondonAnnie Ryan's production does full justice to the sinewy, aphoristic language in Webster's sinister portrait of corruptionWebster's dark Jacobean tragedies sit …
Theatre 503, LondonMichael McLean gets under the skin of his characters' lives in Skelmersdale but his play skimps on the bigger pictureWhat happened to the social utopias of the 1960s, buil…
The NT usually manages a balance between revivals and new work. Now, classic plays are disappearing from its stages " and from regional reps tooDavid Hare has made the headlines with a damni…
Hurt, who has died aged 77, was a superb, if too infrequent, stage actor. In plays by Beckett, Pinter and Stoppard, he had an intuitive understanding of outsidersI last saw John Hurt six mon…