Theatre Royal Haymarket, London Christopher Luscombe's double dose of comedies begins elegantly, but when Lisa Dillon and Edward Bennett let fly in Much Ado, it becomes a festive romp3/5 an…
Almeida, LondonSharing the roles of Elizabeth and her Scottish cousin, Stevenson and Williams are a pleasure to watch but Robert Icke's production lacks subtlety elsewhereJuliet Stevenson an…
London PalladiumPaul O'Grady, Nigel Havers and Amanda Holden are among the stars in an outrageous and deeply knowing pantomimeWith Paul O'Grady and Julian Clary in the leads, pantomime pitch…
Dorfman theatre, LondonAlexander Zeldin's devised piece depicts the endurance and needless suffering of two families living in temporary accommodationIn Beyond Caring, Alexander Zeldin creat…
Lyttelton, London Ruth Wilson superbly conveys the desolation of Ibsen's ahead-of-her-time aesthete in Ivo van Hove's invigorating modern-dress versionThe extraordinary Ruth Wilson stars in …
Wilton's Music Hall, LondonThe veteran comic is the chief delight of a warm-hearted production mixing morality, melodrama and magicIt's been a vintage year for 80-year-olds in the British th…
Park theatre, LondonThis adaptation of CS Lewis's collection of sardonic letters from a senior to a junior devil is excessively and noisily theatricalThe big question is whether CS Lewis's 1…
New Diorama, London"Our aim," says Mark Leipacher, director of the young Faction company, "is to create big, bold, bombastic theatre with limited resources." I'm not sure about bombastic; on…
Hampstead theatre, LondonMichael Frayn excavates Chekhov's six-hour drama, written when he was 20, for this bittersweet comedy about a schoolteacher torn between romantic rivalsIt is strange…
Menier Chocolate Factory, London The cult 1960s show lives up to its Broadway pedigree and the performances are perfectly pitched in this skilful, intimate staging "This may be the best prod…
Young Vic, LondonPlaying a studio mogul at the dawn of the talkies, Enfield makes an assured theatre debut but this production puts visual bravura before verbal precisionHarry Enfield, as we…
Glenda Jackson ruled as Lear and Harry Potter left the West End spellbound but a three-hour drama in an empty cinema tops our critic's pick of the year's theatreMore on the best culture of 2…
Olivier, London Sally Cookson's inventive playfulness reinforces the hero's devotion to fun and games but remains true to the melancholy spirit of JM Barrie's playJM Barrie's play is an obli…
Swan theatre, Stratford-upon-AvonAnders Lustgarten's play pits the biblical morality of an Italian masterpiece against the cruelty of current housing policies with ingenuity and humourAnders…
Trafalgar Studios, LondonHarris impresses as a whiskey-soaked old wreck in Shepard's gothic story of loveless inertia and poisonous guilt in a dysfunctional familyIt is good to see Hollywood…
Garrick, LondonGraham captures the daily machinations of politics, and raises questions about our current parliamentary system, in this account of Labour's 1970s strugglesIt has taken four y…
Orange Tree, Richmond Maugham's 1933 play " about a man whose charitable giving horrifies his family " beautifully skewers the self-interestedness of society then and nowSomerset Maugham is …
Finborough, London Oscar Toeman directs Rodney Ackland's most autobiographical work, which painfully records the reckless optimism that accompanies any theatrical ventureTime has lent a pati…
Harold Pinter theatre, LondonRylance plays a goofball novice on an ice-fishing trip in a play that feels derivative and slides into absurdismMark Rylance and Louis Jenkins have fashioned a p…
Royal Court, LondonFrancesca Annis, Ron Cook and Deborah Findlay give fine performances in a post-apocalyptic play that is genuinely disturbingLucy Kirkwood astonished us in 2013 with the ep…
A refurbished version of the 1963 Tommy Steele vehicle has opened in the West End and joins a string of stellar homegrown hitsIt is an odd, but intriguing, fact that Oh! What a Lovely War an…
Following the hip-hop musical's special message to the US vice-president elect, here's a selection of great American shows that could enlighten him and his bossEveryone knows what happened w…
Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-AvonFears that digital technology would upstage the actors are scotched in this RSC production starring Simon Russell BealeSimon Russell Beale's ret…
Royal Court, LondonIn EV Crowe's teasing tale, the suspicion and rebellion among rural women in 1700s England lead to troubling questions about the modern worldEV Crowe tends to write about …
Union theatre, LondonThe story of Women's Institute members fighting to decriminalise sex work did not deserve the Carry On treatmentThere is a good show to be written about the 10-year camp…