Supreme lucidity and two commanding performances make for a moving productionYou always wonder about those final scenes of Shakespeare's tragedies. Are they really needed dramatically; do th…
Back to the 17th century: the village that cut itself off to dieThe end-of-season contemporary writing slot at the Globe must be a proposal as full of promise for playwrights as it is perhap…
A furious, darkly comic riff on race, this frenetic two-hander dazzlesUnderground Railroad Game is scabrous theatre " in every sense. To start with, Jennifer Kidwell and Scott R Sheppard's t…
The ladies of France shine in a production that otherwise makes heavy weather If ever there was a play of "well bandied" words, it's surely Love's Labour's Lost. The early Shakespearean com…
Jordan Seavey paints a landscape of New York gay life that is as moving as it is witty I'm still not entirely sure what the full associations of the title of New York playwright Jordan Seave…
Orlando Bloom compels as the hitman-cop ruling Tracy Letts's dark, gothic worldRight from the beginning of this production of Tracy Letts's very first play, it's clear we're in for a bi…
Calixto Bieito's melange of text and music delivers a mesmerising agony of desolationCalixto Bieito has a reputation as a radical theatre-maker, and by any traditional standards The Str…
Michelle Terry's new company explores gender fludity, charts new directionsThere's a distinct feeling of back-to-basics to this opening double bill at the Globe under the theatre's new …
Bravura performance from Tanya Moodie in sharp new American drama of racial discordConflict and comedy can be unpredictable bedfellows, and Chicago playwright Joel Drake Johnson's 2014 play …
★★★★ THE OPEN HOUSE, THE PRINT ROOM A tyrannical family reunion and a dramatic volte-face in Will Eno's ingenious new dramaA tyrannical family reunion and a dramatic …
Was Tennessee Williams breaking rules, or breaking apart when he wrote this 1969 play? A bit of both, probably, and the two main characters of the rarely performed In the Bar of a Tokyo Hote…
Lorraine Hansberry's career as a playwright proved tragically short. A Raisin in the Sun is by some distance her best-known work, a key piece about the African American post-war experience. …
I'm still pondering the title of Chris Urch's new play. On the surface it's clear enough: The Rolling Stone is a weekly newspaper in Uganda that has been notorious for pursuing that country'…
Every incarnation of totalitarianism has its own specific mythology, which exists in different forms as it is believed at home and "translated" abroad (or not, in both cases). North Korea su…
Is Jim Broadbent Britain's best-loved actor? The slate of screen roles he's accumulated over the years " this Christmas Carol is his return to theatre after a decade away " has surely given …
One of the joys about this stage adaptation of Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days is the contrast between its phlegmatic hero Phileas Fogg, who deals with everything in terms of preci…
In the world of rediscoveries, half a century may not be a long time. Slightly more, in fact, with Robert Bolt's first performed stage play Flowering Cherry, which premiered in 1957 with Ral…
The repercussions of loss ripple inexorably through Simon Stephens' 2003 play One Minute. Foreshadowing elements developed in his later work, it's a testing piece that speaks most of all abo…
If you were expecting a fusty, formal adaptation of Anthony Trollope " and one of his least known novels, to boot " Lady Anna: All At Sea will come as a breath of fresh air. Colin Blumenau's…
Helen Edmundson's The Heresy of Love may be set in 17th century Mexico and follow the conflict between strict religion and personal development, but its theme of a woman denied her voice by …
There's a clear territorial divide in the small space of the Jermyn Street Theatre at the opening of Ashley G Holloway's Lesere. At the centre of Ellan Parry's persuasive design there's a br…
The devil gets the best lines. That may depend, of course, on whether we're prepared to qualify David Cameron as the devil, but in William Gaminara's rapid-firing farce The Three Lions, the …
Jacobean playwright John Ford is flavour of the season at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. His better-known, and simply better, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, opened the venue's new programme last aut…
It's true that there is something wildly, garishly, theatrical about Pedro Almodóvar's films " none more so than this rampant farce " but it's equally true that their sensibility is far r…
The single spacious room that is the central location of Tena Å tiviÄić's 3 Winters has seen plenty of ghosts. It's part of an old Zagreb mansion, and through the course of the…