I'M GONNA SIT RIGHT DOWN AND WRITE MYSELF A REVIEW…  So dress up sassy, shake your chassis, get some mesh on your flesh like the ladies who sing with the band. Sell your vocals to the …
NOT AT ALL FLAT, SUFFOLK…     Exuberantly funny, elegant as a Deauville hotel balcony and sharp as the crack of a 78rpm record over a lover's head, Joanna C…
POISONED LOVE  I sometimes wish Harold Pinter had written more plays like this: decadent, agonized, helplessly sensitive to the nuances of friendship and treachery. More prai…
 MARTYRS OF THE MCCARTHY YEARS      Ideological hostilities across the world,  fake news and paranoia, a resurgent deep left, uneasy relations with Russia, anti…
NOT YET DEAD CAT BUT…  Since I stopped being The Times Chief Theatre Critic  it has been five years:  on this site there have been  930 posts, over half a million words…
A HOLLOW CROWN IN MUD AND BLOOD The clue is in the paper hat, worn by a dour-faced Simon Russell Beale on the programme cover.  This is not stately, sacred, shockingly regicid…
JAMAICA BREEZES UP WEST, WITH GRIEF AND GUSTO     Jamaican mourning tradition, longer than the Irish wake and noisier than the Jewish shiva, involves – we lea…
PSYCHOPATHIC LIBERAL MEETS DINOSAUR PARENTS    Can we, I wonder, ever learn to deplore past attitudes without being vengeful about it? Hot on the heels of Mike Bartlett's…
ONE MORE TIME, WITH FEELING .  After two other full cast renderings in a fortnight -David Edgar's socially angry take at the RSC and Jack Thorne's warm spectacular at the O…
A GOTHIC EYEFUL In this troublous nation, 2018 seems to be the Christmas of Aaargh! and Eughhh! and hahahahaaa! , as a gross-out gigglefest sweeps London theatre. There's …
ENERGY, ANGER, HOPE      It is 1842: young Charles Dickens, thirty years old and with five novels under his belt, is ranting.  The Industrial Revolution is re…
 CHRISTMAS,  BREXIT,  GRIEF, HOPE   A few hours after Theresa May postponed the parliamentary vote and spun us down into another layer of Brexi-hell , the little O…
 I WENT TO THE PANTO. O YES I DID.    The great thing about the proud tradition of Oxford Playhouse panto is that while cannily aware of the audience's likely cultural…
A WONDERLAND WINNER      "Posh panto", for wincing parents fleeing the rackety showbiz 'n smut of the season, can be a bit chilly – neither one thing nor…
,  GEESE CACKLE, LIFE GOES ON    I have a friend of Russian heritage who boycotts any Chekhov production which lacks scabby birch-trees, a samovar and some parasols.  …
L'CHAIM – TO LIFE!   A SPECIAL NIGHT      We are there, over a century ago, beyond the Caucasus.  Designer Robert Jones has wrapped us around in …
GUEST CRITIC MICHAEL ADAIR EMPATHISES WITH DEADLINE FEVER.. Here is a tale of two brothers. First, Kit Harrington's serious, intelligent and moustachioed Austin, Ivy League educated and with…
DARK MAGIC,  REAL THEATRE   Long, long before Harry Potter there was a gallant orphan, a boy dreamer sucked into a world of murderous magic, facing grief and responsibility alike.…
DICKENS UNCHAINED: A SCROOGE FOR OUR TIMES    It is , if possible, even finer and more heartfelt and gripping, tuneable and serious and moving than last year.  MyÅ
DARK DOINGS AND DISSECTION   Oyez, Oyez.  Let it be known that this suspenseful yet dreary political season has become officially the Year Of Dark Panto. Down at The Bridge w…
BREAKING THE MOULD….   Our politics is partisan, quarrelsome, dated in its pattern of two-parties-plus-minnows.  A nest of weary careerists, pointless betrayals and illo…
DEATH AND THE DIFFICULT WOMAN Those who call Theresa May a 'bloody difficult woman' should pop in to the Ambassadors and realise that in the ranks of  of BDWs she is the merest dab…
THE EMPTY DARKNESS OF THE HEART   Third time lucky: after two glumly disappointing 2018 productions steeped in directorial gimmicks  – RSC and NT – the ca…
THE KNIGHT WINS HIS SPURS AGAIN: A NOBLE DELUSION    Need a Christmas outing? Quailing at panto, feel you and the kids need some Euro-culture to counteract Brexidepression? Tr…
A SWING AND SWIRL THROUGH HELL   It's certainly not family-panto time along the glittering Thames riverbank: what with Martin McDonagh' grossout-silly Dark Matter downstream at t…