National Theatre
Wonderfully corny: Burlesque, at the Savoy, reviewed
Inter Alia, a new play from the creators of Prima Facie, follows the hectic double life of Jess, a crown…
The National have bungled their Rishi Sunak satire
The Estate begins with a typical NHS story. An elderly Sikh arrives in A&E after a six-hour wait for an…
Brian Cox’s Bach has to be heading for Broadway
The Score is a fine example of meat-and-potatoes theatre. Simple plotting, big characters, terrific speeches and a happy ending. The…
Fortitude, emotional intelligence and wit – the defining qualities of Simon Russell Beale
The Shakespearean actor has taken on 18 of the great roles since his first gig at the RSC in 1985 and recalls them with insight, sensitivity and a sharp passion for language
How is Arnold Wesker’s Roots, which resembles an Archers episode, considered a classic?
The Almeida wants to examine the ‘Angry Young Man’ phenomenon of the 1950s but the term ‘man’ seems to create…
Faultless visuals – shame about the play: the National’s Coriolanus reviewed
Weird play, Coriolanus. It’s like a playground fight that spills out into the street and has to be resolved by…
Shapeless and facile: The Hot Wing King, at the Dorfman Theatre, reviewed
Our subsidised theatres often import shows from the US without asking whether our theatrical tastes align with America’s. The latest…
Cheesy remake of Our Mutual Friend: London Tide, at the Lyttelton Theatre, reviewed
Our Mutual Friend has been turned into a musical with a new title, London Tide, which sounds duller and more…
The tumultuous story behind Caravaggio’s last painting
For centuries no one knew who it was by or even what it was of. The picture that had hung…
Love and other drugs
Lucy Prebble belongs to the posse of scribblers responsible for the HBO hit, Succession. Perhaps in honour of this distinction,…
After the fall
Clunk, clunk, clunk. John Gabriel Borkman opens with the obsessive footfalls of a disgraced banker as he prowls the attic…
All that jazz
Simon Godwin’s Much Ado About Nothing is set in a steamy Italian holiday resort, the Hotel Messina, in the 1920s.…
A lethal disdain for the poor
Dictating to the Estate is a piece of community theatre that explains why Grenfell Tower went up in flames on…
Body language
‘I fink I doan luv yew any maw.’ A marital bust-up drama at the National Theatre opens with a whining…
Double trouble
A Number, by Caryl Churchill, is a sci-fi drama of impenetrable complexity. It’s set in a future society where cloning…
Love letter to a titan
Hampstead Theatre has revived a play about Peggy Ramsay, the legendary West End agent who shaped the careers of Joe…
The National is the graveyard of talent
Somewhere in the wilds of England a stately home is collapsing. Rising floodwaters threaten the foundations. Storms break over the…
Tsunami of piffle
Deep breath. Here goes. Winsome Pinnock’s new play about Turner opens with one of the most confusing and illogical scenes…
Screech, howl, yelp, crash
The new Lily Allen vehicle opens in a spruced-up terrace in the East End. Allen plays a self-satisfied yuppie, Jenny,…
Homeric levels of misery
The National Theatre has given Sophocles’s Philoctetes a makeover and a new title, Paradise. This must be ironic because the…
This will hurt
Before the National Theatre produced Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood they had to make a decision. How could they stuff…
Theatre’s final taboo – fun
The stage has become a pleasure-free zone in which snarling dramatists fight over their pet political causes, says Lloyd Evans
Thank god for lockdown
Death of England: Delroy is a companion piece to Death of England, which ran in February at the NT and…
