1,376 stories by "Aleks Sierz"
Hypocrisy. Is this the right word? I don't mean the play, but the audience. Of course, in the middle of the current COVID-19 crisis, there's bound to be a certain amount of discomfort whe…
Saoirse Ronan makes her UK stage debut in Yael Farber's testosterone-fest, which is vivid, but much too long.
Remembering the months of lockdown, I can't be the only person to thrill to this play's opening lines, "When shall we three meet again?", a phrase evocative enough to be borrowed for the fir…
This new coproduction between Graeae and Tamasha is not perfect, but it offers a moving insight into ritual and belief.
This is a labour of love. Hilary Mantel has adapted The Mirror and the Light, the third novel of her Tudor trilogy, in collaboration with actor Ben Miles.
Since 9/11 there has been considerable interest in staging stories about British Muslims, and the best of these avoid the stereotypes of arranged marriage and terrorism. Although religious o…
Bess Wohl's history play is an imaginatively-written, brilliantly chilling and resonant account of life at a Nazi summer camp, starring Patsy Ferran and Luke Thallon.
This is a labor of love. Hilary Mantel has adapted The Mirror and the Light, the third novel of her Tudor trilogy, in collaboration with actor Ben Miles, who is the Royal Shakespeare Company…
Are we too obsessed with Nazism? Apart from countless television programs which revisit that grim era, as fact or as fiction, in monochrome or in color, briefly or at length, there has recen…
American playwright Aleshea Harris' dazzlingly satirical 2018 extravaganza is about two women seeking justice and getting even, and it comes to the Royal Court from New York, trailing shouts…
I remember seeing Shelagh Stephenson's contemporary classic at the Hampstead, when this venue was still an ageing prefab, and enjoying Terry Johnson's racy staging,
For more than three decades, playwright Winsome Pinnock has been at the forefront of new writing, often experimenting with form as well as documenting the lives of Black Britons. Her new pla…
At its best, the subjective and poetic image creation in Rockets and Blue Lights at the National Theatre is both audacious and striking. At its worst, it is over-complex, confusing and overl…
Before seeing this play, I decided to eat a steak. I thought I needed some extra strength. And it seems exactly the right culinary equivalent to David Mamet, one of America's most provocativ…
The Young Vic's main stage reopens with Booker Prize winner Ben Okri's short play Changing Destiny, directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah
The great thing about Lucy Bailey's 80-minute production of Oleanna is its sense of balance. And I have to say that it changed my mind about the power balance in the drama.
By the end of Orange Tree Theatre's production of Bryony Lavery's Last Easter the certainty that friendship and love are life's true miracles is quietly and effectively realised.
I finally caught up with Michael Longhurst's restaging of his 2012 Royal Court production of Nick Payne's Constellations, a gem of a two-hander.
With many theatres now reopening again, it is surely a good moment to celebrate all those venues which managed to stage live shows in the past few months " often in very stressful circumstan…
Although some theatres are tentatively reopening, the creative vigor of other companies is undimmed. Clean Break, which works with women in the criminal justice system, has recently released…
After months (and months) of watching theatre on screens large, medium, small and tiny, I definitely feel great about going to see a live show again. Of course, it's not the usual theatre ex…
Although some theatres are tentatively reopening, the creative vigour of other companies like Clean Break is undimmed.
Online performance, streamed instead of attended, has given theatre companies an immense amount of flexibility. Suddenly, the digital world offers all kinds of different freedoms. A good exa…
Amy Berryman's ambitious debut play Walden about siblings, climate change and space travel is full of ideas, but what happened to the emotions?
I think I can safely say that polymath playwright Philip Ridley has had a good lockdown. In March last year, when The Beast of Blue Yonder, his new show for Southwark Playhouse, was closed d…
