Summerfolk, National Theatre review - Gorky's self-deluding intelligentsia under sharp comic scrutiny Heather Neill Wed, 03/18/2026 - 04:00 Nina and Moses …
David Harewood and Toby Jones at odds Perspectives on Shakespeare's tragedy have changed over the decades. As Nonso Anozie said when playing the title role for Cheek by Jowl in 2004, white a…
Indhu Rubasingham's tenure gets off to a bold, comic start The word "after" can be elastic when a modern writer is inspired by a classic. Nima Taleghani here stretches it to breaking point, …
Rival Elizabethan playwrights in an up-to-the-minute encounter The title refers to a line in Henry VI, Part III: the future Richard III boasts that midwives cried, "Oh Jesus bless us, he is …
Revisiting Tim Price's dream-set account of the founder of the health service The National Health Service was established seventy-seven years ago this month. Resident doctors are about to s…
Unspoken emotion flows through this late work Terence Rattigan's rehabilitation - some might almost say deification - as a leading Twentieth Century playwright is complete. As well as academ…
Magic is minimised in Jamie Lloyd's pared-back version Shakespeare must have relished the opportunities brought by the indoor Blackfriars Theatre in 1611: sound magnified in a way impossible…
Shakespeare's comedy of identity confusion benefits from a 1940s setting It's all too easy to underplay the melancholy of Shakespeare's comedy of divided twins, misplaced " sometimes narciss…
J Smith-Cameron and Mark Rylance bring the classic characters to life "Captain" Jack Boyle is a fantasist, a mythmaker, a storyteller. He relishes an audience - usually his sidekick, Joxer. …
Adrian Lukis revisits his disruptive character from the beloved BBC television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice It is a truth universally acknowledged that an actor tends to take a sympathe…
The legendary small-screen drama still resonates in a new medium Prolific playwright James Graham was born in 1982, the year Alan Bleasdale's unforgettable series was televised. From Notting…
Queer themes and music take centre stage in a café setting In Shakespeare's day theatre was regarded as "wanton" by those of a Puritan disposition who feared boys dressed as girls could eng…
Gemma Whelan discovers a mean streak under Charlotte's respectable bonnet The Brontë sisters and their ne'er-do-well brother will always make good copy. The brilliance of the women constr…
Focused on young life in south London, this hit is as energetic and joyful as ever The reviews of Tyrell Williams' debut play on its first and second outings at the Bush Theatre were univer…
Poltergeist activity in the suburbs remains earth-bound Reports of supernatural events are always met with either willing belief or dismissive scepticism. The "camps" generally don't have mu…
Unsettling investigation of patriarchal family and sexual relationships has uneven force As the audience enters, thick mist envelopes the thrust stage and jazz music fills the theatre. The s…
A familiar comedy provides Jeeves-and-Wooster period Christmas fun Oliver Goldsmith was a literary all-rounder - novelist, poet and playwright - remembered chiefly for one example of each di…
Mature actors bring style and poignancy to Coward's brittle comedy There is a grainy piece of black and white film on YouTube featuring Noel Coward as the celebrity guest on a 1964 edition …
The story of an immigrant family's contribution to American capitalism is still captivating The frantic world of finance moves fast, its giddy successes and thundering crashes causing ripple…
The first home-grown offering at this impressive new space is a playful paean to theatre The scene is set onstage in the first minutes. And it remains a stage throughout this harmonious prod…
Inua Ellams adds contemporary political thrust to a well-loved classic Antigone, the forceful young woman who takes on the male establishment, has long resonated with idealists; Sophocles' p…
Anupama Chandrasekhar argues, with humour and invention, against political extremism The young Indian man stepping towards us on the vast Olivier stage is unremarkable enough, slight and boy…
Youthful Elsinore reflects life in present-day London It is a truism that every Hamlet is different, depending more than any other play on the casting of the lead. Each production moulds it…
This serpentine classic is perfectly placed in every sense Lucy Bailey's production of Christie's Witness for the Prosecution, first staged at County Hall in 2017, has a few years to make up…
Thoughtful and funny revival of a familiar classic Pinter wrote The Dumb Waiter in 1957 (although it wasn't seen in London until 1960) the year before The Birthday Party received its notorio…