What Gregory Doran frames most brilliantly in Measure For Measure at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford upon Avon is the is the central confusion of morality.
‘Several people were actually rendered helpless’: NOISES OFF – Lyric Hammersmith ★★★★★
It felt like a pilgrimage, homage to pay. Thirty-seven years ago Michael Frayn’s greatest of comedies, Noises Off, a wicked love-song to the great age of touring rep, premiered in this very theatre.
‘Elevated to realms of unexpected glee’: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM – Bridge Theatre ★★★★★
A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Bridge Theatre is a dream of a Dream. One expected fun from the combination of Nicholas Hytner, a roiling mass of promenaders in the pit and a Bunny Christie design which makes the most of this fresh big theatre’s technical tricks.
‘A new-century’s howl of irritated perception at the imprisoning absurdities of society’: RUTHERFORD & SON – National Theatre ★★★★★
Psychology, social rage, human sadness and betrayal move in an elegant circle in Rutherford & Son at the National Theatre and Findlay’s direction doesn’t miss a beat of it.
‘Pure & thoughtful pleasure’: SMALL ISLAND – National Theatre ★★★★★
Small Island is a terrific yarn, both romantic and tough, about history and Empire and sex and frustration, escape and hope and love and racism: about promises turned to dross and the great seas of misunderstanding that roll between people.
‘Mischievous satirical blast’: WHITE PEARL – Royal Court Theatre ★★★★★
Five mice for White Pearl at the Royal Court Theatre because it’s different and clever and useful, and horribly good fun.
‘Funny, truthful, wise & bravely original in form’: THIS IS MY FAMILY – Chichester ★★★★★
This is gorgeous. Funny, truthful, wise, and bravely original in form. Anyone with a a family – past, present, remembered, or merely observed in cautious auntly incredulity – should see Tim Firth’s musical This Is My Family.
‘Honest, humane & thoughtful play’: KUNENE & THE KING – Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon ★★★★★
Specific though the SA setting is, Kunene & The King opens great vistas of heart-stopping universal wisdom about death, guilt, reconciliation and human need.
‘Brilliant, necessary, questioning’: DOWNSTATE – National Theatre ★★★★★
If we accept that people are widely diverse, we have to accept that paedophiles are too. Not all the same identi-monster. Moreover, if their horrifying actions pose us questions we need to think very clearly about answers.
‘Honest & beautiful play’: NINE NIGHT – Trafalgar Studios ★★★★★
Nine Night is an honest and beautiful play which by being so particular and rooted in one community becomes a conduit of universal emotional truths. Fabulous.
‘If anything the sincerity has deepened’: A CHRISTMAS CAROL – Arts Theatre ★★★★★
Has the performance of A Christmas Carol, and Simon Callow, changed over the years? Probably, but not from ego or bravura, no cheap tricks, no knowing modernities: if anything the sincerity has deepened.
‘This tight, intimate, heartfelt production sparks new life’: FIDDLER ON THE ROOF – Menier Chocolate Factory ★★★★★
You gasp and laugh and shiver in recognition and, yes, love. However many times you have seen it this tight, intimate, heartfelt production at the Menier Chocolate Factory sparks new life into Fiddler On the Roof.
‘I hope it comes back every year’: A CHRISTMAS CAROL – Old Vic ★★★★★
A Christmas Carol at The Old Vic is, if possible, even finer and more heartfelt and gripping, tuneable and serious and moving than last year.
‘Aaahh, Sondheim! It must run forever’: COMPANY – West End ★★★★★
Marianne Elliott’s production of Company is the comeback kid, another demonstration that Britain is natural Sondheim country: all dry wit and laughing resignation.
‘This is remarkable’: TOUCHING THE VOID – Touring ★★★★★
We know the story of Joe Simpson’s book: climbing in the remotest Andes with his friend Simon Yates, but theatre sometimes gives films – and books – a remarkable translation, making stories deeper, stranger, more tense. Touching the Void is an example of that.
‘Puzzling, moving, clever & humane’: THE HEIGHT OF THE STORM – West End ★★★★★
In The Height Of The Storm, faultlessly directed by Jonathan Kent, the strangeness and pathos are extreme. Because though indeed Jonathan Pryce’s patriarch is in rising dementia, and Eileen Atkins his living – or dead – wife, the theme above all is love: settled, interdependent, half-century devotion.
‘Rarely is the emotional violence as beautifully evoked as here’: PACK OF LIES – Menier Chocolate Factory ★★★★★
Hugh Whitemore’s 1983 play Pack of Lies, immaculately set in every humble postwar detail, reconstructs a real case: the plight of a hapless suburban couple who found their daughter’s bedroom requisitioned for surveillance of the opposite neighbours.
‘The staging brilliantly respects the pivotal emotional changes of the play’: ANTONY & CLEOPATRA – National Theatre ★★★★★
Antony & Cleopatra can be a bit of an ordeal. The last RSC one was. So I am happy to say that this time, and in the trickily vast Olivier, director Simon Godwin has absolutely pulled it off .
‘Dark, sharp new comedy’: HOLY SH!T – Kiln Theatre ★★★★★
The renamed Tricycle (no, I am not taking sides) is open: its leader Indhu Rubasingham launches her sprauncy new theatre with Alexis Zegerman’s dark, sharp new comedy about one of the great corruptions of British society.
‘Raises the heart & hits the spot’: ONCE – Ipswich ★★★★★
This joint Wolsey and Hornchurch production of Once, the regional premiere long overdue for this lovely show, raises the heart and hits the spot.