Take this as purest Shakespearian tragedy: vigorous but classic, a magnificent magnification of the darkest human and political longing, of affection, terror, defensiveness, hubris and – in the women – a defiant courage that rings down the ages. Don’t miss Richard III at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford upon Avon.
‘The whole thing sings’: CANCELLING SOCRATES – Jermyn Street Theatre
The Jermyn Street Theatre – small as it is – has been rocking Howard Brenton’s latest play Cancelling Socrates, set in Ancient Greece and dealing with the last days and condemnation for sacrilege of the philosopher Socrates.
‘The hero is evoked beautifully in every line & gesture by Alex Jennings’: THE SOUTHBURY CHILD – Chichester Festival Theatre ★★★★★
The Southbury Child is a fine play, sharply written with some really strong unexpected laughs and a heartstopping ending. Its subtleties of character ask a great deal (not in vain) from the cast.
‘So elegantly tense’: THE BREACH – Hampstead Theatre ★★★★
The central theme in The Breach at the Hampstead Theatre remains perennial, terrifying, universal and sorrowful: the fragile tipping into disaster of teenage children unnoticed by adults.
‘Full of fun but also astringently bracing & darkly sexy’: OKLAHOMA! – Young Vic Theatre ★★★★
Traditionally, audiences don’t go to Oklahoma! to be unsettled. On the other hand you don’t go to the Young Vic to have your expectations cosily met by a singalong, with the dark bits tastefully brushed over.
‘This is an Orlando any Woolf would gobble up’: ORLANDO – Jermyn Street Theatre ★★★★★
This jolly adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando by Sarah Ruhl, directed con brio by Stella Powell-Jones, is a 90-minute treat and holiday too.
‘A watercolour on the landing of middle life’: MIDDLE – National Theatre ★★★
David Eldridge’s play Middle at the National Theatre’s Dorfman space is a sketch, a watercolour on the landing of middle life: sensitive, accomplished but not likely to stop you in your tracks.
‘Waves of affection lap around him’: BARRY HUMPHRIES: THE MAN BEHIND THE MASK – Touring
Barry Humphries is 88, five shows into a 27-date tour, The Man Behind The Mask, and this time he is presented as himself, the trickiest character of all.
‘It feels as if she has been pulling houses to their feet for decades’: PRIMA FACIE – Harold Pinter Theatre
Jodie Comer’s extraordinary West End stage debut in Suzie Miller’s play Prima Facie at the Harold Pinter Theatre reveals not only strong vocal skill but an absolutely dazzling physical expressiveness and high-voltage emotional power.
Do we still love Rooster? Reflections on the return of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem
Twelve years on from Jez Butterworth’s glorious shock-troop assault on metropolitan sensibilities, we welcome back Ultz’s woodland glade and knackered caravan, and surf along with Ian Rickson’s bravura direction.
‘This is Bertie Carvel’s show, his Donald Trump is magnificent’: THE 47th – Old Vic Theatre ★★★★
Bertie Carvel as Donald Trump is magnificent. Eerily so, capturing not only the ex-President’s showmanship, the gestures and unwholesomely needy yet threatening charm, but moving beyond caricature.
‘The vigour of the staging, & fine performances, leave you exhilarated as well as sad’: DIARY OF A SOMEBODY – Seven Dials Playhouse ★★★
The tiny Actors’ Centre is reborn under its new name, and since this play is set in what was a traditionally febrile, theatrical, subversively arty quarter in the 50s and 60s before it got chichi, it’s a good place to remember Joe Orton and his killing.
‘An overlong, ill-conceived & pretentious evening’: DADDY – Almeida Theatre ★★
Jeremy O’Taylor is a much-feted American playwright (a Tony for Slave Play) adept at drilling in to the moment: BLM, fashionable white guilt, showy theatricality and retro-intellectual themes.
‘Aaron Sorkin’s stage adaptation is a freestanding triumph’: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD – West End ★★★★★
Aaron Sorkin worked on this play in the age of Trump and of Black Lives Matter, and it shows. A fusillade of trigger warnings reminds us that it cannot be handled without numerous racial slurs and acknowledgment of violence, sexual and otherwise.
‘You either leave this show vowing to devote your life to musical theatre or to never go near one again’: MARIA FRIEDMAN & FRIENDS – Menier Chocolate Factory
At the end of the evening the great diva, director and muse informs us that we too must sing. In a packed house, on the far side of a pandemic, which made us fear one another’s very breath, we join the posse of old-timers and ingenu(e)s.
‘This play just gets more & more topical, with its cathartic storm of mutual offence’: CLYBOURNE PARK – Park Theatre ★★★★
In 2010, Bruce Norris’ play wowed the Royal Court: this is a ten-year anniversary (well, plus two years lost to Covid) so forgive me for quoting what I wrote then.
‘Ralph Fiennes gives it everything… He is irresistible’: STRAIGHT LINE CRAZY – Bridge Theatre ★★★★
It is not often I resort to drawing in the notebook, but there it is: half an hour into the first part of David Hare’s play about the city planner Robert Moses, whose demonic energy built modern New York between the 1920s and the ’60s.
‘A quirky, comic four-hander celebrating a 40-year partnership’: THE MARRIAGE OF ALICE B TOKLAS BY GERTRUDE STEIN – Jermyn Street Theatre ★★★★
With typical wit, the doughty little Jermyn has captured an intellectual-farcical oddity from New York, complete with author-director and star. Tom Littler signed them up for 2020, with obvious results, but lured them back.
‘Taron Egerton is utterly at home in the theatre’: COCK – West End ★★★★
Mike Bartlett’s mischievous, half-earnest play is about a gay man wrestling with his identity (and his furious partner) after falling for a woman. Who he loves both as a person and – to his confusion – as an anatomy. It’s clever to revive it in this even more gender-anxious time.
‘Art is about hearts not dollars, a sacred human magic’: THE COLLABORATION – Young Vic Theatre ★★★★
Two artists in a studio: Andy Warhol and Jean Michel Basquiat. They have been put there to collaborate in 1980s New York.