At best Baghdaddy at the Royal Court Theatre is a surreal trip into traumatic memory, at its worst it’s a self-indulgent mess. If you think that American crime are worse than Saddam’s you’ll love this show; if you like playwrights wagging their finger at you, you’ll love this show; if you believe that parental trauma can be inherited and then self-consciously joked about, you’ll love this show.
‘Powerfully switches between the personal & the public’: FOR A PALESTINIAN – Camden People’s Theatre
Identity is the sum of the stories we tell ourselves. Some of these are personal, and some political. Sometimes they blend, sometimes clash. In Aaron Kilercioglu and Bilal Hasna’s excellently staged and thought-provoking For a Palestinian, the performer and co-author Hasna tells two stories: one about himself and his new love for Palestine, and the other about the Palestinian activist and translator Wa’el Zuaiter, and his love affair with Australian-born painter Janet Venn-Brown. Her 2006 book, For a Palestinian, tells the story of Zuaiter and his assassination in Rome in 1972 by Mossad.
‘A perfect tour de force of visual, intellectual & emotional pleasure’: DEATH OF ENGLAND: FACE TO FACE – National Theatre/Sky Arts
One of the absolute highpoints of new writing in the past couple of years has been the Death of England trilogy.
‘The writing is always perceptive & convincing’: SESSIONS – Soho Theatre
Intense, but inconclusive: this powerful new play about black men’s mental health fails to reach a satisfying resolution.
‘Explores how belief can be a psychological & emotional journey’: 10 NIGHTS – Bush Theatre
This new coproduction between Graeae and Tamasha is not perfect, but it offers a moving insight into ritual and belief.
‘A smart & sassy study of loneliness & obsession’: HARM – Bush Theatre
Harm, which has already been screened on BBC Four with Leanne Best, is a new monologue by Bruntwood Prize-winning playwright Phoebe Eclair-Powell and now the one-woman show stars Kelly Gough, familiar most recently from the BBC’s Casualty.
‘A musical & historical love letter to the city of Sheffield’: THE BAND PLAYS ON – Sheffield Theatres (Online review)
The Band Played On, the latest show from Chris Bush, is a tuneful celebration of stoicism, resilience and humour.
‘Disturbing, moving & eloquent in its brilliant advocacy’: TYPICAL – Soho Theatre (Online theatre)
Typical, a film version of a powerfully poetic and painful 2019 monologue about institutional racism, is brilliant.
‘Plenty here to engage both mind & feelings’: OVERFLOW – Bush Theatre
Travis Alabanza’s play Overflow at the Bush Theatre is both tender in its empathy for the different kinds of trans experience and passionately angry about prejudice.
‘Joseph Potter is more than a match for this quick-fire writing’: THE POLTERGEIST – Southwark Playhouse (Online review)
Philip Ridley’s play The Poltergeist made an intimate transition to the screen and will be unmissable as soon as live performances can be scheduled.
‘A tour de force performance in a brilliant monologue’: THE POLTERGEIST – Southwark Playhouse (Online review)
A tour de force performance (mark Joseph Potter as one to watch) in a brilliant monologue on an empty stage, you will not want to miss Philip Ridley’s The Poltergeist.
‘Blends wry reminiscence, personal experience, poetry & music’: AN EVENING WITH AN IMMIGRANT – Bridge Theatre
This is a masterly revival of An Evening with an Immigrant, Inua Ellams’ 2016 autobiographical one-man show which is both poetic and engaging.
‘Hytner has envisaged both stories with considerable care’: THE SHRINE / BED AMONG THE LENTILS – Bridge Theatre
The Bridge Theatre’s most savvy decision is in teaming The Shrine with Bed Among the Lentils, placing together two of our finest actors who effortless and regularly transition between stage and screen – Monica Dolan and Lesley Manville.
‘Pushes the envelope of the monologue genre’: DECLAN – The Actors Centre (Online review)
Jimbo is 12 and on the cusp of young adulthood. Both his body and his mind are confused about its identity and the world around him is not much help.
‘Theatre is rarely so forceful or so urgent’: THE PROTEST – Bush Theatre
This venue’s urgent response to the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter campaign is powerfully realised.
‘A real gem’: Philip Ridley’s online series The Beast Will Rise is ‘sublime storytelling’
The problem with creating theatre in an era of lockdown is that the constraints of working online tend towards a uniformity of creativity
‘Philip Ridley’s masterly monologue explores the anxieties of our current culture of fear’: GATORS (Online review)
Gloriously surreal monologue about everyday anxieties in extraordinary circumstances: welcome back the glittering dark!
WATCH: Enter the world of Red Peter with the tense new trailer for the Vault Festival show
Meet Red Peter, the character at the heart of the award-nominated Camden Fringe Festival hit, which returns to London for a March run at the VAULT Festival. Time to book your tickets!
NEWS: Camden Fringe hit Red Peter returns to the London stage at Vault Festival
Grid Theatre’s acclaimed staging of Red Peter, an award-nominated hit at the 2019 Camden Fringe Festival, will head back to the capital later this spring for a short run at the VAULT Festival. Book your tickets now
‘Enormous passion & frightening intensity’: BABY REINDEER – Bush Theatre
Baby Reindeer at the Bush Theatre, stand-up comedian Richard Gadd’s provocative one-man show about a stalker and complicit victimhood, is darkly exciting.